SciShow Tangents - Teens

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

For humans, the teenage years are marked by angst, self-discovery, and homework. For elephants, they’re marked by pus-weeping face glands, uncontrollable rage, and a green penis!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Truth or Fail]Guevedoces:https://secondnexus.com/opinion/the-intersex-children-of-salinas/https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/924291-overviewhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2265.1991.tb03769.xCat scratch disease: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-case-of-schizophrenia-found-to-be-a-bad-case-of-cat-scratch-disease[Fact Off]Musichttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-teen-music-choices-fear-rules/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22Gregory+S.+Berns%22Elephant Musthhttps://www.bbcearth.com/blog/?article=teenage-elephants-need-a-father-figurehttp://www.rhinoresourcecenter.com/index.php?s=1&act=pdfviewer&id=1253211728&folder=125[Ask the Science Couch]Risk taking/brain developmenthttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445337/https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontopsychology/chapter/6-3-adolescence-developing-independence-and-identity/Lyinghttp://www.jeffreyarnett.com/articles/articles/ARNETT_the_right_to_do_wrong.pdfhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691815300184https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0109591[Butt One More Thing]Koala paphttps://www.savethekoala.com/about-koalas/life-cycle-koalahttp://koalainfo.com/pap-the-first-solid-food-of-koalas

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's 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 Stephan Chin. Hey! Whoa! Hi! Stephan, what's your tagline? Taco meat in the morning.

Oh, that's the best. We're also joined by Sam Schultz. Hello. Sam, what's your tagline? My other car is a car. Nice. You have two cars? No.

That would be the bumper sticker I had, though, you know, if I had two cars. Sari Riley is also here. Hello. You pulled yourself together and you got an outfit today. Whoa. I love it. You look great. Thank you.

As opposed to usually when I wear a garbage bag on this couch. Yeah, what the hell? I found these weird pants and they're really comfy and so I'm trying to figure out how to wear them. They have straps built into the pants. They're weird pants with shoulder straps. Yeah. I should do more suspenders. You should bring it back.

You have some cultural cachet or whatever. Right. I'll trade it in for suspenders. All the social capital I have built. Your book will plummet off the New York Times.

People will be like, Hank Green, he's the suspenders guy? Right? Sorry, what's your tagline? Loud Jell-O. And I'm Hank Green. My tagline is I'm bringing suspenders back.

Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by previous conversations, we might not be great at that. So if the rest of the team deems a tangent unworthy, we will force you to give up one of your Hank bucks. So tangent with care. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sari. Who needs to study for that biology test? If my mitochondria hide that I'm broken inside, sadness is woven into my DNA and to cell membranes and to every peptide. They say fake it till you make it, but I don't know what real is.

No one wants an empty shell. They want a beauty or math whiz. Can't wait to leave this town and shed my past like a snake skin. Start fresh with a new me. That's when life will really begin. Whoa, angsty teen poem. Our topic this week is teens.

Did you draw on your personal experiences for that? I think I did write angsty teen poetry, but I really liked science. So I don't think I would have been mean about science. Been mean about it. Yeah, I wouldn't have bashed studying for biology because that's what I did instead of having friends. I tried to find my old teen poetry, but it all got thrown out when my parents sold their house. It's probably for the best. I kept a lot of old high school stuff and sometimes I read it and I think, thrown out when my parents sold their house. It's probably for the best.

I kept a lot of old high school stuff and sometimes I read it and I think well at least I know that I'm changing. I'll find sketchbooks from high school like in my parents house and discreetly throw them in the garbage. Oh no we should have a sketchbook day where we all bring in our stupid bad

sketchbooks from high school. I do have those. I have those too. It all has to die. No, we should have a sketchbook day where we all bring in our stupid bad sketchbooks from high school. No, no. I do have those. I have those too. It all has to die. There isn't a way that yours are more embarrassing than mine. They're just embarrassing to me. So they must die.

Stephanie, do you have any sketchbooks? I never drew. What kind of teen were you? Were you exactly like you are now? I guess so. Quiet, awkward. I played football. And listened to L Quiet, awkward. I played football. And listened to Limp Bizkit.

