The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Bird Milk, Space Lube, Hermit Crab Housing Crisis

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Liz Clayton Fuller rejoins the show to talk all things bird milk (yum!), and Amanda Reed spins the tale of the rocket scientist who invented a world renowned lubricant. Finally, Rachel explains the intricacies of the hermit crab housing market. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ Thanks to our Sponsors! Check out https://FACTORMEALS.com/weirdest50 and use code weirdest50 to get 50% off.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code Weirdest. It's third party lab tested and ships directly to you in a discreet box. Best of all, everything's backed by Mood's 100 day satisfaction guarantee. And like I said, you can get 20% off with code Weirdest. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code weirdest.

That's code weirdest for 20% off. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton.com. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises, it matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors

of Popular Science. I'm really. Rachel Feltman. I'm Amanda Reed. And I'm Liz Clayton Fuller. Liz, welcome back to the show. So great to have you. Thank you for having me back. I'm really excited that you asked me to come back. Listeners, many of you probably heard and remember Liz from 2023, but for anyone who has forgotten or who missed that episode and will now obviously circle back and catch up, Liz, why don't you tell my listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do when we're not dragging you on to the show. When I'm not on this show, I am typically painting burbs. So I am a scientific illustrator and streamer and educator and my career is really centered around painting birds. So I'm an

artist and I paint birds for scientific publications, educational outreach, research papers. And I also run my own little bird biz. And so I paint birds for myself too. And I like to put them in little cowboy hats and boots. And yeah, I stream on Twitch as well. So I'm the bird person on the internet. Such a great person to be on the internet. One of the better things you can be known for on the internet, I feel. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up some kind of fact or tease we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, painting burbs, etc. And decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we

learned this week actually was in a chill, non-competitive fashion. Oh, and before we actually get into the show, also, that thing that I keep saying is going to happen. Jess and I are going to do a Q&A. So, and that's now happening like really soon. I think we're going to try to make it happen in like early April. So definitely follow me on Patreon, follow Jess on Twitch, email me at Rachel at Pops.com or hi at Rachelfeltenman.com. If you have questions, you want to submit for the Q&A. But yeah, keep an eye out for bonus content. Okay, now we'll actually get into the show. Sorry, y'all, but it's very important to get you in the loop for bonus content. And also for you to follow me on Patreon, please. I'm trying to live. Okay, so Amanda, why do you start with your tease?

Yeah, so my tease is, many things aren't rocket science. Loub is. Loub, L-U-B-E-S. Loub, Loub. Wow, great. Perfect. I can't wait to hear more. God, that's a great tease. Yeah, and whenever something comes up that's, like, related to sex facts and I don't know it, I'm really excited because I feel like my head is so full of assorted sexual health-related facts. And yet the world remains full of mystery.

And also, as the person bringing this fact to. Rachel Feltman, author of a sex history book, I'm honored. Oh, yes. Well, wonderful. Liz, what's your teas? Okay, so my tease today is birds making milk. It's more likely than you think. Oh, dear.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. Cool. My tease is that hermit crabs are doing something both incredibly adorable and incredibly upsetting with our garbage. Wow. Amanda, I would love for you to start because I'm just so excited.

Why don't you grease the wheels for us? See what you did there. Very good. I loved that. Oh, and do I, is this story also filled with greasy little sicko puns? Great. So, lube has a long history from the Romans using olive oil as personal lube. lubrication to K.Y. Jellies start as a surgical lubricant. And we have literal rocket science to thank

for AstroGlide, which, if you're not familiar, it's another incredibly well-known lubricant brand. I would call it a lubricant OG. I feel like that in like K-Y, like on a family feud, it's like, name a lubricant. And it's like those two are like, sure, yeah, definitely. The ones on there. So let us all travel back in time to 1977 and the building of the space shuttle enterprise, which, yes, is named after the Star Trek ship. Nerds. I believe NASA, nerds. NASA had like a ship naming, yeah, a spaceship naming contest. And everyone was like, Star Trek. And NASA was like, all right. So. Those were the like very quaint days when that was how a contest would end. and not Bodie McBoatface. Exactly what I was thinking. It's also quaint now.

Now you couldn't get something as wholesome as Bodie McBoat face. But I digress. True. We've been through so much. We have. We have been through so much. Put me on the ship. Put me on the spaceship.

