The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Chicken Hypnotism, The One and Only Ferris Wheel, Interspecies BFFs

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

The weirdest things we learned this week range from a coyote and badger becoming BFFs to instructions on hypnotizing sharks. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? 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!  Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Purbita Saha: www.twitter.com/hahabita Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 Rachel Feltman. I'm Perbita Saha. I'm Jess Bodie. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting,

trolling around on Reddit, et cetera, 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. Jess, on this side of the mic for the first time in a while. Yes, hello, I'm here. My tease is I want to talk about chicken hypnotism. Ooh, not to be confused with rose-colored glasses for chicken. That's correct. And cannibalism.

Yeah. Which has previously been. My second chicken fact. On the chicken feet. Perfect. Perbita. I'm going to talk about animals that go against the grain and become friends and hunting partners. Oh.

Exciting. Heartwarming. Yeah. My tease is that there was actually only ever one. real Ferris wheel and we blew it up. What? I got it. That's a bingo. Well, I guess we should start with that.

How is there only been one real Ferris wheel? I will tell you how, Jess. Okay, so I was doing my usual thing of just kind of fooling around the most esoteric corners of the internet. And I don't even remember how, but I ended up on this 2015 Smithsonian Mag article by Jamie Milanoowski, and it provided a really great jumping off point for a curiosity spiral. Wow, I wrote that down as a note and didn't even realize it was a pun, but we're going to talk about the world's first and technically only Ferris wheel, which started as so many things do, an American exceptionalist pissing contest. So we talk about world fairs a lot on weirdest thing and exhibitions,

because they were these opportunities for countries and cities to just put all of their resources into pushing the envelope on science and engineering and medicine. And it was all about like people gathering to look at spectacles. During a certain period in world history, like most things were debuted at these kinds of events. And when Paris hosted the World's Fair in 1889, entrepreneurs and engineers spent more than two years and about $1.5 million, dollars building a tower around 1,000 feet high, the Eiffel Tower. And it spent 41 years as the tallest man-made structure in the world, which is when it was just barely surpassed by the Chrysler building. So the Eiffel Tower, big deal. Even though a lot of artists and other intellectuals in France made fun of it, one guy said it looked like a whole written suppository.

What? Which is quite specific. That's graphic. Was he also French? Yes. Everyone who made fun of it was French. Like, everyone else in the world, I think, I mean, you know, I'm sure someone somewhere made one of it. But generally, they realized it would be gauche to be like, you made the tallest structure in the world, but it's ugly.

So when Americans started prepping to host the world's Colombian exposition in Chicago, which opened in 1893, they were still really smarting from the success of the Eiffel Tower and they needed a comparable spectacle. Now, Eiffel himself offered to do the same thing, but make it slightly taller. but they decided that that was like kind of gauche and also would not be representative of American genius. So instead of, we almost ended up with a slightly taller Eiffel Tower in Chicago. Instead, enter George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. Who was born on Valentine's Day, a fellow Aquarius, in Pittsburgh to the Galesburg Gales. Oh my goodness. That's how you know you're from money is when the town is named after you.

Right. And his family ended up moving out to Nevada, but he wound up back in Pittsburgh and founded a company that tested and inspected the metals used on railroads and bridges. So he was a steel man, very into engineering, very into creating sound structures, which is great. That's, you know, what you want from a steel baron, I have to say. And in 1881, he responded to this call for proposals for the World Fair in Chicago with one that he said, without Eiffle, Eiffle. It was just a big-ass wheel. Uh-huh. Just a giant wheel.

It was a Ferris wheel, the first Ferris wheel. But what does that mean? So I'm not going to about to explain what a Ferris wheel is. Everyone knows probably. But Ferris didn't invent the concept of putting people on a wheel and spinning it around. They're actually so-called pleasure wheels that existed as early as the 1600s in Europe and Asia, but they were small enough for people to crank by hand. I have one illustration of a 17th century Turkish model.

