The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Defensive Puking, Self-Cooling Curls, Zambia's Teen Astronauts

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Scientific Illustrator and Twitch Partner Liz Clayton Fuller joins the podcast to talk about turkey vultures, their defensive puking mechanism, and why you should thank the next one you see. Plus, Rachel explains how a head of curly hair is actually scientifically cooler, and Purbita talks about Zambia's teen astronaut program. 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  Link to Jess' Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn Link to Liz's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ipaintbirbs -- 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 Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeek Check out Weirdest Thing on YouTube: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeekYouTube If you like the show, telling a friend about it would be amazing! You can text, email, Tweet, or send this link to a friend: bit.ly/WeirdestThingILearnedThisWeek Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's code Weirdest for 20% off. Make every get-together chill. This Memorial Day, get up to an extra $1,000 off select top brand appliances like LG. Plus, get free delivery at the Home Depot. Tackle pool towels and camp laundry with a large capacity washer. And host in style with the fridge-serving craft ice, mini-craft ice, cube dice, and crushed ice. Appliant savings now through June 3rd at the Home Depot. Offer valid May 14th through June 3rd, US only. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. See store online for details. 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 Ritchie.

I'm Perbita Saha. And I'm Liz Clayton Fuller. Liz, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be able to chat about nerdy things with you. Yay! Liz, why don't you tell our listeners, for those of them who aren't already familiar with you, a little bit about who you are and what kind of nerdy things you do when you're not here talking to us? Sure. So all of my nerdiness, well, okay, not all of it. A lot of my nerdiness is centered around birds. So I am a scientific illustrator and educator. I run my own business and I also stream on Twitch as I paint burbs. And the name really says it all. That is what I do. All the time. I work with ornithologists and I learn a lot of cool things about birds and I get to paint them. So yeah, that's that's me all about burbs, baby. Just absolutely one of the coolest

jobs a person can have, I think. I'm glad you think so. I say that if someone who can't draw so it seems. Right. Yeah, it's very specific. And also, if you ever want to learn how to draw, you know, hit me up. I love teaching people how to draw. Oh, my gosh. Genuinely going to.

Okay, great. Amazing. I want to learn how to draw birds in cowboy outfits. I can teach you that too. So, yeah, I do scientific illustration and then to balance out the, like, seriousness that is. also illustrate birds in cowboy hats and boots because it brings me joy. Perfect. Yeah. Listeners, Perbito was not just pulling that out of thin air, so it's plausible that she would. So let's get into it. So on the weirdest game in this week, we start by each offering up a little tease

about a factor story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, drawing verbs, 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 win this week actually was, but not in like an actual winners or losers kind of way, because I recently decided that that bores me now. But I'm not rewriting the intro. I will eventually stop giving this disclaimer, but I feel like I just, I don't want people to be confused. I want everybody to be happy and have a good time. So, for Pito. What's your tease? Today I'll be talking about how Zambia tried to beat the U.S. to the moon in the 1960s.

Wonderful. Amazing. Sweet. Liz, what's your tease? My tease is that turkey vultures projectile vomit as a defense mechanism, and that is not even the coolest thing about them. Yum. I love that. I love a good vulture story. I feel like some of my favorite blog posts when I was at the Washington Post were, if it wasn't about poop, it was about vultures.

And then it was also often also about poop. Yeah, it's all related. Yeah. So my tease is that I am going to talk about what the heck is up with curly hair. Why it be like that? Amazing. Yeah. Relevant.

Yeah. Will there be a lot of personal anecdotes? Yeah, I can't help it. Pervito, I'd love to start with this space race story that is completely new to me. Yeah, surprisingly new to me too, even though it happened 60-something years ago. I guess many of the places where I read about it spoke about it as this kind of long, forgotten chapter in history, partially because we're unclear how much of it was kind of a media ploy versus actually happening. But it's fascinating nonetheless, and it serves a nice bridge to

talking about astronomy and the space hopes of countries and Africa today. So yeah, so we're going to start in 1964, big year, both for the space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union, but also for Zambia, because that is the year that Zambia gained independence and became the country that we know of it today. Previously, it was called Rhodesia and it was colonized by the British for a few decades. So yeah, baby country, you know, with its own independent government now. And all of a sudden, the world starts hearing about this particular science teacher. His name is Edward Makuka Nicoloso.

And he was a teacher, but also he called himself the head of Zambia's National Academy. of science, space, reach, search, and philosophy. Again, the Zambian government is just formed, so it didn't really have agencies or departments at this point. So, I mean, honestly, Edward just kind of, he found an opportunity and he took it to self-appoint himself. Good for him. And to speak to the international press,

magazines such as Time picked up his story. But essentially, Edward was fascinated by space and this new kind of rush to get to space, again, fueled by U.S. Soviet competition. So in 1964, where here in the U.S., we were just starting to test out the Saturn V rocket, which is eventually what carried Apollo astronauts into. space. So we had not put anyone in orbit or on the moon just yet. The Soviet Union had sent satellites to the moon. I believe the first one got there in 1959. That was Luna 1. Some of them not so successful. Most of them crash landed into the moon, but they did get there first. That's why whenever NASA or anyone really has like a probe or a lander or a rover go down, you'll see a lot of stuff about like the first controlled landing.