You played football? Yeah. Well, I sat on the bench and I liked weightlifting, but I could not deal with the performance anxiety of like playing in an actual game. So, Sari, what's a teen? I mean, this is one of the few ones that in human terms, at least, there is a mathematical

definition. Yeah. 13 and 19. Ends with the word teen. Yeah. So when we're talking about numbers, there is defining lines. But when we're talking about reality, of course, like adolescence is a time that can stretch and wiggle around and be different for different people. And definitely different species, which go through their teenage years metaphorically at all kinds of different ages. But things that happen during adolescence, we should maybe talk about. When you're a teen, hormones change in many species. Adolescence is

seen as when they become sexually mature and can reproduce. There's usually developmental changes in the brain, too, so behavior changes changes in addition to like body composition changes. And the word teenage we started using apparently around the 1940s, which I thought was funny. And it was hyphenated at first where people would say like teen aged people doing things. And so there's like a whole feature in Life magazine about these teenage people. What the heck? Was that late? Teenage girls.

Huh. Is that when people were like going to like drive-thrus and sock hops and stuff? A little later than that. After that, yeah. But the beginnings of it. Yeah. It's sort of like a expression of progress. Yeah.

To like say like it's okay to like extend childhood into this era of someone's life. Like you're not just an adult now. Oh, yeah. Better get married. Interesting. So we're all defined up, which means it's time for Truth or Fail. Stefan has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment, but only one of them is real. The other three panelists have to figure out by deduction or wild guess which is the true

fact. If we do, we get a Hank Buck. If we don't, Stefan gets our Hank Buck. Stefan, tell us your facts. In a village in the Dominican Republic, about one in every 90 children born have a genetic mutation that causes one of these three things to happen when they reach

puberty. My voice broke a little when I said puberty. That's going to have to stay. I'm going to keep in it. Is what happens that, number one, they suddenly develop schizophrenia and doctors think it's because of the flood of testosterone. Number two, changes in thyroid function and an overproduction of the thyroid hormone leads to hypermetabolism and the need to consume four to five thousand calories a day to maintain their weight okay or number three the increase of testosterone in puberty leads to the growth of a penis for people who don't have

one yet correct this is not by the way the last time the word penis will happen in today's episode of psychotangents so one of these facts is true in a village in the domin penis will happen in today's episode of SciShow Tangents. So one of these facts is true. In a village in the Dominican Republic, one in 90 children have one of these things happen when they reach puberty. They develop schizophrenia, possibly because of an increase in testosterone. Two, their thyroid hormone overproduction causes hypermetabolism and they have to eat a lot of food. Or three Increase in testosterone can cause the growth of a penis Oh man I don't know at all

Do you not? Do you not know? I don't think so Do you? I have a guess Okay I think it's schizophrenia Because oftentimes it has onset at puberty

It's a fairly common disorder Okay And it's a fairly common disorder. Okay. And it's a big deal, so it's something that people would probably want to look at and study if it did happen because we're really curious about what causes schizophrenia

because it's a serious disability to live with. Hypermetabolism, it could totally be that. You're right. Does that happen anyway to everyone? Hypermetabolism in your teenage years? It seems like it, but I don't know if that's the case.

You just eat a lot because you're growing, I feel like. You're getting all your new muscles. That's different. It's different than hypermetabolism. Growing is not synonymous with that somehow. I don't think so, no. But I can't Google it because I don't want to find out the fact. That would be bad, yeah.

I did eat a lot of hot dogs and stuff when i was a teenager oh man yeah oh those i drank like a six pack a day of like sugary so yeah just good times oh my gosh yeah i had constant mountain dew brain i would die so quickly i think i'm gonna go with the hyperthyroid eating thing i'm also gonna go with the thyroid eating thing just because it sounds like not too much of an exaggeration, like a little bit of something. Like the metabolism doesn't just burn food. It like creates energy.

So like where is the ultimate destination for the energy? Do you just get really hot? Do you move around a lot? Are you just like super hyperactive? I feel like that's how they would know in these 1 in 90 people because the kids or the teens are starting to act weird. The teens are acting weird. They're sweaty and sprinting around. So for that reason, I'm going to go with develop schizophrenia.