Oh, wow. I'll have a picture of this on popside.com slash weird. It looks like a menorah guy. Yeah, it looks very angular. Yeah, it really was just like a frame with a crank on it, and you could sit and get probably, like the best view of your your small village that you were ever going to get in the neighbor's hog field. And, you know, really enjoy the wind rushing past your face as some sweaty man cranked you. So you could go in a circle.

And so these existed in slight variations of the like mechanically operated cranked wheel for centuries. And then according to many New Jersey publications, even today, Ferris stole the idea for the modern wheel from William Summers, who put up three pleasure wheels in Atlantic City in the early 1890s. Now, Ferris did apparently ride these wheels and, like, definitely got the idea that it would be great to build something like the Ferris wheel from them. But, like, to me it's so embarrassing to ask someone from New Jersey, seeing these New Jersey newspapers being like, everyone knows the Ferris wheel was really invented in New Jersey. because summer's wheels were only 50 feet high. So they were a big step up from the like hand-cranked things of the 1600s.

But what Ferris wound up building after spending a lot of time convincing the World Fair Committee and raising $400,000 he would need to construct them, he made a wheel 246 feet high. Whoa. So just in a totally different league from these things in Atlantic City. and the engineering that went into them was incredible. The wheel was the single largest piece of seal ever made in the U.S. And it featured more than 100,000 parts.

The axle alone weighed almost 90,000 pounds. Jesus. Yeah. And they even had to use, like, dynamite to blow the frozen ground open deep enough to put the foundation and supports down. But yeah, because, like, you know, there was going to be this huge, wheel. And a lot of people, the reason he spent so much time convincing the committee is because people were like, this will not be able to hold itself up. There's no way. And he ended up like, you know,

like I said before, he owned a company that tested the structural integrity of metal for like bridges and railroad. So he actually ended up front to the cost for the testing himself to prove that this could be done. But people were still skeptical and like, yeah, you needed to really get supports deep down into the ground and in Chicago, that poses a problem. So, yeah, they use dynamite to blow holes in the ground. They do use steam to keep the ground from, like, refreezing while they worked. Oh. And to run it, they built a pair of 1,000 horsepower reversible steam engines connected to a 20,000-pound sprocket chain that turned the wheel.

And they commissioned a custom-built airbrake from Westinghouse. So it was just like, like some of the other, you know, things at World Fairs and exhibitions we've talked about before. It just featured solutions to problems that no one had thought of before. Right. And the wheel had 36 cars. And each car was actually like as big as a railroad car. They were on there kind of horizontally. Yeah.

Across the bars. And each car could hold up to 60 passengers. So more than 2,000 people could be on at a time. So yeah, you could have 2,160 people on it. full capacity. That's wild. And the ride was 20 minutes long, just two rotations. It was not very fast.

But while the wheel made more than $700,000 in profits on just 50 cent admissions, and it was open for, I think, 19 weeks. So, yeah, tons of people went on it. I think like 1.4 million people write because 50 cents, 700,000. Ah, Matt. That's where I got that number. But Ferris claimed that the World Fair didn't pay him, his fair share of the profits. And remember, he had raised $400,000 to build this thing. So it would

have been profitable if he had actually been given the majority of the ticket sales. But apparently he was not. Then, according to a couple of sources I read, his wife left him. Oh. And then he definitely got typhoid and he died. And he was just 37 years old at this point. It was just a couple years after his great wheel. And in fact, the funeral director who cremated him actually put a lean on his ashes for years because no one had paid for the funeral. So it wasn't until 15 years later that his brother got his ashes back. Yes, it is not amusing at all. No. But what happened to Ferris's wheel? The one the only, because he did not live long enough to build multiple true Ferris copyright TM wheels. And also, you know, that's another thing,

is that he never was able to brand the Ferris wheel in part, first of all, because he was so broke in the immediate aftermath and just like, then he got sick and then he died. But also there was some legal contention from Summer, this guy in the Atlantic City. So he probably wouldn't have been able to like brand the Ferris wheel anyway. But the wheel itself was moved and rebuilt in Liggen Park, but was then sold in 1903 for not a lot of money at all. I found a few different estimates, but it was definitely just like a few thousand dollars at most. And it was moved to St. Louis for the 1904 World's Fair and then destroyed there in 1906 with 200 pounds of dynamite, presumably just because like nobody would take over the maintenance cost or the cost of moving it

and rebuilding it. So once the fairgrounds were being dismantled and nobody wanted to open an amusement park there, it was just easier to blow it up? Do that happen to a lot of the world's fair inventions? That's a very question. And I don't know, but I think, you know, most of them, if they were structures that large, they were meant to be there permanently. Right. You know, like the Eiffel Tower.