Because otherwise people will be like technically the other one did land. Yes, lots of caveats when it comes to first with space, I think. But still cool. an exciting time for space exploration, developing rockets, but also a scary time because we didn't know what would happen if people went into space, right? So Edward was apparently not afraid of the fact of going into space because he's recruited 12 young Zambians to start giving them astronaut training right here on Earth with very meager tools and resources at his disposal. So while NASA was training its astronauts,

getting them ready for the zero gravity situation in military tankers and anti-gravity pools, some of the same practices that they go through today for astronaut training, Edward took a bit more of a DIY approach. He, at least the stories report, that he would put his trainees in oil drums and roll them downhills so that they could get used to being weightless. They would, I just, I don't know. I mean, listen, he was working with what he had and I really admire that spirit. but I don't know that being weightless is at the top of the list of sensations.

I would expect to feel being rolled down a hill in a barrel. Yes. Yes. I was thinking the same thing. The physics is a little fuzzy. A lot of confounding factors there. Yeah. Please continue.

Well, it gets better. He, uh, his astronauts were, uh, very good at handstands by the end of their training because he made them walk. on their hands because he thought that this might be the best way to navigate the moon once they landed on it. And yeah, a lot of like there were some mentions of free falling a lot. I imagine that's a little more extreme that trust falls, but still far ways away from real astronaut training. But anyway, he got he got attention. and he by the end of I believe he they went through two years of this of as of Edwards astronaut school

and by the end he had picked out his cohort for the first mission to the moon and he actually his lead astronaut was a teenage girl her name was Matha Mwamba and she was 16 and I guess she just excelled at the training because Edward thought that she she should be the face of Zambia's space mission. Motha would have been accompanied by one adult, a missionary, and two cats. And also there was mention of Edward's dog, whose name was Cyclops, going into space as well. I think he was inspired by Leika, the Soviet dog that went into. to space and sadly perished.

So there's not a lot of details on how they were going to launch their astronauts or what kind of spacecraft they would be using. There were some cool national space suits that were modeled to the press. But that's pretty much as far as the mission went. The thing is Edward did not have funding, which is probably why. the actual technology never developed much further than his abstract visions. He tried to get the UN to fund him. He reached out to other countries.

Again, Zambia, just a new country, so it didn't have much in its coffers at this point. And people in general seemed to wish him well, but of course no one really took him seriously. So that's about as far as this moon mission went. And again, it was not really talked about again until the 2000s when some Zambian expats kind of rediscovered this story. There were a bunch of photographs that were taken with some of the magazine articles back in the 1960s. And they kind of repurposed the historical footage and images and created this kind of like sci-fi version of Edwards story that they called the Afronauts. So this is a series you can go and look up today. To be clear, it has been doctored so that some of the Zambian trainee astronauts were.

actually, you know, photoshopped onto the moon. And I say that because with all the moon conspiracy, the moon landing conspiracy theories, let's just know that this one is fictional, so go into it with that in mind. But it is, it's very cool. You know, I think there's a lot of space for, you know, art and imagination in terms of futuristic spaceflight. But then we should also consider the realities of the fact that none of the African countries have had a space launch of their own just yet. I think South Africa might be the only nation so far on the continent with its own space agency, and I believe it's been working with SpaceX to at least get its own satellite program off the ground. We do have some space telescope.

in the southern portion of Africa. There's salt in South Africa. And then the African millimeter telescope is being built in Namibia, which a couple countries away from Zambia. And that's going to be part of the Event Horizon Telescope Network, which if you guys remember, that's the tool that helped us image the first black holes.

So, so lots of potential. on the continent. Hopefully, you know, in the next couple decades, the that potential will match Edwards' big, big dreams. But until then, it's just a neat, neat piece of history. I love that. Also, cats in space. I think cats would hate it, honestly. Dogs, I think they can be convinced to have an okay time. Cats, I really don't think they'd be down. But if you had a year's long journey to Mars, let's say, wouldn't you want? I would definitely want a cat with me.

Wouldn't you want the company of your cat? That's true. I'd still probably pick a dog. I think that is someone with a cat that I love very much, but would she be my choice to go on a multi-year space mission with me? probably not you know honestly I'm I have a dog and I would not pick my dog to go to space with me I would pick a dog love her so much but she's not the one to go to space yes this is a good point I think there are you know the military trains like German shepherds to be able to fly and lightly jump out of planes with like cute little doggy goggles so

I'd probably take one of those trained shepherds. Yeah, they're ready. Yeah, for sure. But I am for having a teen go to space. Let's get some Gen Z up there. Yeah, that would be amazing. 16-year-olds. They'd make some amazing viral content.