The correct answer was grow a penis. Weirdly, the hypermetabolism thing was the least based on any fact. Hypermetabolism is a penis. Oh! Weirdly, the hypermetabolism thing was the least based on any fact. Hypermetabolism is a thing, and it can cause a symptom of having an overactive thyroid, but I did not find anything about that happening when people hit puberty.

So the true thing, there's a specific village in the Dominican Republic where it seems like the rate of this happening is the highest, but it does occur elsewhere. And so it's one in 90 children. And so they think there's some kind of founder effect thing happening

where one of the founders of the village had a mutation that got spread throughout the population. And that mutation causes a 5-alpha reductase enzyme deficiency. And so in these children during fetal development, they do have testosterone present and they develop testicles and all the other anatomy that you would normally get from like XY chromosome pair. But there's a bit of tissue that would normally become either a penis or a vagina depending on whether that enzyme is present.

So the enzyme converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, DHT, which is more intense version, I guess, and causes that bit of tissue to turn into a penis. And so they're born with what appears to be a vagina, or it's just kind of ambiguous. It seems like there's a lot of different options that can happen. But they're assigned female and raised as girls. And then when they hit puberty, the increase of testosterone at that point seems to be enough to trigger the growth of that tissue into a penis. And then the testicles descend. And most of them end up living out the rest of their lives as men in that society. I've never heard of founders.

Yeah, what would your founder effect be? Like if you went and like founded a village and like all your, like it was everybody in that village descended from you. It would be a bad, it wouldn't be a good village. No, it would be a bad village? Well, Sam's would just be, you know, like, just artists with on we. Yeah. I think so. Really low level, like, social anxiety.

Late bloomer. I'm a late bloomer. Yeah. So nothing, like, we wouldn't get anything done. I bet there'd be so much good D&D, though. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We would get bored of it fast.

We would start a lot of groups. And then it would dissolve. But there'd always be a new group to join. That's true. Yeah. I'd feel bad for all of them. I'd feel bad for my descendants. Yeah.

What a very 2019 feel. How about yours? Yours would be great. You think so? They'd all be starting internet companies. Sure, yeah. A bunch of entrepreneurs. Yeah, they'd have the poops.

You'd have to have a really beefy sewage system. You know, plenty of joy at the world, but low-level chronic pain. Too much tweeting also. Too much tweeting about economic systems. Yeah, absolutely. Mine's also not fun. They wouldn't have any allergies. They'd be physically very robust. That's good.

I mean, I don't know if fun is the right way, but that's a good thing. Oh, they'd be so sad though. They'd be so tough. They'd be sad all the time. In years, it'll be lifting weights or something. Lifting weights. You'd be really good at football, but you'd all be too scared years, it'll be lifting weights. Lifting weights. You'd be really good at football, but you'd all be too scared to play it. Yeah, that'd be great.

We have a football team, but no games. The trainings would be great. So is there any reality to the schizophrenia one? Yeah, that was based on this case of a teen. This was a different teen thing. Where this one teen got cat scratch disease which is caused by bacterium that can be transferred

through cat bites and scratches but it usually doesn't cause any symptoms of mental illness but in this case he seemed to have developed like rapid onset schizophrenia and was receiving medication for that which helped a little bit like some of the symptoms cleared up,

but he was still experiencing like psychosis and that kept getting worse. But he had like red stripes on his skin and they think it may be, they just thought they were like stretch marks or something. But one physician eventually like put all these pieces together and was like, maybe it's like an extreme version of this cat scratch thing.

And that's what it turned out to be. So once he got treated for that, it was fine. So he didn't have schizophrenia. Right. I don't want to think about more cat diseases. I'm spending time around cats for the first time in my life. I don't think I had toxoplasmosis. Now I maybe do.

Yeah, it's fine. Do you love the cats a lot now? I do like them more. You have it then. I'm sorry. Well, you got every point. Stefan got every point. Next, it's time for a short break.

And then, the fact off. Welcome back, everybody. Hank Bucktotal, Sarah, you got one for your angsty teen science poem. And Stefan has got three. Woo! So we cannot catch you. With a rolled R, even. Three!

This is how I'm doing it now. All R's are rolled. And suspenders. Suspenders and rolling your R's. It's what I'm spending my social capital on. Now all R's are rolled. And suspenders. Suspenders and rolling your R's. It's what I'm spending my social capital on. Now it's time for the fact off, where Sam and I have brought a science fact to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds.

