SciShow Tangents - Sam's Favorite Things

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

The Tangents team faces their most complicated, multi-faceted, and mysterious topic yet: Sam. Who is he? Can anyone ever really know? Find out in this very special episode. [Truth or Fail]Mini terrariumshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-X4g_fCmKwhttps://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Experiment/exper/429https://history.nasa.gov/SP-400/contents.htmBaking powder submarineshttp://torgo.org/bpsubs/https://books.google.com/books?id=F2ApK7QnbPUC&pg=PA35#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://marinebio.org/creatures/tools/submarines/Bo'sun whistlehttps://telephone-museum.org/telephone-collections/capn-crunch-bosun-whistle/https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/capn-crunch-whistlehttps://garydrobson.com/2014/06/03/the-origins-of-phreaking/[Fact Off]Oxytocin in art class vs. board gamesArticle: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/bu-cca021219.phpThe paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jomf.125563D print your own hermit crab[Ask the Science Sam Couch]D&D monsterRoving Mauler!https://1d4chan.org/images/0/01/Roving_Mauler.jpg[Butt One More Thing]Beetle coming out of frog’s butthttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/after-being-swallowed-alive-water-beetle-stages-backdoor-escape-from-frogs-gut/https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30842-3?_returnURL

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, as always, I'm joined by Stefan Chen. Hello, Stefan. Hello. Good evening. If you could date any fictional character, who would it be? A fictional character?

I have never thought about this. How is that possible? Come on. How often do you think about it, Sam? Well, I know that the answer is Jubilee from X-Men, so that's how much I think about it. I feel like I've had a number of fictional character crushes, but you don't want to date them necessarily. Stefan's in it to smooch.

I'm in for those smoochies. Yeah, I don't know. Like Misty from Pokemon. Woo! It'd be great. You could go Pokemon hunting together. Yeah, and that I actually would. We could go out and find some Pokemon.

Yeah. Stefan, what's your tagline? Super spud. We're here with Sam Schultz as well. Sam, what do you want for Christmas? This is such a hard question for me and similarly hard to writing this poem because I don't really know what I like. I'm not extremely in touch with that kind of thing. We all have the same problem. And what's

your tagline? A festive holiday Dracula. And Sari Riley is also with us today. Hello, Sari. Hello. Have you ever been to a Dakota? Yes, I've been to a South Dakota. Okay. When I graduated from college, me and my friend piled into a car and road tripped back as we drove across the United States and Canada. And we stopped in South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore, which was underwhelming. Yeah. What's your tagline? Most likely to not have a tagline thought up.

Whoa. Meta. And I'm Hank Green and my tagline is the international service station. Every week here on Tangents, we get together to try to one up a maze and delight each other with science facts and we play for glory. We also keep score and award sandbox from week to week and we try to stay on topic, but we're not always great at that. So if you go out on a tangent and the rest of the team deems your tangent unworthy, we'll force you to give up one of your sandbox. So tangent with care. It is almost the end of the year here in the year 2020, which means it's almost the end of season two of SciShow Tangents. So this month, we're celebrating science and friendship and the end of season two of SciShow Tangents. So this month, we're celebrating science and friendship

and the end of the season with episodes about each of our hosts. The topic of each episode in December will be one of us, and everyone else will be presenting facts about some of that person's favorite things. And in the last episode of the year, we will announce the season's winner and name a new name for our Tangents currency. And now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sam. This is the hardest science poem I've ever had to write.

I got sweaty while I was writing it. Well, well, well, it's time to talk about me and the things I like. I'm a rich tapestry. I like how dead leaves smell during the fall. I like spicy food. And guess what? That's not all. I like scary movies with lots of gore. I like old film grain and I like when cats snore. I like lots of people such as my wife. I like Oreos. Not much rhymes with wife. I like recording the show with my friends. I like mac and cheese and I will not pretend that I don't like things that glow in the dark.

Of course, Halloween and the Ferengi quark. Was this poem supposed to be about science? The prompt is unclear, but I don't want to rewrite it. So I'll just say there's probably science explaining why I like this stuff. And it's probably amazing involving things like my brain chemistry or how my DNA is organized sequentially. I'm sorry I didn't research it. I really am. But this poem is over.