Enterprise was NASA's first space shuttle orbiter. So unfortunately, it was not capable of spaceflight, and it was really a prototype. But it paved the way for the space shuttle program. as a whole. A young scientist by the name of Daniel X-R-R-A-Y, and that's Ray, W-R-A-Y, was working at the Edwards Air Force Base in California to improve heat transfer in the Enterprise's cooling system. He discovered a water-soluble, non-toxic solution that became more slippery when wet. And like most nerds, he thought, you could put this on your penis. He bottled up this magical liquid and gifted it to a male colleague as a gag birthday gift.

The male colleague did indeed put the solution on his penis as a man would do. And he came back to Daniel Ray asking for a refill. And it wasn't like a little bit of this stuff. It was like a pint. Right. gag gift size, you would assume. Per Dr. Mr. Ray, it was a literal pint. And from there, the rocket scientist knew he had something incredible on his hands.

So Dan made 300 different versions of his solution before landing on the Astrolyve formula we know today. And he proceeded to license it to a North Hollywood-based company in 1982. And then after that, he just went back to rocket science. He was like, all right, I've done my lube thing. Back to the world of mixing physics and chemistry and engineering together to achieve feats of space. However, when the company he licensed his liquid creation to closed in 1991, Daniel Ray purchased the rights back, got a $8,500 business loan, and formed biofilm, which is the current. parent company of Astroglyde. Whoa.

And gave it the name we know today. So, yes, the name Astroglyde is a nod to its rocket science roots. And the formula has remained relatively unchanged. It's made of purified water, glycerin, which in skin care is used as a humectin to draw moisture from the atmosphere and trap it in your skin. Propylene glycol, which helps bind water to the skin. skin and prevents moisture loss. And polyquaternium 7, which is used to improve moisture levels, but also makes products feel more velvety and slippy. You often find them in like shampoos and

conditioners and I think maybe lotions, but I know definitely shampoo and conditioner. And polyquaternium 7 is the only change in the astroglyde formula we have. Astroglyde used to include polypollineum, Pollyquaternium 15, but it is a little more irritating. I know it's technically an antimicrobial, but it has been known to give people rashes, which you don't really want around your sensitive bits. So when it no longer became available, the company subdub for polyquot 7, which is more common. And Daniel X-ray was an incredibly interesting guy. his middle name was xenophon, just like the Greek historian and philosopher.

He chose it when the DMV told him, hey, bud, you need a middle name on your driver's license. Just off the cuff, just throwing that out there. Incredible. Good for him. And it gets better. It gets absolutely better. Dan was super active in his community so active that one city official said, we have to be careful that we have to be careful that we we not ask him to get into too many things because he's so willing to jump right in.

We don't want to abuse that willingness to lend a hand. Oh, what a guy. And like there's there's an entire San Diego Tribune article about him working on this like 4th of July parade that started as like a small venture and went to become like a $45,000 celebration. So again, he put his heart into everything, including his community. Sadly, Daniel X-Ray passed away in 2018 after a quick battle with cancer, but his legacy lives on in the hearts of his community and the hands of people using Astorglide today.

Yeah, everywhere. Many people. Everywhere. So many people. And I first came upon this fun little fact. I write about a whole gamut of things for the popsye gear vertical. One of them is sex toys. And naturally, when you're doing sex toy reporting, you have to mention what lobes are good with what toys.

Because silicone-based lubs will mess up your silicone-based toys. And Astroglyde, well-known, water-based lubricant. And then I was doing the research and I was like, oh, Astroglide, rocket science. Perfect, beautiful, incredible, it's going in the story. I love that. What a life. What a life. What a life and what a legacy.

I mean, if you had asked me, why is it named Astroglyde, I'd be like, because it sounds cool, you know. Yeah, I truly, I have read the whole like, here's the, here's the connection to rocket science. And then it hit me later that the astroglide was like related to, oh, yeah, space. I love that. Actually incredible. Thank you so much for for sharing that, Amanda. I can't believe I didn't know that. I can't believe it's never come up. I feel like, you know, when you're playing Mario Party and you like magically usurp the person in first at like the very, I have not usurped Rachel at all. but I do feel there's a lot of pride in my heart right now for giving Rachel Feldman a fun

sex fact. That's an honor that you feel that way about telling me sex facts. So thank you. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more facts. Did you know that there's an online cannabis company that ships federally legal THC right to your door? And talking about mood.com, they have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code weirdest. I'm not a smoker myself, but I do love the occasional weed gummy to, you know, help me go off to Dreamland. And I can't have one right now because I have a new kit. And, you know, I definitely miss it a little bit. But maybe you can have a weed gummy. And you can get one at mood.com. So the reason that different cannabis grains can make