But, and then, you know, most things that were just like wonders of engineering were a little bit more portable. Butter sculpture. Right. The butter sculptures, that was really up to you as the butter sculptor to decide how much you wanted to invest in ice for the rest of your life to keep that sweaty butter sculpture alive. But yeah, it got me thinking about Ferris wheels today, like Ferris's legacy. The tallest Ferris wheel today is 520 feet in diameter. So more than twice the height of the one at the World's Fair.

Wow. And that's the high roller in Vegas. Each cabin weighs 44,000 pounds and has eight flat green TVs inside for some reason. So you don't have to look outside. I was going to see, that feeds the whole purpose. And supposedly opening in October of 2020 is a 689 feet high ferris wheel in Dubai, which has been delayed a couple times, but is supposedly going to open in time for their World Expo in 2020. That's crazy. where will it end?

They should put it on top of the Birch Khalifa. Oh, God. I have to say that like I have been in Dubai once and I just looked up at the Burge Caliphah from like the mall next to it. And I was like, I'm not afraid of heights, but this makes me feel sick to my stomach to look up at the top of this thing from the ground. Yes. So I had zero interested going up to the top of it.

I am afraid of heights and just thinking about it like makes me small. What? And then, you know, there are also a few, like, funky designs now. There are things like, with, like, triple wheels that, you know, spin on, like, multiple axes, which I wouldn't really call Ferris wheels, but according to Wikipedia, they are an offshoot or wheels without a spoke where the cars just spin around on, like, a circular track. And then there are so-called eccentric wheels, like the Wonderwheel in Coney Island. So those are the ones. So eccentric wheels are the ones where a car will slide on like an inner track as it spins. And I just have to say, just to wrap this up with some reflection on how integral ferris wheels are to our culture these days. I wouldn't even say American culture, just like, just human culture. Sure. We love a ferris wheel. And when Charles Herman built the Wonder Wheel on Coney Island in 1920, he called it the dip the dip.

What? Dip the dip. That's right, Jess. The dip the dip. I hate that. He promised to combine, in his new invention, quote, the thrill of a scenic railway, the fun of a ferris wheel, and the excitement of the shoot the shoots. What? What does that mean?

It's a different language. To Google shoot the shoots. And it's like a log flu, but with a big boat instead of a lot. Oh, Jesus. That sounds awful. And a science and invention article written at the time said that the Wonder Wheel provided, quote, a real thrill like you have probably never had before, at least not at this great height, which is just like a kind of measured journalism we really don't see these days, probably haven't.

seen before, at least not at this great height. That's all I have to say about the Ferris wheel. I was shocked that there was this, like, tragic figure in Gail Ferris Jr. that I had never heard about before. I think it's tragic that he didn't get to see his invention for the World Fair turn into the amusement extravaganza it is now. It really took the world by storm. You know, like any amusement park you go to, there's going to be a fun. And it's going to be a fun. You know, Ferris wheel as the focal point. But he only made one wheel and he'll never know.

If only he could see that scene in the notebook where Ryan Gosling dangles off the first wheel car. It's true. So romantic. What a legacy. I don't remember that. Yeah. Wait. I'm pretty sure.

It sounds familiar. And she's like, ah, stop. And he's like, no, I don't you go out with me. That's how I remember it. Oh, okay. Maybe I just haven't seen whole movie. I love emotional blackmail. Yeah. So romantic.