The presentees each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that they like the most. But if both facts are a giant snooze, the presentees can choose not to award their Hank Buck and throw it in the trash. And because today is a special day. Why? So Caitlin is our producer. She's in the studio all the time with us, most of the time.

And so we're giving Caitlin a chance to vote on her favorite fact as a tiebreaker. Are you trying to get more points? Or as a way for someone to beat Stefan. Or at least tie. I feel like Caitlin should be involved. I'm okay with Caitlin getting a vote, but maybe when I'm on the fact off.

From now on. I think we need to have production meetings about these sorts of things. Absolutely not. I will not have more meetings in my life. What does the title of producer mean, even? If anyone can just sit down on the couch and say whatever yeah there's a new wild stuff they want i've got another one sam yeah that's kind of how it works

i formulated this perfect game and now look at it i just there's no way to catch stefan so we you've swept before that's unacceptable that's sick alright alright and the person who's gonna go first is the person who was most recently you don't say it in their teens

right when I sat down I knew today that was gonna be the thing cause you just get everything you want don't you alright

so one of the most pervasive stereotypes about teens is that their actions are dictated by peer pressure. Cool teens set the trends and then all the other non-cool teens try to keep up with them. Yeah, rolling their R's and putting on suspenders. Then there's all the badasses who go against the flow and they hate all the cool people and all the sheeple trying to be like them. That's right. And that's basic teen like. Teen that's how teens work well in 2010 a team of researchers put that stereotype to the test with science so researchers hooked a bunch of teens between 12

and 17 up to brain scanning devices and played them clips of popular music at the time which was music that had a lot of listens on MySpace because it was 2010. Then they asked the kids to rate the music from 1 to 5, how much they liked it. So then they played the clips again, but they at the same time showed the kids stats relating to how popular the song was.

So it was like downloads, position on charts, what other people their age would have maybe said about it. And they asked them to rate the song again. And 22% of the teens changed their scores. And of those 22%, 79% changed them for the better. 21% changed them for the worse. So then they looked at the brain scans. And when the kids liked the song without context of how popular it was, the pleasure centers of their brains lit up. But when they

had given a bad rating to a song that other people their age liked and then saw that the ratings were generally better, the anxiety and pain centers of their brains lit up. So I assume the same is true for kids who liked the song less after they found out it was popular. And basically what they got out of this was that they didn't actually like the song any better when they found out it was popular. And basically what they got out of this was that they didn't actually like the song any better when they found out that it was more popular. They just had the shame of knowing that they didn't like something

that other people their age had liked. So it was causing them pain instead of causing them to actually like anything better. Oh, man. And that's how it is to be a teen. You just want to conform. Yeah, and it's all you're all self-shaming

it's not a good feeling like none of it's good it's all like pain centers of the brain yeah it's like physically painful to not

to dislike something that the rest of your or to like something that kids that you think are scum like yeah which is how I definitely was yeah that's me hating Daveews so that's my fact

that's good i like life is pain for a team for teens yeah and how how can we free ourselves from that and just love things yeah did they have any conclusions on the study of like what to do yeah i think the only thing you can do is turn like 30 and just be like I can't do it anymore these are important formative experiences your turn tell us about those penises my turn, here's my penis fact this is part of the fact

so puberty, it's bad do you remember? anybody remember? I mean it's got it's uses it's intense, it's sticky it's very confusing but elephant teens have it even worse and also for their whole lives because male elephants have a different thing from puberty it's called must m-u-s-t-h dusty yeah it also starts in their teens uh but it comes and

goes throughout their life so it's sort of like being in heat, but for men, for like bulls. And it's controlled not just by their age, but by their social environment, which I think is very cool. So here's the situation. Instead of hairy armpits and pimples, elephants, they have their temporal glands, which are like on the side of their face,

get really swollen and they start to weep. And then they constantly dribble urine down their legs and sometimes their penis will turn green whoa so you thought puberty was bad at least you're not an elephant uh the must cycle is a signal for female elephants that the bulls are ready to reproduce and it's marked by elephant testosterone levels going up 60 times higher than normal. In one individual, they found it went up to 140 times higher than normal.