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and tea, and like I said, you can get 20% off with code Weirdest. I'm eyeing mood.com's delta9 THC buttercream caramels because in addition to not being able to have THC, I also can't have dairy right now. So the idea of having a caramel that also mellows me out and sends you to Dreamland sounds very nice. And speaking of fun edibles, mood.com has delta9 THC freezer pops. So if you're looking to try some new cannabis products, head on over to mood.com. Get 20% off your first order now with code Weirdest. That's code Weirdest. for 20% off. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to talk about hermit crabs and what they're getting up to with our garbage. But first, I actually need to apologize to the countless hermit crabs that I unknowingly neglected as a child. Wow. In the course of researching this episode, I had to face some hard truths about my hermit crab legacy. Because I grew up spending my summers at the South Jersey Shore.

And in Ocean City and Wildwood, you could not walk 50 feet down the boardwalk without encountering a cage full of hermit crabs for sale. And they always came with the same little dinky little plastic enclosure with a handle on top of it. And they usually had shells that were painted, a bunch of bright colors, sometimes even like, They would be like painted like SpongeBob, whatever. And they were very much built of having like very brief, low-key lifespans. Like the messaging was that you'd definitely be in the market for a new hermit crab by the next summer, just by nature of the lifespan of a hermit crab. I think they probably told you you should come back and buy a shell at some point. But like that definitely, there wasn't really an expectation that they would have ongoing upkeep.

I definitely treated them like oversized sea monkeys. Like I fed them. I kept them in my room. I loved them. But like, you know, I expected them to die very quickly. One time one of them went missing and I found it in my sock drawer alive like two weeks later. And that probably should have clued me into the fact that like actually if I cared for this hermit crab, it could be with me for a long time. But I was like six.

So I did not figure that out. But yeah, it turns out hermit crabs can live for decades. decades? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't know that either. Oh, dang. You know, it depends on the species and obviously, you know, it's hard to know what sort of stage of life. The hermit crabs I bought in Ocean City, New Jersey were in when they came to me. But still, definitely they should have lived more than a few months. So that's on me and also on, I don't know, capitalism. But yeah. It's like we have taps playing in the background. for them. Yes. We have a memorial fun set up. I hope they're all resting peacefully in hermit crab heaven. Yeah. In researching this episode, it is pegged to a new study that I will get to in a minute. But I was

like, oh my God, hermit crabs are actually insanely cool. So I'm going to go on a little bit of a little bit of a dive into their whole deal because I really, as bad as this make me feel, sorry, as bad as this made me feel, it also like really blew my mind. So yeah, Herman Crabbs actually, they do their shells and that's supposed to happen about every 12 months. They grow and they mold and they need a bigger shell. But, you know, I never really stopped and thought about like,

it's so weird that this crab need shells from other animals. And yeah, they evolved to have bodies that require shells for protection, but they do not create their own shells. And they've been doing this for at least 200 million years. Like the fossil record shows hermit crabs living in shells that are not made by crab for 200 million years at least. And yeah, they were tooling around, you know, shopping for discarded mollusk shells to use their homes. And I recommend everybody look up what a hermit crab looks like without their shell. They have these very squishy little bodies.

They kind of look like shrimps at the end. They like are curled up. They're curly cute. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. And their bodies are like weirdly. asymmetrical. And it's a shape that would be super impractical for a crab that wanted to like act like a crab. Also, hearkening back to our live show episode, Hermit crabs, not actually crabs.

Most crabs, not crabs. Don't worry about it. I know if you're going to tell me like Rachel, stop calling them crabs. They are hermit crabs. So, not crabs. Go listen to the live show episode if you don't know what I'm talking about. Seratornash explained. No, wasn't Sarah Tonash. Who explained it? Yeah, Saratotos explained all of it. Yeah, so these weird asymmetrical bodies, very impractical if they were trying to like walk around on their own. But they're designed to fit into and then grip onto like as many shapes of shell as possible. They basically evolved to like be really good at like curling up and pressing their body against any shape of shell. And what a weird thing to evolve to do, you know?

I really respect it. One paper I found about their evolution was titled A Stranger in His Own Home, which I just love. Wait, that's incredible. Wow. Yeah. And, yeah, well, a few marine species apparently will shack up inside immobile structures like coral. Most of the hundreds of species of hermit crabs use shells or sometimes hollow pieces of wood or stone or other objects, as I'll get to in a second, to create these little mobile homes. They evolved from free-living crabs, quote-unquote crabs, sometime before 200 million years ago.