Do you think Ferris Jr. got to ride his Ferris wheel? Oh, he did. The first, the test ride before they had the passenger compartments in was just the workers like all hoisted themselves up on like the steel frame. And then, but the

first ride like with the cars in place. Ferris and his wife who apparently was Fairweather, Mrs. Ferris. Right. Because she left him. Man, who was like a cooler dude than that Ferris wheel guy? Like, who did she leave him for? I do not know.

But they, and I think like, it was like them, like the mayor and a marching band. Wow. We're the first to ride. What an image. And I guess you really could have a whole marching band on there. You could have several marching bands. Right. I hope they played something jaunty as they were riding.

But yes, he did get to. not only ride his ferris wheel, but know that more than a million people enjoyed riding it. But he could have no idea of how many millions and millions more people would ride ferris wheels. And I also think it's great that like even though his ownership over the concept was so contentious at the time, like everybody calls them Ferris wheels now. Yeah. Every time I see the phrase pleasure wheel while researching this, I was like, ugh. Yeah, that sounds gross. Yeah.

So yeah, pour one out for Ferris. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more facts. And we're back, Pribita. Why don't you tell us about your Pixar movie about strange animal friends? Okay, yeah, I can't wait to turn it into a Pixar movie. So earlier this month, there was this really short and sweet clip that people were wilding about. It was this black and white remote-censored camera. capture from the Santa Cruz Mountains in California.

And it showed a coyote and an American badger literally frolicking through this culvert, this highway culvert that had been built to help wildlife go under roadways so that they don't get killed and so that their population stay intact and such. So yeah, people were really shocked by this interaction. And a lot of scientists pointed out that this is a well-neutral. known relationship between coyotes and badgers. Specifically, coyotes and badgers? Yeah.

I love that. Oh, my God. And it's surprising because the two are, you know, rivaling predators. They usually share, they often share the same habitats. And they'll also predate each other if, you know, the opportunity comes. But in this clip, you'll see that, you know, these two animals are very friendly with each other. Like the coyote has quite a bit of spring in its step. and it's almost like beckoning the badger through. And even though the clip is only like 12 seconds long,

the conservation group behind it, Peninsula Open Space Trust, they wrote that the actual footage is like an hour long. So these two animals were interacting for quite a bit of time. So, yeah, this is, like I said, this is a well-studied relationship between the two species. And it actually stems from a cooperative hunting partnership. So when it's seen, it'll be seen on grasslands and kind of desert landscapes where, you know, conditions are tough. There are a lot of other predators looking for limited prey.

And essentially what happens is that the coyotes and badgers play to each other's strengths. So you'll see two individuals pairing up and going after little rodents like ground squirrels and prairie dogs. And what they do is, so badgers are really good at tunneling, and they'll tunnel into the ground and kind of just pop into these squirrels like burrows. Wow. Very sweetly. And scare the squirrels out. And the squirrels will run out of the tunnels and boom, run right into a coyote's face. No way.

And then the coyote will give chase over the open ground. And in the end, you know, there is a shared. meal between the badger and the coyote. And they really do share? Yeah. And, you know, this typically happens in the summer rather than the winter because in the summer, that's when these prey are not hibernating. So they're super active. And the badgers can't really, they're not super fleet footed. Sure. They're good at badgering. Yeah. It's right in the name. So, yeah, it's really a mutualistic partnership here. One study saw that these animals had a 9% success rate, better success rate. Sure. When they teamed up together, they both expended a lot less energy, either tunneling or

running. And what's even more lovely is that it's not just about hunting, it seems. You know, like in this video, these animals seem to be playing and fostering this relationship. and people have seen coyotes and badgers bonding in different ways. You know, they'll be playing, they'll be napping together, and they'll even like rob noses together. They snuggle. Yeah. I love that. And it's been documented both by scientists and also indigenous cultures out in the West like Navajo and Hopi tribes.