Now let's talk about Sam. Wow. So our topic for the week is stuff Sam likes, which, oh boy, we'll see how it goes when we get to my part of the podcast. If I had heard this poem earlier, maybe it would have given me more to go on. Well, the reason I got so nervous is because I tend to play it pretty close to the chest. So I don't like to talk about things I like. I think it's really boring. So this was hard for me.

Is that because you want other people to think that you're paying attention to them and not think that you're harping on yourself? I think it's probably a lot of really complicated reasons all the way back to my childhood. Okay. Let's talk about the next part. What's next? I brought the etymology of your name. Yeah. Do you know what your name means? I know. I don't think I do. The primary definition is from the Hebrew name Shemshon. I'm not pronouncing that correctly. Derived from Shemesh, meaning sun. Sun in the sky or sun in your father's sun? Sun in the sky.

Nice. That's a good one. But it could also be from the Hebrew name Shemul. I'm so sorry for anyone who actually speaks Yiddish, which means either name of God or God has heard. I did some deeper digging. And in Avestan, which is the language of Zoroastrian scripture. Okay.

Sam means dark. The opposite of the sun. In Old English, Sam means half, as in like Samwise, Namji is half wise. Oh, that's cute. And it could be a derivative from an Old Norse by name, Samr, which means swarthy. And I really like that one. When you say the word swarthy, it's so hard to not picture just someone with an axe. Yeah.

My friend is like, no matter what, he's like, that guy's got an axe. Yeah. I don't know what he's going to use it for, but he's got one. I wouldn't look good with an axe, I don't think, though. I think you would. You could just put on some plaid and pick up an axe. You know, okay, so when I was a kid, I was scared of the Happy Birthday song because everybody looked at me too much when they were singing it to me.

That's exactly how I feel right now. Sam is uncomfy all right then i guess it's time to move on to one of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment but only one of those facts is real and the rest of you have to figure out either a deduction or a wild guess which is the true fact if you do you get a sam buck if you're tricked then our presenter will get the Sam Buck. Who is this time?

Sari. Sari, what are your three facts? So I started out the statement very bold. I know Sam likes little toys and action figures because they're on his desk. Is that true? Okay. So here is a truth or fail about cereal box toys.

All of these toys are real and came in cereal boxes, but which connection to science is true? This is perfect. Thank you. Okay. Number one, in the 1970s, Alphabets included a miniature terrarium with all the supplies for kids to grow sprouts, including a hardy and safe growth medium. The inventors of that miniature terrarium went on to work with NASA and the Sky Lab Space Station to help develop some of the first micro-greenhouse apparatuses to study the growth of plants in space. That's cool. Number two, in the 1950s, some Kellogg cereals included a baking powder submarine. You filled it with baking powder, and when it filled with water, the sodium bicarbonate and cream of tartar would produce carbon dioxide gas, making it float back up again.

And then when it reached the surface, it would tilt so the gas bubbled out and it would sink again. And a submarine engineer was inspired by this toy to experiment with the buoyancy of ballast tanks on real submarines, swapping out compressed air tanks for a simple chemical reaction that generates gas. That's cool. Or number three, in the 1960s, Cap'n Crunch included a whistle that sailors used to signal different things clearly at sea, and these whistles happened to exactly produce 2,600

hertz tone. Because AT&T implemented automatic phone switches that use specific tones to mean specific commands, hackers discovered that they could use Cap'n Crunch whistles to trick phone switches into rerouting calls to get things like free long-distance phone calls. Oh, wild. These are great. So we've got three different maybe things that you could get inside a cereal box. I'm in a church-erarium that was invented by people who would go on to build micro-greenhouses for NASA.

Fact number two, baking powder submarine that inspired an engineer to create a new kind of ballast tank or a whistle that was at the same frequency AT&T used for phone switching, which let hackers reroute their personal phone calls for free. So the submarine was made of baking soda? No, it was like a little plastic or metal toy, like submarine, shaped like a submarine with a hole in it. And then you poured baking powder into it. It would sink and then the baking powder would interact with the water and form carbon dioxide. And then it would float and then it would tip over and the bubbles would come out and then it'd sink again. Oh, that's super cute. I love that. And it does make some sense that you would use a chemical like source for gas in a submarine as opposed to compressed air. Though it feels like it would get used up.