I was going to say, I want to know what the content would be from space. What are the TikToks like from space? it's it's really it feels like it's only a matter of time before somebody's making tic-tok videos on the i sss um it's like i'm almost saying it out loud i'm almost surprised it hasn't happened yet because like you know chris hadfields and several other astronauts really were like i'm gonna i'm tweeting from space i'm gonna make some youtube videos from space but like we're The first Gen Z astronaut is going to get a blow that out of the water. I can literally just hear it now.

Like, hey, guys, here's a day in the life in space. You know, like, it's coming. Amazing. I both relish and dread the thought. Definitely. Just how I feel about TikTok. Agreed. Big same.

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sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Okay, we're back. And I would love to hear what you have to say about vultures, Liz. Yes. So the way that I usually learn about birds is that I have a project to paint them. So I'd like to preface that. that the way that I learned about turkey vultures and really got into how cool they are was actually from a meme. And then I painted them after I fell in love with them. So I don't know if y'all remember sort of early in the Barbie movie campaign. There was sort of a template and it was like, this Barbie is an astronaut.

This Barbie is a diplomat. And there was like an aquarium in Oregon that posted a turkey vulture and it said, this Barbie projectile vomits in self-defense. Amazing. And I was like, give them a raise. Exactly. It was amazing. It blew up.

I was obsessed. And so I was like, what more can I learn about turkey vultures? What is their deal? So yes, they projectile vomit in self-defense, which is really cool and super, super effective because apparently they can project up to 10 feet,

which is absolutely wild and very, very far. And their puke is really gnarly. So they eat carrion exclusively, only dead animals. So their puke is full of dead animal chunks. It's very stinky. It can burn your eyes. It's got a super off-putting smell. So it's a super effective strategy for them.

And not only is the puke itself a deterrent, but it also lightens the load. So if they're distressed, they're going to puke to. get some of that weight off of them so that they can also escape. So it's kind of an amazing strategy. Yes, I'm very impressed by them because sometimes they will eat so much actually that they can't fly. So it's sort of a twofold strat of lightening the load and also absolutely freaking out whatever is attacking them. And their stomach contents, so this is the deep dive into vulture puke, their stomach is so acidic. that they are able to eat carcasses carrying all kinds of nasty toxins and diseases like

anthrax, tuberculosis, and even rabies without getting sick. So it is really, really amazing, and their puke is some serious stuff. But also, it's so cool because they play a critical role in the ecosystem by basically being nature's cleanup crew. You know, like they are keeping the carcasses from piling up because, you know, dead animals, dead things can spread disease, but the vultures are very on top of it. And I think they're really misunderstood. Like, I know that I personally grew up very misunderstanding vultures. I thought that they sort of like circled their prey, and that's why you would see them flying in these circular

patterns. And I don't know about y'all, but when I was a kid, I tried to get a turkey vulture to come to me by drawing in red chalk on the ground and laying in it, you know, just in my driveway hoping that a turkey vulture might come down. And of course they didn't because they only eat things that are actually dead. But a really discerning palettes. Yes, exactly. Yes. But I did want to give it a try. It did not work. But yeah, the reason that they fly in the those circles is actually they take flight and then they catch these thermal vents that kind of spiral upwards. So basically they're just kind of chilling when they're circling like that and what they're doing. It's like cruise control. Exactly. It's like cruise control. Someone once said that turkey filters are like

one of the laziest birds because they just cruise in the air. They don't actually kill anything. They only eat things that are already dead. You know, all of these things. They're just like, yeah, I'm just chilling. Oh, yeah, okay, I guess I'll eat something that I find, you know, just very, very casual birds. And I don't, I don't think them to be lazy. I think them to be quite strategic, actually. Yeah, I was like, they're like, they're like really like hippie fregans. Yes. Yes. The fregans of the bird world. Not necessarily lazy. Just like, listen. Yeah. It's going to go to waste. They're so chill. Yeah. Why would I buy food?

Exactly. Why would I buy food? And yeah, you know, the common denominator for what they eat is literally only that it's dead. So I live in Tennessee and I have seen them eating raccoons, rabbits, deer, coyotes, armadillo, skunks, cows, like literally anything possible, they will eat it. And the way that they find their prey. So this is just like, when I learned about the puke, I was like, give me more facts about the turkey filter. And everything I learned just made me fall more in love with them. So when they are chilling in the thermal vents and you think of them looking for prey, but actually turkey vultures have like the most amazing olfactory system of any bird ever, ever, ever, ever.

