Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Mexican Jumping Beans

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

Mexican jumping beans are a real thing and they really do move around. It’s not magic, it’s nature! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Go to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's other Josh over there, and this is short stuff, giddy up, down Mexico way, Chuck. Yeah. If you're wondering where Jerry is, she's fine. We just, she's out for a couple of weeks and we happen to be recording a lot those couple

of weeks. So, in podcasts years, it probably feels like Jerry's has been out for months and months. Yeah. Not true. It's not the case. Just two months. No, she's doing great, but really everyone pray for her. Right.

That's a pretty good check. That was very nice. I think Jerry's going to appreciate this. Probably so. If she ever hears it. Nah, she won't. She probably won't. Not a chance.

So, when you were a kid, were you aware of the idea of something called Mexican jumping beans? Yes. I think probably from like cartoons or something like that, and I'm not sure if I assume that they actually existed. Did you think they existed? I don't remember when I first saw them. Oh, wow.

You've still never seen them, have you? No, I've never had. I've seen them on the YouTube, so that's it. Yeah, I've seen them in person at some point, and I don't know if it was just, because you know, you can buy them in little souvenir packs and stuff like that. So, I don't know if I saw them when I was a kid or when I was an adult and finally went to Mexico. I don't know.

But I've seen them before. Well, there was like a glory day in the 60s, I think, where you could walk into like a KB toy store in the United States and find Mexican jumping beans for sale. The golden age of Mexican jumping beans. That's right. But I guess we just kind of spoiled it. If you were aware of Mexican jumping beans and thought they were just kind of made up like snipe hunting or jackalopes or whatever, no, they're actually for real.

Chuck can verify that. But the thing about them is they're not actually beans, they're seeds, but they do actually move and kind of jump a little bit, move around at least on their own. And for a while at first, no one really had any idea what the heck was going on. We just knew that it was kind of cool to watch and a little thrilling, especially before the television and even really before radio. This is what people did. They stood around and watched beans roll around on their own.

Or like ant farms or flea circuses. Yeah. Simpler people. Sure. So they should have just called them Mexican jumping seeds, because that's just as good to me. I don't know why the bean made it more marketable necessarily. Maybe because they look like beans.

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, they're seeds. They should have just called them that. Hey, Ask Joaquin Hernandez, the jumping bean king, he could tell you. Oh, we'll get to him. Okay. But they are seed pods.

They're from a plant called the Yerba de Fleche or the Sebastiana Paboniana. Very nice. Is that right? You said Latin and Spanish in the same breath. That was really great. That means herb of the arrow, which was taken from the fact that the poison from the shrub sap was used sometimes to tip the poison for their arrow tips from local tribes. Right.

I think I looked it up. I think it might be the Yaqui who did that. All right. Well, it's a deciduous shrub. It's got leathery leaves. It's dark green, but then turn red in the winter. Oh, but it's beautiful. It is, I think.

I looked up pictures. It looked nice to me. Okay. I've never seen them. Tested the chuck test. I've never been to the Rio Mayo. I hadn't even heard of it, but it sounds creamy and delicious. Well, that's the region where they're found in Sonora and Chihuahua.

I can't even get a good laugh out of you with my dad jokes anymore. They're that bad. That one was okay. All right. I wasn't sure if you were serious or not. No. They grow on these rocky slopes. Back in the 1920s is when they first started to hit the states.

That's when they came stateside in San Francisco. San Francisco, there was an article in the Chronicle about the little freakish brown seeds that just basically delighted people of all ages. Yeah. Mental floss had a pretty good article on this. It said that these beans cavorted about to the edification and delight of children and grown-ups. Yeah.

Well, actually they said seeds. Yeah, they did. They call it seeds correctly, right? Because this was pre-Wakien Hernandez. Right. So I guess I wonder if he really was the one who changed it over to beans. Who knows? I bet he's a smart kid.

Maybe he should take a break. Okay. I think we're at the halfway point. Sure. Right. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Mangesha Tickler, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. Lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast.

Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, cancelled marriages, K-pop? But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey Chuck, enough dilly-dallying. Let's get to Joaquin Hernandez, please. Who is he? He is a guy who in the 40s was 12 years old and was aware of Mexican jumping beans, although they weren't called that at the time. He knew they were kind of interesting, but he thought, maybe if you marketed these things

just right, you could really have like a novelty on your hands. Joke shops will go bonkers for these things. And he was absolutely right. He's like, kids are dumb. Yeah, kids like me. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing this guy was 12 years old and he became the literal jumping bean king over the following decades. I think Alamos and Sonora, where he lived, is now the jumping bean capital of the world.