I mean, compressed air also gets used up when you're underwater. So the way that a submarine works, to my understanding, is that there is initially air in the ballast tanks and then they open up in some way to fill up with seawater to help the submarine sink. And then when you're ready to float again, you push gas back into the tanks. And so it's like, we're going to be buoyant again. Oh, I see. And so it'd be for that part of it.

And the air that's in the ballast tanks doesn't get like compressed. It just gets leaked out. So the first one is their building of terrarium. I don't believe this. That then grows sprouts for me to eat. Like, is it like, hey, enjoy your cereal and grow sprouts. So it's like a little plastic container that comes with a little bit of growth medium and seeds.

And they were like, kids, open up this plastic container, sprinkle your seeds in, sprinkle on some water. Your plants will grow. It's like a little chia pet. And it's like in an egg, basically. Like you open up the egg. Yeah, like a clear egg or like a clear triangle. She's now got a really good picture of what this thing looks like in her head. I'm just saying. All these toys are real. The science

is what's tenuous. I could show you a picture of every single one of these cereal toys. That's the part I thought was fake. Yeah, me too, because kids would eat the same thing. Yeah, you can't include agriculture in your cereal. That doesn't make any sense. Seems like a really bad idea. Apparently you can. Shoot, well now I don't know.

And then there's the whistle with a Cap'n Crunch. This one I like because I feel like the peak of cereal toys happened around the same time as the peak of like phone shenanigans. When we all had landlines and you could like, you know, play your weird computer tones into them and like do different things. Yeah. I feel like a whistle would accidentally do something weird on the phone or like the designer knew that it would do it and was like, yeah, he's making shenanigans.

Yeah. Does tone still do things to phones or is that? I don't think so anymore. Okay. Well, the thing is though, if you could do it with like a serial whistle, then why can't you just do it with a flute?

I feel like a flute's way more, way more versatile than a serial whistle. Yeah. Yeah, but most people can't play a flute. That's true. And it's cheaper. Yeah. Yeah, you don't get flutes in your Cap'n Crunch.

That would be quite a surprise, though. Cap'n Crunch is not a pirate, is he? He's just a cap'n. Yeah, he's just a cap'n. He fights pirates. Okay. Who does he work for? I don't know.

I don't know. I think he's got an American accent, but he's wearing a British Admiral. So, really confusing. He could be a pirate, and his thing is just that he dresses like an Admiral. That's sneaky. Yeah, he's like he's flying the wrong colors. Yeah.

Alright, we are about to share our answers here, but you can go vote at twitter.com slash SciShow Tangents, where we have a poll up and you can vote for the thing that you think is the true fact. Go vote now. As soon as you do that, unpause and we will tell you what we think. Who wants to go first? Whistle.

Stefan's at Whistle. Okay. I'm also going to go with Whistle. I'm also going to go with Whistle because it is the true fact. Oh. Oh no. I was afraid you would be old enough and like tech savvy enough to know it, Hank. Oh, no.

Yeah. The whistle is the true fact. I just watched a movie about this. Oh, you also knew? I didn't know, but I suspected because I saw the conversation and they do this in that movie. Yes. There's a legendary hacker who is called Captain Crunch. Oh.

Yeah. Yes, there's a legendary hacker who is called Captain Crunch. Oh. Yeah, his given name was John Thomas Draper before he became known as Captain Crunch. And it was an American computer programmer. And then there was a group of phone hacking folks named Freakers. Very classic hacker name, I think. Like a bad pun, but they identify with it strongly. Oh, I never got that before. The PH is for phones. PH is for phones.

Yeah. And it just like came up in the freaking community that the bosun whistle from Cap'n Crunch was the exact frequency that you needed to trigger the AT&T internal tone signaling system that would basically make it seem like you hung up on your call. And so then it was ready to reroute it wherever. And so these people would blow the whistle into their phone. The company would think that it hung up. And then my guess is through other tones or through like an understanding of the internal phone system, they could then reroute their own call to another country or to whatever number they wanted. Did somebody do this on purpose or was it just a fluke? They didn't make the whistle like this on purpose, to my knowledge. No one was a secret agent in the Cap'n Crunch factory because in the 1960s is when this whistle was released.