They have these creation stories surrounding badgers and coyotes cooperating together. So yeah, it's very easy to anthropomorphize animals, of course, when we see these little bits and pieces of their lives. But it also opens up this question of, and there was a biologist who wrote a really great write-up of this in High Country News, saying, when we see these behaviors, we shouldn't always think that they're instinctive. You know, the animals can have personalities. They can be individuals. So we could just be seeing one animal developing a relationship with another animal outside of its species, maybe altruistically, maybe because it wants to bond, or maybe it's just all about finness. We don't know.

But we should explore that question of there being these complex personalities to these animals. So not all behavior has to be coded in instinct like that. Yeah. So there are other examples of animals from different species doing this kind of hunting. A 17-year-long study in New Zealand found pods of false killer whales, which is very confusing. They are not killer whales. They look like porpoises, but they're actually dolphins. They saw pods mixed of false killer whales and common bottle-nosed dolphins foraging together.

But then they would also spend years just, you know, in these pods swimming together, maybe fending off predators. So again, it's like outside of the hunting scope. Yeah. These scientists who were snorkeling in the Red Sea saw these grouper fish going up to coral reefs and kind of shaking their heads at moray eels, which, again, two species that don't usually interact. And it was seen that so these groupers would fail at hunting a smaller prey. they would chase it into the reef and then not be able to get at it.

So they would go and recruit Amora eel to come over. They would do like a little headstand over where they had chased the prey into. And then the eel would slip in and grab the prey or retrieve it for the groupers. So again, this kind of like exchange between two very different predators. And that was maybe the first recorded cooperation between two fish species. It does sound straight out of finding Nemo. I every one of these examples just sounds like a Disney thing it's kind of it's bizarre and then my personal favorite is there's this well-known behavior in Africa specifically Tanzania where the Yao community they actually have this call-and-response system with the greater honey guide which is this like beautiful pink-billed bird native to Africa and what they do is they have the this specific call, it's like a burr-hump.

I can't roll my R's, but it's like this beautiful ringing R that I can't do. Is there audio of the sound online? There is. Okay, I'm leaving a space right here, and it's going to, you can hear it. Okay. And that actually beckons the honey guide, and then it will lead these Yao hunters through the forest to these giant hives, which the hunters will then smoke the bees out and pull the hive down, and they'll collect the honey,

and then the honey guide bird will go in and eat the wax and the larvae. So this, yeah, this relationship is maybe like 500 years old, but it's more recent that they've developed this actual communication system where the bird, you know, the bird would show up like 66% of the time when called. So anyway, I, for one, I'm very excited to go out well. and just see, like, a badger and a coyote really snuggling up to each other. Yeah. Yeah, you know, drinking some beers.

The boys. The boys. Out on the range. Yeah, I also would love to see a coyote try and, like, team up with a much fiercer honey badger or something. Oh, my God, yeah. Impossible, maybe. But I don't know. So if you could have intra-species,

hunting partner. What would it be? That's a good question. You know, you want something that complements your skill set. And the thing is that if we're talking about me hunting, I don't know what my skill set is if I have one. Oh, I have an idea. I want a sea otter to fish me like delicious sea scallops. Oh, that would be, what would you give to it? Uh, belly rubs. Yeah, snuggles. There we go. Yes. Oh gosh. Perfect. I really want to have a good answer to this.

I don't. What about like a truffle pig? Hmm. Or a truffle puppy. Oh, that's really good too. Yeah, I would love to have a mushroom hunting dog. I feel like you love mushrooms. I do love mushrooms.

And I am probably better than a dog is at knowing which mushrooms are poisonous. That's true. But a dog is better at finding all mushrooms because of how it can snorffle the ground for them. So I think that would be a great symbiotic relationship. I'm going to get on PetFinder right now. Filter, truffle hunting, petting. But I wouldn't want to just look for truffles. There are only so many truffles in the world.

There are a lot of other good mushrooms to eat. All right, we're going to take a quick break. Then we'll be back with more facts. Okay, we're back. Jess. Yeah. Why don't you tell us about chickens? Okay, well, I'm going to get there, but it's going to be a little roundabout.

