Short Wave - A Silky Shark Named Genie Swam 17,000 Miles, a Record-Breaking Migration

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

A silky shark named Genie traveled from the Galapagos Islands out to the open ocean and back – over 17,000 miles – over the course of a year and a half. That's an average of 31 miles per day, making Genie's journey the longest recorded migration for a silky shark. Marine scientist Pelayo Salinas de León and his team named Genie in honor of the late marine biologist Eugenie Clark – also known as "The Shark Lady." She devoted her life to the study of sharks and to improving their reputation. Have another story you want us to cover? Email us at [e-mail]. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, shortwavers, Emily Kwong here with the big sister I never had, Elsa Chang. Oh, that's so sweet. It's true. And my other big sister, co-hosts us with the Moses Regina Barber. Thank you, Em. All right, today, as you both know, we're going to share three science stories in the news that have caught our attention recently. The first one is a new study on how not to be misunderstood.

Okay. And I hear there's also one about some metal. head woodpeckers. And a shark named Jeannie that makes a record migration. All that on this episode of Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. All right, Elsa, what topic do you want to start with? Let's first start with the study about how not to be misunderstood, which is, I feel like, the story of my life. But how not to be misunderstood?

Not to be the grammar police, but this is a double negative. And I bet you feel totally lost by that. I do not feel terribly found, but yeah. Yeah. Okay, even that sentence right there. You Elsa Chang just used negation. Negation! It's this thing we do in linguistics all the time, right?

Where we cancel out a word or part of a sentence to change its meaning. And neuroscientist Ariana Zunazi wanted to figure out how our brains process negation and published a study in the journal Plus biology this week all about it. Well, as someone who is in the business of communication, this is super fascinating already. How did Ariana study this? Yeah, when she was a postdoctoral fellow at NYU, she set up a study where participants sat in front of a computer monitor and read phrases with the words not and really next to adjectives like good, bad, hot, cold. Like the phrase, this coffee is not hot,

Ariana would measure how participants interpreted that phrase through a computer task and neuroimaging to measure like electrical brain activity. Oh, cool. What did they find? So when a phrase with negation came up, participants took several milliseconds longer, to interpret it and their interpretation had this specific pattern to it. So, yeah, the knot in this coffee is not hot merely reduced the temperature of the coffee in the minds of the participants. They didn't generally think the coffee's cold.

So negation appears to mitigate meaning rather than invert meaning. Ah, that is interesting. But, I mean, I feel like linguists have known about this for a long time. Like, I can think of a bunch of people at NPR who would readily point out to you, oh, you just used a double negative. Yeah, for sure, for sure. But, you know, Ariana says this is one of the few negation studies using, like, neuroimaging of this type to maybe provide evidence for it. And that's important research because negation can be used to deliberately deceive people. Think about legal findings or advertising.

For instance, if you say, oh, this product is not harmful to the environment. What does that mean? Is it safe or is it not safe? So using negation sometimes introduces this level of confusion. Confusion, obfuscation. Yeah. Ariana wants this message to reach everyone who cares about language from AI developers to writers to public speakers. We could all stand to communicate more clearly and maybe try not to use not as much. Deal.

Okay, Gina. Next up, you have a story about a shark named Jeannie. Yes, yes, not Gina. It'd be Jeannie. So Jeannie is the six-foot-long silky shark and silky sharks are named after their smooth silky skin. Yeah, and Jeannie was tagged in the Galapagos Marine Reserve and then traveled halfway to Hawaii twice and circled all over the place in the area in between. Elsa, this journey by Our Girl Jeannie was epic. It's turned out to be the longest silky shark migration on record. Jeannie traveled over 17,000 miles in a year and a half, an average of 31 miles per day. Researchers published the results in the Journal of Fish Biology.

Wait, wait, wait, before we move on, why is this shark? named Jeannie. Like, can you make a wish with it? I actually wish you could make a wish, but no. But it's a sweet story. The researchers behind the study, including the lead author, Palayo, Salinas de Leon, named the shark after the late marine biologist Eugenie Clark. And here's Palio.

