Short Wave - Quiz Bowl! How Animals Sense The World

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Do worms feel pain? How do otters experience the world? What are those pink appendages on the face of the star-nosed mole? We answer all these questions and more in this quiz show episode of Short Wave. Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber and producer Margaret Cirino go head-to-head answering questions based on science writer Ed Yong's new book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Are you reading a new fascinating science-themed book? Let us know which one at [e-mail] 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. So when I get up in the morning, a series of things happen, much of them sound related. So I hear my alarm. Definitely the cat, Zuko, makes these trumpet-like meows. Ed, can you describe how you experience the world when you wake up? Yes. It is a sensory bombardment. All five traditional ones are engaged because usually what,

happens is I get woken up at about six o'clock by my dog, Typo, licking my face. Ed Yong is a staff writer for the Atlantic and author of the new book, an immense world, how Animal Senses reveal the hidden realms around us. He crawls up from where he sleeps at the bottom of the bed. It's an arduous track for a little corgi, and he just furiously and intensely licks my face. And so... So it's a little bit like... Yeah.

In the morning. That's... Yeah. That's uncannily close. How odd. Right. So then there's the sound of him looking my face. There's the sight of like fuzz. Sometimes when he actually gets in my mouth because my first reaction is going, oh, God, no. And then he's all in there. Then there's taste as well. It's really a whole smorgasbord of sensory information at six in the morning. You've been a science writer for 15 years and spent a lot of time examining the world with a scientific level of rigor and curiosity. From the microbes that live inside us, that was your first book, I Contain Multitudes, to now pondering how animals have what you describe as a, quote, sensory bubble that's a bit different from our own.

I love that language. Why, Ed, did you want to write about sense? For lots of reasons, I think that the biology is incredibly fascinating, right? So in the book I get to write about snakes and bats and elephants and whales and all the incredible things that they pick up in the environment. I think that the senses connect us all. Thinking about the senses of animals really changes our appreciation of the world around us. Absolutely. And it's such a world-expanding read for that very reason.

So, Ed, you kind of inspired us to make a game show to really explore these animals on their own terms. I'm tentatively calling it instead of Quiz Bowl, G-Golly Whiz Bowl. This is the work of the title. Please submit other suggestions. Inspired. Let's meet our contestants. Behind door number one, we have shortwave producer Margaret Serino. Hello, Margaret. Hello. Hi, excited to be here. Welcome, welcome. I know you flew all the way.

And behind door number two, we have scientists and residence, Regina Barber. Hello, Regina. Hi. Number two's the best. Go number two. Today on the show, we gamify Ed Yong's new book, an immense, world and throw down the gauntlet on the wild world of animal senses. I'm Emily Kwong and you're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Quiz Show from NPR. All right, everyone, to warm up, I want to start with a personal question. And that is, if you were a body part, which one would you be?

Margaret Serino. I think I would be a nose because I am always inserting myself into other people's business. No lies detected I know I'm aware Wow Regina Barber Body part

Which one would you be I mean I thought about this a little bit And I wanted to be something like cool But that's just not me So I picked vocal cords Because I am so incredibly loud Vocal cords are cool Are they?

I mean they could be They could be good Like beautiful singing And they can just be annoying Like yelling at people Down the street And that's who I am You have range

Who do Ed, if you were a body part, which one would you be? I'm a stomach because loves food, pretty acidic, and stop between organs that either talk too much or are full of shit. Wow. Comprehensive answer. Okay, you all start with one point, except you, Ed. You wrote the book and you inspired this quiz show, so you get no points.

What? Wow. I'm keeping my points. I'm saying, I'm saying you're the judge. Ed, we want you to know we did not let these guests read the book. Emily, have you deprived me of two sales? Thank you for not reading my book. You're welcome.

It took a lot of energy. It's kind of hard to find people in the science world who haven't read your book. But Margaret and Magida are contestants have not. In fact, they are both physicists. Yes. And we're going to ask them quiz-style biology questions inspired by your book. I expect nothing but excellence from both of you and maybe a tiny bit of smack talk. Do you think we can do that?

Yeah. We'll try. All right. Let's get started. So this question comes from chapter six, a rough sense, which is all about contact and flow. And it focuses on sea otters. So sea otters get a lot of their sensory information through touch with one part of their body in particular. Which part of the body is that?

Margaret. Okay. I'm feeling fur? Like, they're padding? That's the answer I'm going to go with. No. Okay. When?

Regina, I'm going to say their like nose. Okay. Ed, what is the real answer? It is their paws. So much like... It seemed too obvious. The little pause. It was a bit of a tricksy question.

So, yeah, no, it's their pause. See, Oto Pause. much like human hands are extremely sensitive. They look like kind of a knobbly cauliflower head, but they're really nimble and they're incredibly sensitive. And that allows the otter whenever it dives to very, very quickly find the sea urchins and this shellfish and all the stuff that it needs to eat

before it starts to lose too much body heat. Thank you, Ed. We begin the game with a tie. So the next question, in this same chapter all about contact and touch, You talk about how the hands of humans and otters have an outsized influence on our sense of touch. But that's not true for all animals. They're perhaps using other organs.