The 2,600 hertz thing was discovered in around 1957 by a blind seven-year-old boy named Joe Ingressia, which is very cool, and learned by whistling a certain note at that frequency would stop a phone recording. Awesome. Yeah, so this child figured it out, and then this became known among a bunch of hackers, and then they were like, oh, this whistle just happens to be at that frequency. I'm sure someone measured it and then tried it out with a phone. That's so cool. I love analog hacking stuff. Yeah. And then this is what was weird to me and why I knew of it and why I was afraid Hank would know of it. But Captain Crunch, the hacker, then created something called a little blue box, which was basically a machine to generate different tones to do a bunch of different things with phones. And then that got Steve Wozniak and

Steve Jobs interested while they were engineering students. And so they like attribute part of the founding of Apple and like their interest in engineering with this phone hacking community. And that's why the cereal toy is now like mildly famous among nerds. What are you trying to say yeah i knew about it too so dang it yeah cool and these other things actually existed but it just nobody ever thought oh hey that'd be a good idea for how to make my submarine go up and down yeah that was it someone i think two cosmeticists came up with the idea of the baking powder submarine which was funny i don't know why they were messing around with baking powder, but they were like, when water hits it, it has a chemical reaction, makes gas.

So like, let's make a toy out of this. And then they patented it and then sold it to Kellogg's. And we're like, here, make it into a cereal toy. Those are popular. And then Alphabits just included a mini terrarium. I linked the commercial in the show notes. You too can watch it and experience the joy of these children. But no relation to NASA.

I just made that up based on the time period. All right. Well, next up, we're going to take a short break and then it will be time for the Fact Off. Welcome back, everybody. The totals for today so far, Sam has two points, Stefan and I have one, and Sari coming in behind with no points out of your truth or fail. Not that your facts weren't great. It's just that we knew them.

All right. Now it's time for the fact off, y'all. Two panelists have brought science facts presented to the others in an attempt to blow your minds. And the presentees each have a Sam book to award to the fact that they like the most. And it is Stefan versus me. The trivia question to decide who goes first will be read by someone. Sam is the co-founder

and former co-curator of a tiny movable art gallery called Fathom Space. Fathom Space has appeared on street corners and inside other galleries to showcase art to be experienced

by one to two people at a time. True to its name, the gallery measures about one fathom tall, though maybe it was a little taller. How many meters are in one fathom?

It's funny because if you just asked me how many meters were in a fathom, I would have gone into the hundreds or thousands. But knowing that the fathom space is a single fathom tall does change my perspective on this. How many meters are in one fathom? I don't know, three? Oh.

I'll say two. Stefan wins. It's 1.828804 meters. And after 2023, the 04 at the end gets taken off to be standard around the world. All right. So, Stefan, who do you want to go first? I'll go first. Why not?

So, oxytocin is a hormone that plays a role in bonding. I assume in other animals, too, but we probably mostly study it with humans. It's sometimes called the cuddle hormone or the love hormone and reinforces bonds with like your child or romantic partner. And I think it's more complicated than we understand, but that's the basic idea. So in this study that I'm going to talk about, researchers recruited 20 heterosexual couples, 19 of which were married, and had them participate in an activity, either playing a board game together or joining a couple's painting class to see how different activities might affect their oxytocin levels. And so the board game night took place in their homes. So in a familiar environment

and they played familiar games like chess, Uno or Monopoly, there were some other options too. And they also thought that that would be an activity where there was more like direct interaction, more social interaction between the two people. And then the art class was in, not in their homes. So it was in a novel environment. I think they did it at a community art center and they thought it would be more of an isolated activity. They called it a parallel thing so that like you're both painting, but you're probably not interacting as much because you're watching the instructor focusing on your own canvas.

But what they found was that the couples in the art class still found ways to make it more of a joint activity because they were stopped to admire each other's work. They'd put their arms around each other, give each other compliments. And so that also ended up being a joint activity with these couples. And they also collected everyone's pee before and after the activities. So they could measure the actual oxytocin levels. And they found that all of them produced a similar boost, except in men who were painting, they specifically saw a two to two and a half times greater boost

in the oxytocin levels for them. And overall, the novel environment seemed a bit better, which is not useful information in a pandemic. But again, one day, maybe we'll be able to take advantage of that. And they pointed out that other studies usually ask couples to perform a specific physical activity like cuddling or hand-holding. But all the physical touch here was spontaneous and pretty brief, but it still had this effect. So their takeaway was that it could be good to find those small, meaningful ways to interact when you're eating dinner together or going for a walk or sitting on your couches with your iPad. And that's so that's basically the fact.