And in at least a couple of cases, they've evolved back into shell-free crabs with harder exoskeletons, sort of like, you know, marine mammal style. And, yeah, Alaskan king crabs and porcelain crabs are both descended from hermit crabs. Oh, sick. Yeah. I did not realize this. Who knew? those are two very different kinds of crabs quote and quote are such a weird such a weird bunch they really they they come in all sorts

and actually the there was a lot of debate for a long time about how closely these species were related and like which represented the sort of older branch of the evolutionary tree and a lot of the debate was like, they're so weird looking. It would be so weird for this one to come from that one. But thankfully now we can look at DNA and that helps figure stuff out, which you really need when you're looking at quote unquote crabs. Quote unquote crabs. New pop-side merch idea.

Crabbs aren't real. Just on a shirt, on a sticker. Everything is a crab. Nothing is a crab. Perfect. Yeah. You know, they need to get new shells when they grow and mold. And I'm just going to say a few more random things about this before I get into the study.

Because, again, I'm just like, I feel like we got to respect the hermit crab hustle. And I didn't for too long. So now it's, I'm making it everyone's problem. So shells used by hermit crabs generally, they have to be, quote, remodeled, which is when they hollow out the shell to make it lighter. Like most shells that are just like have been. dumped by another animal will be too heavy. And generally, if you try to just like force a hermit crab to go into a random unremodeled shell, they'll die from how heavy it is. And it also takes a lot of energy to hollow out the shells. So most hermit crabs will like inherit a previously

remodeled shell. And it's like they've carved out the interiors. And the shells can last for generation. So actually, you can find hermit crabs like thriving in areas where the snails that they get their shells from have been extinct for a long time. The question that I didn't really find an answer to is like, who first remodels the shells? But I guess the answer is just that it's a very rare energy intensive thing. And maybe in situations where that's the only option, you know, some big crab will do it. And then other hermit crabs get to benefit. But it's just because they reuse the shells so much, you don't need to. tons of hermit crabs doing the remodeling in order for tons of hermit crabs to be able to

have enough shells. That's amazing. I keep thinking of like an HGTV show that's like hermit crab shell remodeling. Absolutely. And there's no shiplap. Yes. No ship lap in sight. Well, and it's really fascinating because they do fight over shells, but there's also all of

this like very complex cooperation. So there's like, like, like apparently this very sort of ritualistic process that hermit crabs, I'm not sure if this applies to all species, but at least some species of hermit crabs will go through if there are two of them and one of them wants the other shell. There's this whole process where the aggressor will like be bothering the crab it wants the shell from until the crab retreats, like, you know, is fully inside the shell. And then the attacker will like turn the shell over and then the.

then start whacking its shell against the shell. And they call this wrapping behavior. And it's enough to, like, make a sound inside the shell. And it seems like, according to what I read, there's generally little to no contact happening between the two crabs while this happens. But after a certain number of, like, bangs, often the defending crab will exit its shell. and then kind of wait there while the attacker goes and checks out the shell and decides if they want it. They'll be like holding on to their own shell and then like scoping out the new shell. And if they decide, yeah, I'm going to take this one, then the other crab will take the abandoned shell because it's better than being left for dead.

And it seems like, you know, on the one hand, it's like, why does the crab emerge when it's, It's not being like literally, it's not having its life literally threatened. But it kind of makes sense because it's like if the attacking hermit crab could theoretically like break the shell of the crab it's attacking. You know? So it's sort of like, okay, better that I let you think about stealing my shell and then I get to take yours, then you break my shell and I have no shell to go into and I die. So it's just very, of course I'm projecting, but like very complex. strategic maneuvers, I feel, on behalf of the hermit crabs. Put a hermit crab on the NBC show Traders.

Oh, absolutely. And yeah, because if a hermit crab gets stuck without another shell to go into nearby, they will get eaten. They're very squishy and weird. So, like, let's see. There's another shell swap fact that really blew my mind. And this has been observed in both terrestrial and merriment. marine species. They'll form what scientists call vacancy chains. So basically, it starts with a

crab finding a new empty shell or stealing a new empty shell and being like, oh, this looks pretty nice, but then it's too big. I can't. This is, I would not be able to comfortably live in the shell. So they go back to their own shell, but they wait by the vacant shell for like, apparently as long as like half a day. And so new crabs will arrive. and they'll also start looking at their shell. And if it's too big, they'll wait. And scientists have seen groups of up to 20 individuals gather. And they'll literally hold on to each other in a line from the largest to the smallest crab.