They have an incredible sense of smell. And so what they're doing is they're actually just smelling and looking for their prey that way. So a lot of other vultures don't have as good of a sense of smell, and they will fall. follow the turkey vultures who have the keen sense of smell to find the prey. So that's amazing. Just a lot of working smarter, not harder in the vulture world. Exactly. And I love that for them.

And I think we could all learn something from them. I know I could. But yeah, their sense of smell is so incredible that they can smell dead things from miles and miles away. And interestingly, their sort of preferred range of deadness is like 12. to 24 hours. Like you think of things getting like really stinky sort of later, but actually the sweet spot is really not that long after they died and it is smelly enough that the vulture can pick it up and find it. So when they do find their prey, they have a couple of really cool adaptations to keep them

from getting sick in addition to their like wild amount of stomach acid. If you've seen them, They're very cute. They're so named turkey vultures because they have these little bald pink heads. I think that they're very adorable. I'm not sure that everyone else would use that exact word to describe them, but I think their little pink bald heads are super cute. And the reason that they are bald is because they evolve to not have feathers on their head because the way that they get into their prey is essentially the easiest access orifice. they just literally stick their whole head in there. And you can figure out what that might be. I wrote a story on a study on this for the Washington Post. It appalled many readers of the paper of record.

Yeah. I think the headline was just literally, vultors eat their prey butt first. Yes. Yeah. That is true. Yes. Evolutionary geniuses.

Again, smarter. not harder. Yes, exactly. They're like, I'm not trying to work that hard to get in here. Just give me a butt and I'm good. So they stick their heads in there and you can imagine it's bit gnarly in there. So when they pull out their heads, if they had feathers on their heads, it would be impossible for them to preen. The bacteria would get stuck in there. The feathers would get matted. Also, interestingly, so turkey vultures are technically raptors. So they're like in the group of like hawks and eagles and ospreys and things but their feet are actually more like chicken feet like they really don't have like cool claws and stuff their feet are just sort of like

there to hold down the prey and their beaks are what do all the work so they have like really cool really pointy beaks and that's like they don't tear anything with their claws it's all beak work which is pretty run and so as if puking on anything that scared you wasn't gnarly enough. They also use a practice called Eurohydrosis, which is where if it's too hot outside, they defecate on their legs to cool down. So they're just like amazing, nasty little guys, honestly. I love that. Yeah, it is, it is the best. And honestly, as we have been talking, I can see out my window and one has flown by, which is amazing. Oh my gosh.

So shout out to turkey vultures. Yeah, exactly, what died? Or are they just chilling? We don't know. But amazingly, their range is enormous. So they can be found from the southern part of Canada all the way down to the southern tip of South America. Like, turkey vultures are everywhere. And so I feel like they're a great gateway bird into birding.

Like if you're like, I don't really know if I want to watch birds or not. Just like, look for turkey vultures. They are everywhere. and if you see one, say thank you. I know that sounds really silly, but every time I see them, I'm like, you guys are doing great. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yeah, so I hope that you see one and have sort of renewed respect for what they do and the role that they play in the ecosystem because they're amazing. And so turkey vultures are all over, you know, North and South America

and then in Europe and Asia, vultures convergently, evolved. So the vultures that are in the old world are not actually genetically related to the vultures in the new world, but that exact sort of type of creature evolved there to fill the same ecological need of being the cleanup crew. I know. There's always going to be rotting stuff to eat back first. There will always be dead things everywhere that need cleaning. And thankfully there will always be some kind of vulture to swoop by and take care of business. Wow.

I love this. My heart is full. It's grown three sizes with regard to vultures. Amazing. On a previous episode, I talked about the mysterious Kentucky meat shower when meat rained from the sky in Kentucky. And one of the prevailing theories is that actually just a bunch of vultures all ejected Right. Right above this lady's farm.

We'll never know for sure. But having looked at a bunch of the theories, that would seem like most likely. It sounds plausible, right? One of them got spooked, yacked, scared the one next to them, and then it's just a domino effect. I mean, it could happen. I've read stories as well, so vultures roost communally. so a bunch of them like hang out in trees together. And people are just, they tell stories of the vultures moving into their neighborhood and like puking and pooping and they're like acidic barf is like peeling the paint off of their houses.

I mean, it's just like the gnarliest stuff ever. But I just, I love them so much. Yeah, they're great. I love that they have tried every strong. to not have to actually kill things. Right. Like they seem like going back to the hippie metaphor. Yeah.

They're just lovers. They don't want any more. They are. They are. And you know how in Western movies, they'll be like, we'll leave you out for the buzzards. When I was a kid, I thought that that meant that the vultures

were going to like come get you, you know, but actually what it means is they'll wait until you die. And then they'll clean it up. Yeah. Amazing. All right. We're going to take one more quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact. 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.

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Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. All right, we're back, and I'm going to talk about curls. What are they good for? Absolutely everything. Say it again. Well done. So I've been thinking about curly hair for probably the last like roughly 31 years, aka my life, because I have very curly hair.