The mind blowing thing to me is that they still saw an oxytocin boost when people played Monopoly. Like, what the fuck? How is that possible? And this is the same fact because it has board games and it has art and it has love. Those are all things I like. I just like have such an opposite relationship with all of those things. Like I get mad when I play board games.

I get mad when I paint. And I mean, I guess love is fine. I don't get too mad about that one. This is great. I'm glad to know it. All right, is everybody ready for my science fact? Okay, Sam, it's about hermit crabs. Oh, well, okay.

So for those of you who listened to our old podcast, a holy fricking science, once upon a time, there was a time when Sam just loved hermit crabs a lot. And one time, and it has time when Sam just loved hermit crabs a lot. One time. One time. And it has anchored itself deeply in my psyche. And now whenever I think about Sam, I think about hermit crabs.

So here's a hermit crab fact. But it's also an art fact. So art is very helpful for scientists. We rely on illustrations and other techniques to share information on everything from the cosmos to the human body. And we have used it also to document new plants and animal species. But times have changed and techniques have advanced, which is why you can now print out your very own hermit crab. So you might think that hermit crabs are a species of crab or that maybe there are several species of hermit crab.

But in fact, there are over 1,100 described hermit crab species. And their bodies are very small, and they are often very difficult to distinguish from each other. So it can be difficult to identify and classify a hermit crab when you discover it or when you find it, to know if it's new or if it's weird, that it's in the place where you found it or just to add to the scientific body of knowledge.

So scientists have to rely on each other's descriptions. That might not be enough. And they might reach out to a museum to have them send them a hermit crab like specimen or just to describe it to them. But the descriptions might be lacking. The museums might have lent that particular hermit crab out to somebody else. The sample might've gotten damaged or lost. And that happens,

and then sometimes end up in a situation where, like, the one individual that you described the whole species on is gone. So in 2018, scientists at the University of Cape Town and Stellensbosch University used a technique called 3D X-ray microcomputed tomography, or micro-CT, to scan seven preserved hermit crab species, including one previously undescribed species and two rare species from deep sea habitats. The scans provided high-resolution images of the

surface of the hermit crabs, including 3D structures that might be too complicated to capture by drawing. And you can view the scans online, and even more exciting, there are 3D printer files based on the images that are available for download, and you can view the scans online. And even more exciting, there are 3D printer files based on the images that are available for download. So you can email yourself a hermit crab or email it to somebody else and they can print it out and be like, is this the one? And you can hold it up next to the hermit crab that you have. So the scans assure that if

anything happens to the original samples, we will still be able to study those hermit crabs. Most importantly, they make it easier for people to learn more and teach more about these delightful creatures. But they're not alive. Yeah, the samples are preserved deads. I just want a new movie theater

commercial, not commercial, but like PSA that's like, you wouldn't download a hermit crab. But these scans and the 3D images of these hermit crabs are remarkably detailed, almost upsettingly detailed. You can see them in our show notes. So you now have to choose between Stefan's facts, couples doing activities together release oxytocin, the cuddle hormone,

but men released two times as much when painting compared to women painting and couples who played games together. Or mine, in 2018, scientists 3D scanned seven hermit crab species to facilitate further study, including rare and an undiscovered species. I'm ready. I'm ready too, I think. Three, two, one, go. All right, we split it again. I never win both. I feel like Stefan really gets me. I just had a moment there. Well, that means it is now time to ask the science couch where we've got a listener question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds.