And then a crab will arrive that's the right size for the empty shell. And they'll take it. And so they'll leave their old shell. And then all the crabs will move up the queue to take the next biggest shell. Wow. That is amazing. And also the cutest thing I've ever pictured in my mind is just all of them like holding each other's shelves. There are.

Little smarties. There is video. So I will post a video on popside.com slash weird. And you can also find related, stuff related to episodes, by the way, on my Patreon. Usually a day or two after the new episodes go up. I'm trying to post all that stuff there plus some bonus musings. But yeah. And, you know, hermit crabs aren't always adorable.

Like, they can also, they'll also, like, gang up. Basically, if one crab has, like, a really nice shell, other crabs will gang up on it and steal it because they can count on this chain happening where it's like, yeah, only one of us is going to get this really nice shell. But then, like, we'll all get to trade up to the next nicest shell in the attacking gang. Really? Like, I'm fascinated. If I had learned that this was a hermercrops were like as a teenager, I think I would have a different profession.

I don't know how much of a market there is for Herbicrab crabs specialists, but, and the shells themselves are also kind of like a complex little ecosystem because they'll have parasites that live inside that keep the shell clean. But then they also will sometimes like put amenities, that amenities on the outside of the shell so that they have like little stinging powers. Not all hermit crabs are into that. Some of them won't get into a shell if it has a stinger on it. But some of them specifically are like, I love my, you know, my peas of the flare. Yeah, my weaponized home. Exactly. My ultimate crib. Yeah, yeah.

So, okay, I promise that there was actually some new research here and not just Rachel learns hermit crabs are cool. So what happens when shells are in short supply? Apparently, when a homemade snail shell isn't available, a storebot chunk of plastic will do. So people have spotted and taken pictures of, and I will post this, hermit crabs, wearing bottle caps, light bulb bases, and other bits of trash for years. And actually, let me, I'm going to drop a link in the chat. So you guys can see. Oh, my God. what a little cutie yeah yeah it's very cute and like once you start thinking about it you're like oh no but it's very cute

so polish researchers decided to delve into the internet record of trash wearing hermit crabs to try to learn more because they did a search of the existing literature they were basically like we've seen these photos how much what do we know about this they looked through the scientific literature they only found four studies on hermit crabs using human debris as shells. So then they searched Flickr, Eye Naturalist, Google Images, YouTube, and Alamy with the same keywords they had searched scientific journals for to find photographic evidence of this phenomenon. And they were able to find 386 individuals with artificial shells representing 10 of the world's 16 terrestrial hermit crab species. And they also spotted the behavior in every tropical region on the planet. So obviously with a study like this, it's not systematic enough to say like this tells us that X percent of all hermit crabs do this, but it did show them that it's like very common across different species, which is not nothing.

and they gleaned as much info as they could from each photo, like, you know, location and background and the color and type of the stuff the hermit crabs are using and the species of the hermit crab to try to determine like why and how crabs would resort to living in garbage. And based on the photograph, they found that 85% of the hermit crabs choosing to live in trash were using plastic. very often white or black bottle caps and then it was about 5% each of metal, glass, and a combination of the two. It definitely seems like sort of light bulb bases were a common combination of metal and glass, which makes sense because they're, I guess, sort of the right shape. And this makes sense because, you know, they look for shells that are big enough to protect them, but they're also taking into account like the color. to see like how conspicuous it might make them. So it makes sense that sort of like white and black bottle caps that are like pretty low profile would be pretty popular. But like why are the crabs using plastic in the first place?

They have some theories. It could be that there's a lack of natural shells. The local snail populations may be dropping. Like the researchers are like that wouldn't be surprising to us given like climate change and you know habitat degradation. But they don't know that for sure. They also think it's possible they're attracted to the plastic in the first place because of chemicals that leach out of the plastic that are known to mimic the odor of food for hermit crabs, which is a thing we already know about for reasons I'll get back to in a minute. But they also pointed out that like a light but hearty shell is very desirable. and it's possible that in some cases hermit crabs are like, this is great.