So stick with me. So a few weeks ago I was visiting my family in the suburbs of Chicago, and we were reminiscing about the first time that our dog, Zeke, caught a possum. And so, you know, this first time he caught one, it was like acting like a possum, playing dead. And it was like totally stiff and frozen. And Zeke, the dog just had in his mouth, like marching around, like evading my dad who's trying to catch him. Like, classic situation. And eventually my dad caught Zeke and he dropped the possum on the driveway. And it was still playing possum, as they say.

So my dad grabbed Zeke's collar, dragged him inside, went to get his shovel so we could like fling it into the Forest Reserve next to our yard. But when he came back out, the possum was gone. And had woken up and ran away. And we were all kind of talking about this. And we were like, so like, so why does this work? Like how is this advantageous in a real predator scenario? Like if it's not a dog just looking for a fun time, like, wouldn't that coyote feasibly just want to eat it?

Like, that's just like a layup, like free food. Yeah. But after I researched this, I realized that the reason predators are averse to eating these possums playing dead is because the possums just so convincingly makes it seem as if it's diseased and, like, decaying. So, you know, like possums curl up their little hands and they, like, hunch over and they drool and stuff so they look dead, but they also secrete a mucus from their anal glands. Oh, yes. And it smells like decaying possum. Like they really put on a performance. So they're not just pretending to be

dead. They're pretending to be like past their cell by date. Totally. Exactly. And that's totally why this whole spiel works for them. Like the predator's like, if I didn't kill this, then like, why did it die? Does they have a disease? I don't want to eat it. Yeah. It's not fresh food. And before I deviate over to the hypnosis tangent. I just want to take a moment to stand possums. I love possums. Sorry, only a moment to stand possums? Yeah, yeah. But have you had to smell their anal secretion? No, I haven't. Maybe that would change if I had. But for now, I think they're extremely baller. They eat a ton of ticks. That's great. Yeah. And some estimates show that they eat over 5,000 ticks per season per possum. I love that for them. I love that for them. I

I hate thinking about it, but... Yeah. Apparently, they're, like, very, very efficient groomers, and that's why. So they just, like, slurp them up. And there is some evidence that actually helps stop the spread of Lyme disease. Sure. Someone's got to eat them. Yeah.

They also eat a lot of other random stuff, like slugs and garden pests, and they are largely immune to snake venom. So they can eat, like, venomous snakes. Yeah. Yeah, we stand. Oh, and to get enough calcium in their diets, they eat the skeletons of roadkill. Wow. Yeah. What can they not eat?

That's a good question. I didn't find anything they couldn't eat. And they are also the only marsupial that exists in North America. And they have prehentile tails. So yeah, anyway, it's, you know, scary when your dog encounters one. Like, you should definitely avoid that at all costs. But they're nice to have in your yard. Like, keep things running smoothly.

When they do that dead trick, if it's a mother, can she sometimes have, like, like the babies in her pouch? I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how that works like if the babies would have to play it cool, too. Be chill. Yeah. But anyway, I'm here to talk about chickens and hypnotism.

So while I was learning all of these great possum facts, I clicked through to the Wikipedia page for something called apparent death, which is another word for playing possum. And it turns... Yeah, it's a little more clinical. But it turns out a lot of other animals play dead. Like I said, it's not a bad strategy. You know, if a predator sees an animal that dies before it can kill it. They're like, what's up with you? Yeah, exactly.

Like, who knows what disease is lurking within. So there are two kinds of apparent death, and they overlap a little bit. But the first is called thanatosis, which is where animals just dramatically play dead. And that's like what a possum does. You know, it has all these ways, like the mucus, the curling of the, of the paws, the drooling. Like, it's really leaning in to that performance. Sure.

And it's also what we tell humans to do if confronted by a brown bear to play dead. Right. So then the bear thinks you're diseased or dead or whatever. It's, like, not interested. It wants to kill you and then eat you. Right. So you're already dead. There's no glory.

There's no glory. And then there are some spiders that play dead. Like, if you shake them from their webs, they just curl up. And then they'll, like, walk away later. Oh. Should I try that? You could try it. Okay.