And that makes them very aggressive. Elephant societies are matriarchal and male African elephants leave their families when they're teenagers to wander independently or from family to family. But must actually ends up serving as a kind of structure for those males with the timing and duration of must changing for the elephants in courting according to their rank compared to other elephants around them so a male elephant and must will typically fight with another male

and if they lose they will go out of must. What? Yeah. Like deactivate it. Yeah. It's like a video game mechanic or something. So younger males, usually in their mid-20s, have a shorter must period that lasts from several days to several weeks. Because they get their ass kicked? Yeah. And older males can go on for months. The structure probably helps younger bulls sort of like handle the intensity of that testosterone spike and figure out how to like pick their battles.

And if you would disturb that experience, that can have really big consequences. In the 1990s, there was a national park in South Africa that had too many elephants and one that they wanted to have more at. So the park rangers culled, like killed a bunch of the older males and took the younger, smaller elephants to the new park. And the orphans grew up without the must hierarchy. And when they got to the new park, they grew up and then there was only teenagers and no one was there to regulate their must cycles. And they killed 49 white rhinos.

Jesus. So instead of going through only a few weeks at the age of 25, they were going through three to five months of must at the age of 18. And they were just going out picking fights? Yeah. And they were just like, just freaking out, going wild, stomping on rhinos. And to deal with this, the park figured out what was going on, and they brought in six older males that out outranked the orphans and that worked

and the younger bulls had a much shorter must duration and they stopped killing rhinos it's like the elephant police they need daddies yeah they're big elephant daddies so bad phrase bad phrase so do elephants think green penises, crying, and urination are all sexy? It's not crying. So there's, you can look up pictures of this. We'll put one up on SciShowTandems.org. It's like glands on the side of their face get all red and swollen and it like weeps constantly like this oily stuff down the side of their face. But that's hot.

I guess the ladies are like well he's ready to go he's really hashtag winning i don't know what the p does and like the green penis thing is weird because it doesn't always happen so what they just get so demoralized by a defeat that that's yeah that's the thing like no one nobody really knows like it's weird that these like hormonal changes can be can be so deeply affected by. I mean, it makes sense. Probably this exists in people as well. Like, our social situation probably also dictates our hormonal situation, but we don't have good data on that.

But it's very clearly the case in elephants. Damn, that's really cool. I lost fights, and I bet my hormones were in a different place the day afterward you know fist fights in high school one day your penis is green you're punching jason in the face and he's hitting you back and then his penis normal normal colored penis the next day just regular penis color all right well i guess it's time for our panelists here and Caitlin to choose this is an abomination

so do you choose Sam's teen music choice makes them happy until they know what their peers are saying and then makes them in pain or elephant must I'm gonna pick moody elephants because it's just so weird.

It's really cool. It's very cool. I like the bully outrank the other bully. I don't know. Elephants are weird. I didn't think they were this weird, but all animals have their quirks. I'm going to give it to Sam. I feel like that's more relatable to my teen experience

caitlin's here for the tiebreaker hey she's going with elephant you still don't win so what have you gained i won this part okay i am no longer in must wow i just competed Sam out of must now it's time for ask the science couch where we ask listener questions to our couch of

finely honed scientific minds over here Mr. Nitram asks is the so-called extended adoption of a fake British accent a common

occurrence among you boo boo is this some kind of personal attack who said this was okay I don't understand did you have a fake British accent? Yeah.

Oh, no. How long for? I don't know. Everyone, people talk about it. I don't remember. I know it happened. I believe, I accept that it was a thing that I did. I just wanted to be quirky, okay? Okay. I'm sure everybody did something stupid. I was was really cool so i didn't really do anything weird i was not cool everything i did was bad probably did you sarah did you take the time to look up an answer to this question i did oh my god all right okay let's learn all about it so specifically i looked into why teens are prone to lying. It wasn't a lie. It was an affectation. Well, okay. So if you consider it an affectation,

then there is research on teen brain development and how this is a very important time for exploring identity. And so teens are more likely over psychological studies to take risks, to do things, I don't know, breaking the law in little ways or right i don't know being rebellious being rebellious is lying to their parents and lying to each other and just like telling lies so one study in 2015 a bunch of researchers just interviewed people who walked into a science center because that's apparently a good place

where you can like get people walking in who will do a science center, because that's apparently a good place where you can get people walking in who will do a science experiment and be honest about themselves. And they found that of the 1,005 people they interviewed, around 75% of teens lie, with an average of nearly three lies a day. 75%? Yeah. I mean, I feel like 100% of people lie. In small ways, like there's got to be.