This is the best shell I've ever seen. It's so light and so durable. So, you know, it's possible that at least in some cases, hermit crabs are like hot ditty dog. I can't believe how fortunate I am to discover this entirely new type of shell. That's exactly everything I wanted in a shell. Everyone's going to be so jealous of my six sheds. Shell. At the shell gathering, at the little housing lineup. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're going to be very desirable. They're going to touch my cool shell with their little, quote, unquote, crab arm.

And they're going to go, dang. I wish I was in a different place than the queue. Exactly. And of course, you know, that doesn't mean that this isn't troubling. It reminds me of the episode where I talked about birds using anti-birds bikes to. build nests and it's like that can be like a good thing for individual birds and really awesome that they're like figuring out how to make the most of this trash and it's still bad that there's so much trash everywhere. A 2021 report by the Environmental Investigation Agency found that in just 65 years plastic production has increased by 18,300 percent, which is that makes me feel bad. Yeah, that is too many percent.

It's too much. Too much. And experts think that by 2050, it's possible the amount of plastic in the ocean will weigh more than the amount of fish in the ocean. And plastic in the ocean likely kills about 100,000 animals every year. And hermit crops specifically, we also know are under threat from plastic. There was a study a few years ago on these remote islands in the Pacific, like really far from any mainland. And researchers found that hermit crabs were climbing into plastic bottles, probably because they smell like food, and then getting stuck inside because of the shape. And this is also known to happen in tires, actually, because they can't climb back up the sort of, you know, curved edge of a tire.

And then here's the really bad part. When hermit crabs die or their flesh is torn, the smell attracts other hermit crabs. Because it's like in when Harry met Sally, when he's like, you got to check the obituaries for an apartment, that's what the hermit crabs are doing. They're known to swarm not to like eat their fallen brethren, but to take their shells. And so what happens is that then more hermit crabs go into the bottle. And this study estimated that even on just these remote islands that half a million hermit crabs are dying each year. because of plastic bottles, which is just wild. And there's even evidence that exposure to microplastics can impact hermit crab cognition.

Not surprising because it's also been shown to, you know, impact lots of animals' cognition. But it may specifically make them less able to evaluate shells to pick the best one based on size, which seems like a very specific thing. But it's also like that's kind of the primary point of hermit crab cognition. So, you know, if anything's impacted, that would be impacted as well. So, yeah, very mixed feelings about this because they are adorable. And a couple of researchers have said, like, we should learn from these hermocrabs. They are reusing.

They're already some of the best recyclers in the world. They use their shells for generations. And now they are, you know, reusing plastic better than humans do, for sure. But we should still, you know, useless plastic. keep it out of the ocean. We have a lot of big plastic problems to solve if we don't want to cause a bunch of catastrophes in the near future.

However, hermit crabs, they're coming out on top. I feel. The silver lining. They're making the best out of a bad situation. Yep, exactly. I was doing some of my own looking at hermit crabs, and I came across a Reddit video.

put her in the chat where it is a hermit crab coffee scoop oh no no it's the one it has a little butt scratching arm and it scratches its own little butt what wow the wonders of hermit crab anatomy never so that's what they're doing it there wow yeah no wonder they want some privacy they're just scratching their butt which yeah they're just like oh pretty shell and then they just get in the shell and they're like, all right, here I am. Just got to scratch my butt for until the next gathering where I got to hold hands with my friends. And then for another decade after that.

Well, thank you for patiently enduring my many hermit crab facts. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill, four-burner gas grill on special buy for only $199. And entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $49. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot.

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Okay, we're back. And Liz, tell us about bird milk. Bird milk, yes. Okay, so I stumbled on this fact as you stumble on many facts, which was while I was playing a video game. So some of you out there may or may not be familiar with Animal Crossing, in which there is a pigeon barista named Brewster. And sometimes he offers you with your latte pigeon mish. milk. And I thought, what, what does that mean? What, what is pigeon milk? Is that a real thing? Is this like a cute video game thing that we came up with? So I dove head first into the world of bird milk and I

learned so much. So in a world of upwards of 10,000 different species of birds, there are only three types of birds that create bird milk. And it's doves and pigeons. which is like one group, flamingos and emperor penguins. And that's it. Flamingos are my favorite animal. I love learning a new flamingo fat. Yes, this is a very good one. So bird milk, as you might imagine, you may or may not know, birds do not have nipples. So bird milk is like functionally similar to mammalian milk, but is created totally differently and does not really bear much physical. resemblance to mammalian milk.