And then there's the eastern hog-nosed snake. There's a video that went viral or maybe just like on Reddit or Twitter a few months ago that will if you like jostle it around a lot, it will like writhe around like it's in pain and like grimace and then stick its tongue out and turn belly up. And if you try to like physically turn it over like with its belly to the grass, it like will turn back belly up like because that's its dead position. Yeah. I think it's really cute.

And sometimes it'll like half regurgitate like a toadleg to complete the performance. Yeah, exactly. You should definitely Google that if you feel like you can stomach seeing that. But the other kind of apparent death is called tonic immobility. And that's pretty much just when animals like are totally paralyzed, like frozen solid. It's the classic deer in the headlights response. And it's also where the phrase scared stiff comes from. And it's the same idea behind it, being that predators don't want to eat prey they didn't kill themselves.

And tons of species do this. So there's plenty of amphibians, reptiles like iguanas, sharks do this, pigeons, chickens, butterflies, beetles, ants, bees, stick bugs. The list goes on. And it actually also happens in humans, people think. Many victims of assault, especially sexual assault, will report feeling just totally paralyzed while being attacked. And that usually is tonic immobility. So when people ask like, why didn't you do anything? It's literally because the body went through this like biological response that has worked for animals for like feasibly millions of years across the whole animal kingdom.

And it's had clear evolutionary advantages. And while we don't totally know the chemistry of what's going on in the brain when this happens for mammals, it seems like it has to do with neuron transmitters like serotonin and parts of the parasympathetic nervous system. But to come full circle. Where the chicken. Humans have found ways to induce tonic immobility in animals over the last few hundred years. And when they do that, they like to call it hypnosis. Oh. So one example is if you watch Shark Week, you might have seen divers rubbing sharks' noses

and making them just go frozen mid-swim. And orcas have figured this out too, and they have been observed making sharks freeze before eating them. And while it is less badass, you can. can hypnotize chickens. For whatever reason, they have this fear response when you tuck their heads behind their wings and, like, give them a little rock. And also when you place their head on the ground and then draw a line with dirt or, like, with chalk, like straight out from their beak on the ground, like just like a straight line.

And they just freeze and stare at the line. What? Yeah. They freeze. Are they ready to get their heads trapped off? People don't know. They just know that it's a fear response. and they're unsure why.

Whoa. And the first report of this was back in 1648 by a German scholar in Rome. Who is having just a wild day. A normal one. Out with his chickens. Yeah. And then later on, Hemingway talked about hypnotizing chickens in his posthumous 1985 book, The Dangerous Summer. Quote, it was a parlor trick that had much success in East Africa.

Sometimes I would have a dozen chickens lying asleep in a row on the porch of some native hut in a village. under Kilimanjaro when we needed something badly, and it was necessary to make magic to obtain it. Wow. Yeah. It can be more of a blowhard. Totally. Yeah. And today, Werner Herzog has hypnotized chickens and some of his films, which does not surprise me at all.

Adam Savage did it on Mythbusters once. Oh, my God, this track record. And it says on Wikipedia that Al Gore used to do it, but I can't find any evidence. Unconfirmed, but I would like to believe that Al Gore is hypnotized chickens. Al Gore, please call us. Let us send us a video of you hypnotizing a chicken. Please. But yeah, that's my story of chicken hypnotism in a roundabout way, starting with possums.

Wow. I love it. Far fewer chickens that I was expecting, but a wonderful tale. Thanks. So what was the weirdest thing we learned this week? I have to say, it's really hard for me to choose. between badgers and coyotes being pals. And just that last bit about the chicken hypnosis,

I mean, it was all fascinating. I was going to say, I feel like I can't deny the spicy history of Mr. Ferris with his cheating wife. Wow. Well, maybe it's a tie then. It could be a tie. Since I think you both won, you both liked Ferris wheels. Yeah.

Sure, great. Awesome. We're all winners. We're all winners here. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms, so subscribe wherever you're listening now. And if you like what you hear, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps other weirdos find the show.

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