It's from atcomo20 who asks, which D&D monster would break the most scientific laws? Sam, I feel like that one's just for you. Yeah, it's just for my mind, which is not scientific at all. Ask the Sam couch. Yeah. But I tried to come at it in a kind of scientific way. So D&D is full of monsters that break the laws of nature in extremely fundamental ways. But a lot of them are like demons or animated by magic or something like that. So I decided to focus on monsters that were presented as like a normal animal that you would see in D&D world. Like you could go to a zoo and there'd be this thing. And so the first thing I thought of was lurkers above, which are basically big flat manta rays that are textured like the

ceiling of a dungeon. So then you walk into the dungeon and then it falls on your head and eats you. But then I started thinking more about that. And that's just like the end goal of any ambush predator basically is to look exactly like what it's hiding against so like those were out and mimics were out which are monsters that look like treasure chests then there's a lot of monsters that are like a hawk with four wings or a cat with six legs which are super improbable they're like as improbable as something breathing fire but that's what like 30 of the monsters are so i picked two that i think are actually just really bad because like a good fantasy monster or even just an okay fantasy monster has an

interesting enough concept behind it if it attacked you you'd be like oh that's kind of cool but these two if your dungeon master described them you'd be like why did you even pick this one so one is the roving mauler which is a pretty popular answer to the worst D&D monster, which isn't the same as the least scientific one, but I think this counts as both. So it's basically a lion and a tire combined. You said tire, right? Not tiger? A lion and a tire. So it's a wheel, but the spoke of the wheel is a double-sided lion head. And then around coming

radiating out of him is five legs i've googled it and i love it so much and it is deeply unscientific this could definitely not evolve we've talked before about wheels being completely impossible to evolve he also doesn't really have a neck or an esophagus or any way to digest you. Any way to lunge forward at you. He'd just have to hope that he got close enough going sideways to get you. He spirals in. I think they actually climb trees and then fall out of trees onto your head.

But also lions don't do that. So I don't know what they were thinking. It feels like a good Halloween costume for your starfish if you owned one. You could put on a little lion face and be like, here you go. Yeah, or like your cat. It would be a cute Halloween costume for a pet. But just thinking about that wheel.

Whenever I think about natural wheels, I just think about how stinky it would get and where the joint would be. Yeah, well, I'm just like, he's got like one, two, three, four, five in between the legs. Yeah. In between the legs is the stinky part. And there's just like times five. So he's probably a really stinky fella. The next one is kind of boring, but it's the very first thing you see when you open the third edition monster manual and it's a flightless bird, but it has four bird legs and it's like a horse bird basically. And it's not super interesting. I just think it's dumb that they chose that to be like the very first monster in their

book. And just like a bird couldn't have four bird legs. So those are my two answers, but mostly the lion wheel. That's my big answer. I love the roving mullet, but it is dumb. If you want to ask the science couch your question, follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Emma A. Warner, at A. Happily,

and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this episode. Final Sandbox scores, everybody's tied with two, except for Sari, who's got nothing. Oh, no. Stefan is now pulling substantially into the lead. Oh, shoot. Ugh, yeah. substantially into the lead. Oh, shoot. Ugh, yeah. It's going to be pretty tough with two episodes left to beat him.

It's going to be hard. We're going to have to work together, everybody. Well, if you like this show and you want to help us out, it's easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show. Also, other people will see what you like about the show. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from the episode. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us.

Thank you for listening. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents was created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes, along with Hiroka Matsushima. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto.

Our editorial assistant is Deboki Trucke-Rivardi. 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. In the pond frog species, Pelophylax nigromaculatus, it eats bugs and stuff like normal frogs. And usually being swallowed alive by a frog means instant bug death. But when this particular pond frog eats an aquatic beetle called Regimbartia attenuata, within six hours, these beetles slip out through the frog's anus completely alive.

And they stimulate the frog's poop reflex in order to temporarily open their butthole so that they can escape and continue living their water beetle lives. I just want to make it clear that the butt fact does not necessarily reflect me. Frog, a bug didn't crawl out of my butt. Okay, guys. As far as you know. As far as I'm sure it's probably, yeah. Gosh, I hope I never have to go out of a frog anus. But now you know how. I don't think I can hold my breath that long. Yeah, how does it survive?

It's a water beetle, so it's fine. They can hold their breath. Would you have to hold your breath if you were inside of anything? Or could you breathe inside of like a person's stomach? No, there ain't no breath in there. Okay. There has to be air, right? It like squishes around.

A little bit. Unless you had a soda and then it's like mostly carbon dioxide and then you're in trouble in there it'd be real stinky here too

I'd imagine oh yeah regardless let us not shoot ourselves with shrink rays and get consumed by a human

yeah okay yeah