We're going to circle back to that because it's a little tough to swallow. That's not, I'm not trying to make a bird milk pun, but we'll come back to that. Wow. So, how do birds make milk? So they secrete it

from the lining of their crops. So I'm throwing a lot of bird terms at you. So what is a crop? So in a bird's digestive system, their crop is kind of like a little sack. in their throat. And most birds use it for food storage, like temporary food storage. If you find like a lot of really good food, you can put it in your crop, save it for later kind of situation.

And so when I was like, okay, I'm going to have to explain crop. Of course, I learned that most birds have crops. And I said, okay, who doesn't have a crop? And apparently owls don't have crops. So no milk for owls, but that's just sort of a side fact about crops. For owls would kind of be like a crazy indie band. Yes. Yeah, that's true. Someone out there, go ahead and take that name and give us a shout out. Free idea. Free idea. It's yours.

Yes. So, interestingly, the hormone that stimulates the production of bird milk is prolactin, which you might be familiar with, because it's the same hormone that stimulates milk production in mammals. So same as us humans. So let's start with pigeon milk. So the modern day pigeon or rock dove, they live in, you know, you see them around. They live in cities. It's a really, really unforgiving environment. And when their babies are born, pigeons don't have like a super reliable way of like foraging for very like fat and protein nutritious food. So it's thought that the ability to make crop milk kind of arose from this problem.

they start to secrete their crop milk a few days before the eggs are due to hatch. And interestingly, in the case of pigeons and doves, both of the male and female pigeons make crop milk. So both of the parents are making milk for their babies. And by the way, pigeon babies are called squabs. So when the squabs are born, they are fed a diet of exclusively crop milk for the first week or two of their life. And then gradually, remember we were talking about the crop being sort of like a food storage situation? So they're making this milk in their crop and gradually they start to like also store food in the crop with the milk to kind of like soften it up a little bit for the baby. Wow. You know, they're getting their first solids. Exactly. They're getting their first solids with the help of the

pigeon milk. So I mentioned pigeons and dove. and this is I'm gonna I'm gonna do a lot of like bird fact sidebars that are important to me emotionally Yes so pigeon didn't we love bird facts here on weirdest thing I learned this week and by we I mean me Thank you Amanda So pigeons and doves Everyone is always like what is the difference and I feel like there's there's a big emotional difference when you're identifying a pigeon versus a dove But they're actually scientifically in the exact same family and literally the difference between pigeons and doves is marketing like

um doves are thought of as like so cute and like fancy and pigeons are like you know city birds but like pigeons deserve so much love and respect they've been through a lot so and you can take one home as a pet exactly it's true so pigeons and doves are the same just just so everyone knows so pigeon milk is extremely high in protein and fat. And it actually has higher levels of each of those things than human or cow milk. It contains antioxidants and immune enhancing factors. So it really gives these baby pigeons, like a good start for their little hard city lives. Not to tug at your heartstrings too much, but they really need the pigeon milk. And a couple of folks did studies where pigeon milk was fed to baby chickens and it improved their green. And it improved their

growth rate by 38%. Wow. When Brewster offers you pigeon milk in Animal Crossing, he thinks of you as a baby bird, and he just really wants to give you a little jumpstart on your life. So it's very sweet. Thank you, Bruce Stark. Continuing to be a king. Exactly.

I will, I do feel like now is the time, though, that I have to tell you just for full transparency that bird milk is more like the texture of cottage cheese than milk. So, you know, let that inform your decision if you want that extra pigeon milk or not, but know that it's coming from a good place, at least from Brewster's perspective. And at least also from a health perspective. True. We got to make those protein gains guys. Exactly. So that's sort of the section on pigeon milk. And so now I want to talk about flamingo milk. So all three of the types of birds that sort of have this milk capability evolved it for different reasons. So similarly to pigeons, flamingo male and females can produce the milk for their babies. And the reason that they

evolve the ability to create milk is that flamingos have a very specific mechanism for feeding. Like if you picture a flamingo in your mind's eye, they've got that super funky beak and you always see them just like fully face down in the water like doing their thing and essentially what they're doing is they put their head in the water they open their mouth and then they close it and they've got like all this water in their mouth and then they press the water out it's almost like a baleen type structure like with whales so they press all the water out and what's left is all these little teeny tiny shrimps that give them you know their nutrition and are their diet but when baby flamingos are born, their beaks are not developed for that type of feeding. Like, it takes quite a while for them