And I really had the classic Caucasian very curly hair trajectory where as a child it was brushed out. and that was horrible. I just had, it was nobody knew what to do, which is especially surprising given that I am of Sicilian and Ashkenazi ancestry, so everyone in my family has curly hair. But the powers of assimilation in white supremacy are so strong that all of the adults in my life were also brushing their curls out and saying, what can we do about this hair?

So with the exception of I do have some great pictures of my parents in the more like disco era having luxurious voluminous curls. But by the 90s, unfortunately, we were all trying to be Rachel from Friends. And I was given that haircut on numerous occasions, I think subconsciously by hairstylists. So as I grew up, I realized, wow, my hair is not just curly, but like really curly. I've had, this has happened more than once. I found out that someone who's known me for an extended period of time thinks that I get perms. They have, yeah.

They didn't. They said that to you. Yeah, yeah. Like, truly, they just assumed this whole time that I am like, I am meticulously curling every, every strand. And that has always really baffled me. But in, uh, really. researching this fact, which is pegged to some new research I'll talk about in a minute,

I found out that according to like research on the subject, which is admittedly kind of scant, among Europeans, the population only 12.7% supposedly have truly curly hair. The, then there's like a basically 40-40 split between straight hair and wavy hair. And so with that context, I'm like, wow, I guess like it really is hard for some of my friends to like wrap their heads around the idea that people naturally have hair this curly. But all of this rambling intro is just to say that finally some amazing brilliant people are working on the subject of understanding curly hair. it's evolution, its many diverse forms, its behavior, and they are finding really cool stuff. And more importantly, they're shining a light on the fact that, like, the way we think about hair type has been really reductionist and super oversimplified.

And honestly, most of the time just like wrong. for like most of the history of modern science. So this news study is looking specifically at like the usefulness of curly and tightly coiled hair. And I'll talk more about their findings at a minute. But to give some background, one of the authors on this paper is Dr. Tina Lissisi, who is kind of like becoming the preeminent hair researcher. Basically, as she was coming up in grad school, she was really interested in understanding hair type and like its morphological differences, it's evolutionary origins, and there just was not existing research on it. And so now she is part of a lot of really cool work to change that. And I'm going to link to an awesome profile of her by former Popsai intern Hannah Cio.

definitely check that out on popsye.com slash weird to hear more about Dr.Lissizzi's work in particular. And I'm also going to include a video. She has a series for PBS. I think it's called Why Am I Like This, which is a great name for a series on like genetics and evolution. So first, I think it's so interesting to talk about why we have such a poor understanding. of hair type. The one obvious reason is racism. You know, there was kind of what was considered the European hair type and what was considered the African hair type.

And a lot of early research on the subject is very binary, very Eurocentric, very white centric, very negative about hair that was not seen as typically. typically European and Caucasian. So that is an obvious hurdle to getting good information about what hair type is actually like. But then even once science was ostensibly a little less racist and reductionist and Eurocentric, Lissisi and a lot of her colleagues have talked about

the fact that for a while there was this idea that skin and hair were kind of like aesthetic and superficial, subjects for research. And you can see like a lot of not that old sort of articles and discussions about the evolution of hair where people are very confidently assuming that hair evolution all came down to sexual selection because they're like obviously hair on your head serves no real purpose. It's all the same. So it must have been about what people found attractive, which is not the case. That might be the case for hair color, but that's kind of like a big open question still, but it's definitely not the case for hair type. But this just goes to show that like that kind of

was the assumption that like it's just the hair on the top of your head. How important can it be? And yeah, even the way people who are very aware of their hair type and have, you know, hair types that aren't as catered to in the mainstream and have a reason to like really think about and talk about their hair curl pattern. Most people use a hair typing system that was actually created by Oprah Winfrey's stylist, Andrew Walker. And it is definitely like much better than nothing. But it's still super subjective. It's not scientific at all. It's a hair stylist's take on like averaging out the hair types. And it's very much like what does your hair resemble the most. And again, to bring back to a personal anecdote, I have a very tight curl pattern and very

thick hair in terms of the number of hairs, but I have very fine individual hairs. And hairstylists, baffled, confused, bamboozled every single time. It's such a struggle. Shout out to like the three people who have ever given me a good haircut in my life. And that's kind of, that is a very, very common problem, especially when you get into people with much tighter coiled hair than mine, where there's this sense that it's like, yeah, these are the buckets. And it's like, no, there's so many, it's so much more complicated than those buckets. And the other thing that Lysisi and her colleagues point out is that there are a lot of researchers, scientists and doctors now who like stay away from any research topics. that have to do with hair type and or skin color because they don't want to deal with like, the potential murkiness and like ickiness of race and the history of race science.