She was called the Shark Lady. And we wanted to acknowledge her career and, you know, all the great things she did for the field of shark ecology. So Eugenie spent her whole life studying shark. and trying to improve their public reputation. Oh, okay. Rehabilitate the public image of sharks. Yes.

Okay. So you mentioned that this is the longest silky shark migration on record, which is a really specific record. Yeah. But we're signed to surprise that this shark traveled so far. Yeah, it actually kind of was a surprise. So Jeannie was tagged in a Marine Reserve with, like, lots of food. So why leave?

And other sharks that fed there, like, tiger sharks, they don't travel that far. Yeah. Yeah, researchers have three hypotheses as to what genie might have been up to. It could have been to find better food or to mate or to give birth. We still don't know a lot about how Silkees reproduce. But this tracking system could help researchers one day answer that question. Okay, cool. But beyond that, like, why is it important to know where they are going? So, yeah, to protect them, we need to know where they are. Because of a poor public image, the shark fin trade and habitat loss, these sharks are considered a vulnerable species and they're declining in number. we kind of as a society allowed for them to be systematically killed and overfish. And if Silkeys are swimming really far and spending most of their time in international waters, nations will have to work with each other to manage these waters and better protect Jeannie and other sharks.

Okay. Well, from Silky sharks to metal head woodpeckers now, what are we talking here like headbanging birds? Yeah? Before we proceed, I just want you to listen to a little, little, little, clip. Oh, my God, what is that? Is that a bird or a construction site? So, Elsa, this is the sound of a woodpecker drumming away recently on our NPR colleague Sasha Pfeiffer's metal chimney cap.

Oh, my God, Sasha. I'm so sorry. That's terrible. It's so frustrating. I've heard it so many times outside of my house in the Pacific Northwest when I lived there. It sounded like a jackhammer outside of my house. Yeah.

And Sasha wanted to know, like, why are these woodpeckers packing on metal and not wood? Oh, good point. Seems kind of counterproductive. Yeah. So she spoke to an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Kevin McGowan. And he said woodpeckers want to make the biggest noise they possibly can when making a home, marking territory or when finding a mate. And springtime is mating season for woodpeckers. Basically summarized as all other guys stay away, all the girls come to me.

And the bigger, the noise, the better. Wait, but does bang your head on something really, really hard, a bunch of people? times. I mean, doesn't that hurt them? Yeah, so Kevin said woodpeckers are really just trying to drum enough sound to make a big noise. Not enough for it to hurt. They adjust how hard they're drumming based on the material. And in fact, he told Sasha that over time, some urban woodpeckers learned that metal, like chimney caps on Sasha's roof, make a much louder, more reverberant sound than wood. And woodpeckers in the cities have access to tons of metal. Like, think about vent pipes, gutters, traffic signs, metal ladders, it is all prime real estate for woodpeckers looking to claim some territory or couple up.

I mean, but it sounds really annoying. So can people do anything who live near these metal surfaces to stop these woodpeckers? So woodpeckers are covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. So capturing them requires federal permission. But people can scare them off with like noise deterrence, like recordings of screeching, hawks or physical deterrence like balloons or pinwheels. That's incredible. Okay, I guess I'll keep my screeching hawk recordings handy if I hear any woodpeckers. I'll loan you some. Okay.

Thank you. Elsa, thank you for hanging with us and talking science today. You're so welcome. I love doing this. You can also catch Elsa on Consider This, NPR's afternoon news podcast. Before we head out, a quick shout out to our Shortwave Plus listeners. We appreciate you. and we thank you for being a supporter.

Shortwave Plus helps support our show, and if you're a regular listener, we'd love for you to join so you can enjoy the show without sponsor interruptions. Find out more at plus.npr.org slash shorewave. This episode was produced by Michael Levitt and Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Viet Leigh and Christopher Enteliotta.

Emily, Rachel, and I check the facts. And the audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Carly Strange. I'm Regina Barber. And I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shorewave. from NPR.