to develop into that sort of structure. Like, they're just, they're just a regular little baby bird beak at first. Like, you, I highly recommend everyone look at baby flamingos because, A, they're super ugly cute. B, they're not pink at all when they're born, which we will cover as well. And C, they have just like regular little beaks to start. So because they cannot feed themselves like this, Flamingo mom and dad produce crop milk for them and feed them the crop milk until they're developed enough to feed on their own. And another really sort of radical metal thing about flamingo milk specifically is because of that shrimp rich diet, which contains a lot of carotenoids, which make everything pink and red, their milk is bright red. So there's a very viral video of a flamingo dad like dripping flamingo milk

onto the flamingo mom's head and then it dripping down into the baby's mouth and it's bright red and everyone on the internet was like, it's murder, you know, like. It really does look like blood. He's eating her brain. So that's very, very intense looking. But actually, it's just flamingo milk. So nobody needs to be scared. And yeah, flamingo babies are born sort of kind of a pale, fuzzy gray, and then as they get more carotenoids in their diet, they turn pink. And while the parents are producing flamingo milk and using up all these nutrients and these carotenoids, they actually pale in color a little bit. Like they are literally putting so much of their energy into making milk that they change color. Wow.

Okay. So that's the flamingo milk section. And now the penguin milk section. So this one's really interesting because I was like, penguins? I can't like, just these three types of birds are so radically different from one another. I was like, how is this possible? So in the case of emperor penguins, only the male emperor penguin creates milk. And it's because they are the one that sit on the egg and incubate it on their feet for like two months in the Antarctic winter while the, while the, female goes out to the sea to like get fish. So during that time, if the egg hatches to be able

to like tied over that chick and be able to give them nutrients, the prolactin hits, they start producing crop milk and they are able to feed their babies this super rich, fatty substance until the female comes back with actual fish to feed them. So again, it's kind of like these three very different circumstances created sort of the exact same solution to the problem. So yeah, that's kind of your crash course on bird milk. And of course, I had to make an illustration about this because that is my way. So I did a painting of a pigeon holding a glass of milk and it says, want a curdle. So, and I think I'll have to do a flamingo and a penguin as well. But yeah, that's bird milk, baby. Wow. Hoof.

I wonder if it's lactose-free. Great question. Amazing question. I really feel like we're, it's anyone's guess how long it will take before someone tries to make bird milk a superfood. Oh, absolutely. I can see it gracing the aisles of Arawan tomorrow. Another sidebar is that while I was researching this, you know, I looked up bird milk and it said bird milk not to be confused with birds milk. And I thought, okay, what does that mean?

And it's a type of candy. It like originated in Poland. And it's literally just like a chocolate bar filled with a marshmallow type substance. And it's called bird's milk because in ancient Greece, they used to be like, oh, the milk of a bird. like so rare and so like fancy because it because it didn't really exist. So anyway, got it. Another, another bird's milk. Don't get confused though. Exactly. They didn't know yet, but. Wow. So I had heard of pigeon milk only very like derisively.

Yeah. So this is fascinating. And I again, I'm like, wow. I did not have enough respect for these birds and their nasty milk. Yes. Just because I don't want to consume it, it's not for me. So, um, it's true. It's true. You know. Yeah, everyone, please give pigeons some love.

If, if there's anything you take away from this is that pigeons are amazing, you know? Yeah. Stop calling them the rats of the sky. Because that, that goes to seagulls. I am, I actually just started, I just started, I just started. a D&D campaign where I am a pigeon. That is so cool. Wait, wait.

Pigeon, but like what's your class? Are you like wizard pigeon? No, I'm a bard. I'm a really troublesome pigeon bard named Chip Skylark. That is? So good. Are you going to sing shiny beak and me or what? It's already come up.

We've only had one session and it's already come up. Amazing. And yeah, my. pigeon is modeled after the hot pigeon that showed up in New York once. People Google if you don't know. But yeah, that pigeon is like people learning about the hot pigeon, I think, is how many people learned that pigeon is just a random name we call some doves. Yes, exactly. It is simply a marketing issue. Yeah. Well, I'm doing my best with my hot pigeon barred D&D character. Thank you so much for coming on. Would you remind our listeners where they can find you?

Yes. So y'all can find me anywhere as I Paint Burbs. And yes, that's B-I-R-B-S. You can find me on Twitch and Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and also IPaintBurbs.com for some bird goodies. Amazing. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts. including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff.

If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us. We've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omni-Shade Technologies engineered to protect you. from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin.

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