And obviously there is a huge history of eugenics-based research in the U.S. and around the world. but a lot of researchers are now making the point, like being like colorblind in your research doesn't actually help. You know, you don't just kind of ignoring that those research questions exist. Like race is a construct. Race doesn't exist. Different hair types do exist. And in fact, the problem is that they've been conflated with this thing that doesn't exist. And that's oversimplified.

It's reductionist. It's not helpful. So it's like, we got to do more. We got to learn more. So it's about researching our hair types as an actual spectrum of traits versus this imaginary, very much just proven idea of distinct racial groups. And that's where we get to like actually describing what makes curly hair different. And Lysia has published a couple of papers on this where she basically is arguing for looking at the curvature of individual strands, which are a range on any single person's head and across, you know, all of human kind. And that curvature comes together to form a curl pattern.

And then there's also the cross section of your hair. And that's like when we talk about course versus spine, that's what we're talking. about, but she points out that there's this huge variation in size and in shape. Like, a lot of hairs are not cylindrical if you cut them down in a cross section. There are strands of hair that will be like triangular or just like a real funky, funky, multi-sided shape. That's amazing. Yeah, right? She's blowing my mind right now.

Yeah, yeah. And it's really cool. And, you know, obviously that affects how your hair lays on your head and how it behaves. And, all this different stuff. So I'm really excited for this awesome scientist and her colleagues to keep doing more and more research. But like what they've, what people have found so far suggest that curly hair evolved as like a very uniquely human trait because, and this is something I've never really thought about. Other mammals don't have super tight curly hair. It's not a thing that exists, really, outside of humans. And humans, of course, are also unique in that we lost all of our fur, except mostly on top of our heads. Obviously, your results may vary, but generally speaking,

we have almost none and then a bunch on the top of our heads. And so we know that like our ancestors gradually lost fur. We know that for some reason it stayed where it stayed. And we also know that, you know, in our like deep ancestry coming out of the African continent, there was almost certainly quite a lot of densely curled hair. and I will say that actually going back and studying the archaeology of hair is super difficult. The oldest hair specimen, human hair specimen that's ever been found was 200,000 years old or so. And it was found in fossilized hyena poop.

Thank you hyenas. That was in 2009. And then there was some more found a few years later. but while they were able to be like okay like this physically this is human hair all of the keratin in the hair sample had been replaced by calcium carbonate and so they couldn't look at DNA so there's this problem with hair not being well preserved enough in you know ancient human specimens for us to like figure out not just what it looked like but like who it belonged to and like what their ancestry was so that's where a lot of

the sort of like blank spots come from. And hopefully as our methods get better and as more people are looking, we will find some like ancient hairs that can be more closely studied. So we know that curly hair is, you know, based on some gene mutations. We know some of the genes that are related to it, but a lot of them are unknown. And it's a dominant trait. So, like, once it's in the population, it's, like, pretty easy to keep it around. So we also know that hair genes can be related to, like, totally different stuff.

For example, there's an East Asian gene variant that is linked to, like, very straight, thick hair. but it's also linked to the shape of like your jaw and your memory glands. So it's possible that the mutations that made it advantageous to have a certain hair type stayed around not because of the hair type, but because of something else related to it. Because it's all about protein structures. So like, you know, it can can do all sorts of stuff. This new study, finally, finally getting back to that, was looking at this idea that. was looking at this idea that's been gaining traction that curly hair in particular stayed on our heads as opposed to going away with the rest of our fur

because it helped protect our brains from the sun. Basically, all animals have to deal with body heat and radiant heat from the sun, and there are lots of different strategies for dealing with that. But we know that hominids like we're doing something pretty wacky and different when they started like being bipedal and having bigger brains. And like it's basically like having like a giant CPU or like server farm in your head. In terms of like the energy input required in terms of like the risk of overheating, it's just like very temperamental, very unwieldy, very impractical as an organ to have sitting on top of your fragile little spine. So the idea is that we lost our hair because we evolved this ability to cool down by perspiring, which is like pretty unique and very cool. We have this like basically evaporative cooling built in saying that not doesn't exist a lot of mammals.

And that was awesome. But what about the brain, which is so sensitive. and you know sweating works by like you're already getting hot so your body starts to react and sweat so that you cool off and what if there was a way to keep the head area from ever getting so hot from the you know sun beating down on you and the idea is that hair protects you from some of that radiant heat and this is the first time to my knowledge that researchers have like really tried to test that and I'm going to link to some pictures on popside.com slash weird because it's wild one second I'm going to drop a link in the chat because like

truly I need I need everyone to see what I'm seeing I'm fully invested this is fascinating also my mom has hair exactly like yours Rachel and it's beautiful both of you I am you know I actually I've been dyeing my hair for so long that like I'm going to take a break from dying it sometime in 2024. I've decided I'm going to grow it out and like dying really does like destroy your curl pattern so I'm like she's going to my head is going to be magnificent it's going to be out of control I'm really excited. Okay so sorry I finally found this picture I was looking for so this is the um Oh, my God.