And there is one critter in particular, for whom this is true, called the star-nosed mole. They use a different organ. I want you to guess what the star-nosed mole uses most to touch the world around it based on this picture alone. Margaret and Regina. Gina, I'm going to say it's going to be my... Same answer from before, nose. That's just unfair. This is one of the coolest critters you write about in the book.

Ed, what is this? Right. The star nose mole is actually very, very well-named. Good job department of naming things. It is a mole with this fleshy star shape on its nose. These like fleshy appendages that look like two hands reaching out at the world. And through that, it senses the textures, the features, the feel, the shape of little morsels of food. It can identify prey, swallow it, and then start searching for the next mouthful in just a quarter of a second, which is about as fast as a human blink.

Very fast. Very cool. Okay. This next question, it is about our sense of pain. Margaret and Regina, we want to know. What is the difference between pain and no seception? Gina, what's the difference? I mean, I'm guessing it has something to do with, like, a process. Like, pain is like a reaction that your brain has to process or something like that. And the other thing that you said, the jargony word, that's just like the name of what happens versus like another step or something. I'm just guessing. You are. Does she get a point for that?

I think she gets a point for that. Correct. Yeah. Number two. Number two. Gina, you have three points. Margaret, you have one, but that is okay. There is one more question left. To make it three to two.

First, though, Ed, what is this jargony word? What is no seception? So when I touch a hot pan and I burn my hand, my arm is going to recoil before I'm actually consciously aware of the burn. And that detection, that something bad has happened to my hand, that's no seception. It is reflexive. It just happens because there are these senses. in the fingers that go, oh, no. The suffering, the agony that I experience afterwards, the fact that frankly the burn sucks, that is pain. Pain involves the brain.

It's the conscious emotional reaction to the injury. And you go on to say, you know, for animals, for us, pain is kind of a subjective thing. Can you talk a little bit about that? So with animals in particular, there's this big debate about whether a lot of different creatures feel pain or not. And then specifically whether they have that emotional conscious experience, like are they suffering or are they just experiencing no seception?

So if a worm touches a hot surface, it's going to withdraw, it's going to rive, that looks a bit like pain, but we know based on the simplicity of its nervous system, that it just seems unlikely to have that kind of rich, full, conscious experience. So a lot of people then argue that some other animal groups might just be experiencing no seception without pain. There's been a lot of push and pull in this. So more recently, I think there's pretty strong evidence that fish, for example, feel pain, that octopuses feel pain. And because pain is so charged, because it's such a difficult topic that has ethical and economic consequences for so much of what humans do, A lot of our thinking around it gets collapsed into this very simplistic question.

Do animals feel pain or not? We're going to pose the final question. Gawley, Wisble is coming to a close. So far, we have Regina with three points, Margaret with one. This question comes from chapters 9 and 10 talking about echoes and electric fields. Oh, yes. Chapter 9 is called A Silent World Shouts Back. and it's all about echo location.

Chapter 10 is all about electrolocation. What's the difference? All right, Margaret, what is the difference between echo location and electrolocation? Final question. I don't actually have any. Okay. You got it. You know this.

It's the spelling. Yeah. Okay. Echo location, you're using like sound waves to create a map to see. electrolocation you are sending out pulses of electricity to create

No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Regina, Regina, let her finish. I'm trying to help. You're using electric waves to see. I'm gonna, that's, I'm wrapping it up. Can I guess?

Ed? I mean, I'll allow it. I think that was certainly fine. But I'm curious what Regina's going to say. Oh, I thought, I thought we were using the Earth's magnetic fields, electromagnetic fields to locate. Oh, no, no, no, no.

Okay, well, then I'm wrong. Ed, what's going on with fish and their electro-location properties? All right, so there are hundreds of species of electric fish that can generate their own electric field. By producing these electric fields and by sensing how those fields are distorted by objects around them, so whether it's a conducting object like a plant

or an insulating one like a rock, they can get a sense of their entire surroundings. You know, it's kind of like an extended form of touch. Isn't that cool? Wow, I was way off. I really thought about electro-magnetism. Now who's the astrophysicist. Yeah, you got it, Marge.

I am horribly embarrassed. What Regina was thinking of is called magnetoreception, which is sensing the Earth's magnetic field and using that to navigate. Yeah, yes. And with that by a score of three, to two. Very respectable. Our winner is Regina.

Nice. I'm the greatest. You know what? Gina, next time. Good job, Marge. Good game. Thank you. Ed Young, thank you so much for talking to us. And to Margaret Serino and Regina Barber for playing this game. It was fun. Thanks, everyone.

You can keep the fun rolling for yourself, too. Ed's new book, an immense world is on sale now. This episode was produced by Burley McCorm. and Rebecca Ramirez, who was also our editor. It was fact-checked by Rachel Carlson and engineered by Stu Rushfield. I'm Emily Kwong.

Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR. Ed, if you had a sudden death question. I have just forgotten literally everything in this book. Like, all 360 pages have vanished. Wow. What a great interview. We made you remember everything in your book and gave you no points for it. No one deserves more rest in this world than you.

Thank you.