It will probably never give up that title. Why would it? So early on, people did not know what was going on with these things. They were just delighted by them. Some people were kind of curious. Some people had an idea, but there were early theories before it was widely understood things like that there was a static charge or something like that, maybe making them bounce or there was gas trapped inside that was somehow exploding.

Who knows? It turns out that botanists and biologists or entomologists, I should say, figured it out. Maybe the L3 Linda hand. Yeah, it was a joint effort. But the entomologists, that's who I'm going with, said, you know what? You know what's in there? There's a live living moth larvae in there, and that is what's making these seeds bounce.

That's right. The jumping bean moth lays these little eggs in the flower of that plant, and then of course the eggs are then in the seeds, starts to rain in the springtime, and that seed develops and matures and it splits into three little guys. They fall on the ground and then those, they don't always, but usually those little smaller parts have the larvae inside, larvae, larvae, larvae, and that's, you know, they're in there screaming, help. Well, they're doing all sorts of things.

For one, they burrow or they make their cocoon, I guess, in the seeds because they eat the seed from the inside out as they're kind of going through this metamorphosis into a moth. If you have Mexican jumping beans, you can get them still. If you have them and you take care of them, you could actually witness the moth emerging from the seed eventually. But in the meantime, it's eating the seed from the inside out, which causes movement. Then also, they weave their cocoon, they spin their cocoon inside and they suspend it from the interior walls of the seed.

When they move about, their movements are telegraphed through the cocoon and the silk that's attached to the seed, which creates enough energy or enough force to actually move the seed pod. Yeah. And I think, where did you get this? Was this some of this from the Mental Floss article? No, there was another thing that I will mention in a second if you will keep talking about it. I'm not stalling am I? No.

The cool thing that they mention is that if it was just a little larvae inside, in order to move that bean like it moves, it would smush itself if it was just like slam dancing against the walls. That one was all Josh. Oh, that was all you? Yeah. All right. Well, the fact that those silk cables from the cocoon are attached is what makes it move.

And then the example of the whip makes a lot of sense. When you use a whip, the whip crack at the end has way more force than what you're doing with the handle of the whip. Right, exactly. It's the same principle, basically. Right. Right. And the stuff that I base that on came from Wayne's Word.

You're about to say Wayne's Word. It's an online textbook of natural history. Nice. Yeah, check it out, everybody. Yeah, that's one of the cooler facts of this one. I think the other one that stuck out to me or shot out like a little jumping bean moth. Are you saying you like the fact that I made up out of whole cloth the most that's your favorite one?

It finally happened. Thank you, Chuck. The other one I thought was really interesting is you expose these things to heat to get them to jump around. And they think that that might be an adaptation, basically, that when these beans are out, they're baking in the hot sun, they're trying to scooch over into a shady spot by making those movements. Yeah.

Isn't that amazing? That's pretty remarkable. It really is. So if you have Mexican jumping beans and you want to make them jump for your friends and they don't actually jump is not quite the right word. They move about, they kind of shimmy, they'll roll, tumble, that kind of stuff. They don't really catch air. Exactly.

Well put, dude, in a very 80s gleaming the cube way. That's right. And to make them really move, you just expose them to heat, put them out in the sun. And so they try to move out of the sun. Well, if you can kind of keep them in the sun, they're really going to start moving. The problem is, is this can kill the larvae inside. Yeah. The problem is it's super mean.

It really is. So like if this happens out in nature, you know, if the larvae can't move the seed pod to a shady spot and actually dehydrates and dies from the heat, that's a circle of life kind of stuff, right? Yeah. But if you believe that every living thing deserves respect and to be treated well, then do not give these to your children. No, because if you do kill them and it's just for humans' amusement, that is, that's a

little mean. Yeah. I mean, just think of the kid where this bean, if the adaptation theory is correct, is desperately trying to get to shade and little Timmy keeps just shoving it right back in the sun with a magnifying glass on it. It makes you want to shove little Timmy. That's right. Because if he were the kind of kid who would squish a ladybug or something.

I don't know. Good point. So there are people who say, hey, you can keep these things as pets if you want, everybody. In fact, there's a website called jbean.com, okay? And jbean.com says you can keep them carrying around in your pocket and the body heat will make them wiggle. If you actually want to let them actually come to fruition, you want to keep them in a cool place so that they don't have to wiggle.

They can use their energy for eating, but you want to keep them wet so you missed them once a week. And eventually, if you take care of them, you can see a moth come out sometimes. Amazing. It is amazing. Mexican jumping beans are Chuck. Amazing. That's right.

Well, that's it. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either. So this is short stuff. Adios. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app.

People podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.