Yeah. So this is a thermal mannequin. Every time I read that, I see the word murkin. There's just too many of the same letters in there, and we're talking about hair. But it's not. Thermal mannequin. And I really appreciate that the researchers went out of their way to say, why does the power plug into its eye sockets? We don't know.

That's not a choice we've made. But listeners, I just, What can I tell you? There is a mannequin in a chair with power cords coming out of its eye sockets. Looks like Will Ferrell. Or a Will Ferrell character. I was going to say it looks like a Dark Souls boss. All great comparison.

So yeah, they took this thermal mannequin and they heated it to a body temperature of 95 degrees. and then they put it under hot lights in a climate-controlled wind tunnel. And then they measured the temperature on the mannequin's head. And they tested that when there was no wig. And then they took a bunch of human hair wigs that were all like similar in thickness and color but had either straight strands, loose curls, or tight coils. And under a simulation of a sun around 86 degrees Fahrenheit, There was a huge difference between having hair and not having hair, basically.

You know, the sun would always heat up the mannequin's head, but even putting on any wig, cut that heat gained by more than half. Shout out to bald friends, sunscreen, hats, important. But yeah, so like having any hair on there made a huge difference. But yeah, then when they looked at taking the moderately curled wig, that made the scalp heat up even less than the straight-haired wig. And the tightly coiled wig was the most effective. And, you know, they didn't investigate like the exact mechanism of this. But the thought is that it's blocking the, you know, like a literal radiant energy of the sun.

But then, of course, it can also trap heat. But curlier hair has more air circulation in it. It's creating, it's almost like I saw one article comparing it to like having a nice spongy material on top of your head. There's still, you're getting breeze. And straight hair is actually, you know, yes, it protects you from the sun. But then it also can keep you from losing heat in a way that curly hair is much less effective for. So the thinking is, you know, again, it's possible that straight hair came about for reasons totally unrelated to the hair itself. And it just stayed around because it wasn't so harmful in places where there wasn't ton of sunlight and heat all the time.

But it's also possible that in some parts of the world, it was really beneficial because it was more important to have that insulation in the winter of having, you know, flat hair that stayed. close to your head. And yeah, they also, they went further by trying to simulate a sweat by like wetting the mannequins, just giving them a spritz. And they did find like unsurprisingly being bald made the evaporation cooling process of sweat most effective. But again, they're like, it seems like on the balance having some hair to protect your head from, absorbing the heat in the first place, tends to be a win. And this like really blew my mind because of how much sense it made to me because people who don't have curly hair ask me all the time how I can stand to have my hair down in the summer. And me too. This has been going through my mind. Yes.

Yeah. And I'm always like, I don't know. It's it's not the hottest part of me. Right. And when I straighten my hair, I always sweat like a maniac. It's like disgusting. So you felt the difference. Yeah. And it never occurred to me until reading this study that that was the difference. I always thought like I must just be more aware of the sweat because like my hair is closer to my head. I don't know.

But now I'm like, yes, I do actually, my hair does have ventilation powers. Yeah. Anecdotally, it makes so much sense now because my hair is like curly and kind of gets more straight over a couple of days. And I feel like my heat tolerance goes down over those days. Yeah, it's really real. I always have my hair down anyway. And now I know why, because my curls vent me. Thank you, curls.

Your curls are doing the absolute most. They are. Yeah. Well, and some other studies have found that, like, if you look at, obviously this was on mannequins, and the researchers do hope to, like, do more studies that capture the full, you know, experience of a human body and human hair. But there has been some related research on this.

And like one study that looked at bald men found that they sweat on their scalps at two to three times the rate of men who have scalp hair. And then there were some researchers who found that like when you shave hair off of the head, there are higher heat loads. So yeah, it's basically like, when you have less hair, you sweat more because sweating becomes the more effective way to stay cool. And yeah, like having longer hair, traps heat more than short hair.

But one thing that's really awesome is that going back to kind of like the like very reductive historical research on hair, there is another population that are not related to African populations closely at all who have like very tightly coiled hair. And that's the Melanesians who are the predominant indigenous peoples of an area of Oceania that's like from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands. And their ancestors came from East Asia. They do have a fair bit of denisovin genes, the same way that a lot of Europeans have a lot of Neanderthal genes. Denizovans were another human relation that they had relations with. And so the denozovan genes would have had kind of a more direct tie to an African descent. But yeah, this is just like totally different population

that has also kept this probably ancestral, very uniquely human coiled hair. And they are also often blonde due to a completely different mutation than the one that made people blonde in Europe. And I think that's just a really great little microcosm of like a lot of us have a lot of assumptions about how like phenotypes work. And really like the human population is this like amazing spectrum of different traits and mutations that have happened. And like people can, people can come out all sorts of ways. And curly hair, really choice, really primo, as far as I'm concerned. I'm convinced.