Even unintentionally. Oh, I've lied today. But in comparison, only 37% of very young children told lies, averaging 1.7 a day. And then like old people was a similar. So like the peak lying is young adult, teen, and then you start telling the truth more. Statistically speaking. It varies person by person. That adds up, yeah.

I agree. So this was just one of my lies, is what you're saying. Yes. I think it would have to be. One of your lies. You were lying to yourself, too.

I didn't think anybody was going to think I was British. It just happened. You watch enough Money Python and you start speaking in a British accent. Okay.

So it could have been identity exploration or it could have been one of your lies, like just long term. But what I thought was interesting is there's a lot of research into lying and there are different kinds of lies and

so in looking at teenagers especially and and other groups there are different kinds of lies so like there's lying by omission which is keeping people deliberately ignorant of stuff so like you didn't ask so i didn't tell you that's very teen thing to do the other one is also a very teen thing to do it's lying by is also a very teen thing to do. It's lying by commission, which is deliberately falsifying information or misleading people. So it's like there wasn't going to be drinking at the party, but, you know, it was just a party. And there's antisocial lying, which is lying to benefit yourself, like saying I finished my homework or I have money when you really don't. And then there's pro-social lying, which is like when you tell your high school partner that they're a really good kisser or something like that to make them feel good about themselves.

Just to help other people out. That was the lie I told today to my brother. I told him pro-social. That he was a good kisser? You're a good kisser? Not that particular lie. I just, you know, I wanted to make him feel better about a thing. And it wasn't a big deal.

Okay. Pro-social lie, not about kissing. So there are like these four different categories and people research lying within them. And so there was like one 2014 study that specifically researched social transmission of lies. So do you lie in similar ways as your friend or family? What they found was that antisocial commission lies, so benefiting yourself and deliberately

misleading people, seemed to be the ones that spread socially the most. And they weren't sure if that was just because similar types of liars became friends, like similar people with moral standards, or just because once one person starts telling those kind of like, well, I didn't mean to, I don't know, like forget to feed your cat or whatever. I don't know. Not what teens lie about.

Not what teens lie about. Okay. It's not the same lie that's like being transmitted. It's the method of lying. It's a metric. Yeah. Okay. Yes, it's the method of lying. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. Interesting.

That's weird. So I guess that was an answer for you. If you want to ask the Science Couch, follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Jack I'm Mellow, at Julie Minors, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week. Final scores.

Sari, you got one point. Sam, you got one point. Good job. You guys tied for last. Sam, you got one point. Good job. You guys tied for last. What? I would have been there with you. I did not miss me. But I instituted a new rule, so I have two points.

So you don't get to brag. Yeah, I do. Okay. That's even better. How many points does Stefan have? Three. Yeah. There's extremely big teen energy on this podcast.

I got more points than you. If you like this show, you can help us out. It's very easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show. And we read them and they make us feel good, usually. Also, we're looking there for topic ideas for future episodes. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from the show.

And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. If you want to read more about any of today's topics, you can check out SciShowTangents.org for links to our sources and pictures of weeping elephant glands. Thanks for joining 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 the wonderful team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Sam, did you see it says it's created by all of us, which means that the rules are created by all of us. Oh, then it further muddies what producer means. Our sound design is by Joseph Tudamedish.

Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And special thanks this week to Valerie Barr. 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 lit. But one more thing. Baby koalas drink their mother's milk for the first like five to seven months. And then when they're strong enough, they crawl out of the pouch and then start nuzzling the mom's anus Okay, and the mom excretes a substance called pap which is different than poop

Which is like a gooey watery jelly made from eucalyptus that the mother eats and that becomes the koala's food source for like two-ish months when it's a teen

and then it grows teeth and can eat leaves on its own so it's like pre-digesting it it doesn't sound like it's a teen it sounds like

it's not a not a embryo anymore yeah probably that which is basically it's the middle part of its life it's a middle phase yeah

sure sure sure