I have to agree. There are no cons. Yeah. I like how you put it as a spectrum, Rachel, because I think we often forget that a lot of these traits are not just controlled by one gene, or they are controlled by one gene, but then like that proximity of the proximity of that gene to other genes you know there are a lot of factors that help code who you are so it's not about having one trait because everyone just has a unique combination um but i see on the scientific end how that just complicates things if they can't

put us in a hair bucket or a skin bucket or a personality buckets for so long and now they're like oh my god it turns out we need so many buckets the buckets are out of control that's beautiful um i love that we're learning enough uh we're learning that like human evolution is like so chaotic and there's so much variation that can happen and a lot of the like things that were considered like very straightforward um you know 50 years ago now it's like oh wow we were looking at a tiny, tiny corner of this actually extremely complicated thing. And I'm sure that has been frustrating for some people to wrap their heads around. But I think it's super cool.

Agreed. Yeah, it makes me more excited about science. I always forget and relearn how unique sweating is, you know, like. Yeah. Like birds don't sweat And have a lot of various ways of cooling themselves down And it always just kind of blows my mind again and again I don't think about it as much

And then I'm like oh yeah It's like a really odd thing that we do It's amazing Like pooping on their legs Yeah exactly Yeah and then it's also so unique to individuals Like True

I didn't realize not everyone sweats out of their armpits Like my coworkers and I were talking about it and they were like, yeah, we like, I'm a sweaty back person. And I'm like, but I thought everyone sweated it out of their armpits. I mean, I guess they do, but some places are sweatinger than others. True. On certain people. I have a pal who has, I think it's, is it hyperhydrosis? Yeah, hyperhydrosis.

And they just sweat and sweat and sweat. And I'm a pretty sweaty person too. And I'm like, amazing. We all have different ways. Yeah. Birds don't sweat. That's wild. Mm-mm.

It is wild. So a lot of birds, I'm going to take any opportunity to just sneak a bird fact in at any time. Oh, please. A lot of birds cool themselves down by fluttering their goaler pouch, which is sounds really cool. And it's kind of like a spot in their neck that they literally just flutter. It looks like they're panting, but they're kind of. of like rushing air. And as we know, turkey vultures use urohydrosis and just, you know, pee on their own legs and that cools them down. And they also can cool down by, sometimes you'll

see vultures doing this pose where they're like holding their wings out very epically, you know, like on a power line or something like that. And they use that behavior to sometimes cool down and also to sometimes warm up. So they've got, they've got a couple strategies to deal with differing temperatures. Nice. Yeah. Well, maybe if I have some time on my hands this summer, I will try. I don't think I've ever curled my hair.

So maybe I'll try curling my hair and see if it helps. I'll go beak in the sun for a bit. You have such beautiful hair. Please don't, please don't heat chill your hair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Do one of those overnight, you know, the robe hair thing.

Yes. There's so much, we've come so far in heatless hairstallie technology. Actually, you know, it's funny. I've written about several of Dyson's hairstyling tools and the R&D behind them because they truly do like, you know, science the shit out of everything they do. However, you might feel about the air wrap. Much brilliant to work went into it. And, yeah, like when I.

first started talking to them like when they first came out with their first hair dryer and they were like we're going to be doing this now this is like a thing we do uh we're just in the business of circulating air to make things happen um one thing that they kept emphasizing was like we went looking for research on hair and there is none and it's not true that there's literally none but they were like no one had done the empirical research on heat damage. let alone for like multiple hair types. And so I think it's so amazing that researchers like Dr. Lassisi are super curious and like innovative about asking these questions. And then and also like, you know, from a less curiosity, more profit-driven side, like it also makes sense to ask these questions.

Absolutely. Everybody has hair and it's all different and lots of people want to do stuff with it. So like, please, please companies who take my money do some hair science. So, you know, I think it's been really cool to see some of Dyson's findings come out and impact their hair products. But obviously there's still a lot more work to be done. Yeah, a lot of good weird stuff today. Really, really all over the place. Yeah, it's a good balance.

We learned about people not go into space, but... Just most of us. Yeah, that's true. Relatable, yeah. Honestly, these people seem to have come much closer to going to space than I ever will. So they did more space trading than I have. True. I'm going to start doing some handstands to get ready, like, just in case.

Amazing. Liz, remind our listeners where they can find you. So you can find me. at I Paint Burbs. And yes, that's B-I-R-B-S. I paint Burbs, basically anywhere. You can even find me at I-PaintBerbs.com. If you need some birdie stickers in your life,

I'm scheming on some turkey vulture designs. As we speak, I'm feeling very inspired. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bode, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor, 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. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with visible. It's one-line wireless

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