The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Robotic Roller Derby, Orangutan Skincare Routines, That Good Pet Stink

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Annalee Newitz returns to the show to discuss the cutest little food delivery robots you've ever seen. Plus, Rachel talks self-medicating apes, and Amanda explains why we love our pets' stink and our lovers' smelly armpits. 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! Right now, get 60% off at https://Babbel.com/WEIRDEST This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at https://BetterHelp.com/WEIRDEST Ask for Claritin-D at your local pharmacy counter. You don’t even need a prescription! Go to https://Claritin.com right now for a discount so you can Live Claritin Clear Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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popular science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Amanda Reed. And I'm Annalie Newitz. Annalee, welcome back to the show. It's so great to have you. Yeah, it's so fun to be back. Thanks. And you, well, I asked you on here because I just wanted to have you back on the show, but my excuse was that you have a new book out. Would you tell listeners what is called and a little bit about what it's about? Sure. So it is called Stories Are Weapons. Psychological. warfare and the American mind. And yeah, I know it sounds very ominous. It's a history of psychological warfare in the United States. So it's kind of scratching my itch of looking back at history and using history as a way of understanding the present and the future. And one of the

things I found as I was looking at the United States' unique relationship to psychological war is that a lot of really bad science has been kind of shoveled into the way that we conduct propaganda and psychological operations. So a lot of the book deals with how the language of science, particularly from psychology and anthropology, but also later data science too, and how that's been kind of appropriated and weaponized and used not just in military engagements, but also now in culture wars as well. So there's a lot of great history and bad science in this book. So interesting. I have a copy. It's been on my TBR pile and I think I'm going to dive into it this weekend. So I'm very excited and listeners should definitely check it out. So let's get into the

show. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera. It decided 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. Asterisk. Listeners who know, no, it's fine. Amanda, what's your tease? All right. My tease is, and Annalie, I think you will like this one. We were all talking about cats earlier, and this one is cat-related. So my tease is huffing your cat. and your loved one's armpit is connected.

All right. Two things I respect if other people want to do, but not really a thing I do. Or do I? I don't know. Maybe you're about to blow up my mind. Annalie, what's your tease? Sorry, I was still hung up on huffing as like some kind of like scientific method. Like the method section is like huffing.

It's like in chemistry lab when they tell you to waft. Totally. Sometimes the procedure says huff, and then you're like, whoa, we're in for a weird day. Do you huff in like microns or what is a unit of huff? That would be, I would, future weirdest thing, topic. What is how do you measure a huff? No, but I've only heard huffing used in connection to paint and or glue. Right, yeah.

And it's also a great word. Yeah, it is. You can, you know, also it's like the three little pigs and then paint and glue. It's a, it's a very unique word in that way. The trifecta. Anyway, sorry. Sorry. Sorry to diaper. So my tease is a paper about a robot who is purpose built for delivering food, but has both wheels and legs and has many strange encounters in a city. It's kind of a, It's kind of an epic journey, a tale of, you know, going on a quest. Yeah, the classic hero's journey. It is. It's a quest narrative starring a very cute robot that looks basically like a kid's wagon. Oh, it can move on its own.

Obsessed. I'm very excited for this sequel to Wally. I'm like, somebody write the kid's book right now. Yeah, it writes itself. My tease is that I want to talk about primates other than humans using medicine, self-medicating, if you will, in all sorts of ways. But I think the use of the word huffing has really, Amanda, you do know how to craft a tease. So I think we're going to have to start with that. Incredible.

Okay. So my favorite thing to always talk about in my weirdest thing, blurb yarn, is how I came about this topic. So my cat, junk, junk, yes, J-U-N-K, J-U-N-K. He was adopted two years ago this week. He is a black and white tuxedo cat who is just like a weird little guy. Unfortunately, I've done the bad pet owner thing where I have not provided pet photos on this call. But just imagine your standard tuxedo cat, half black face, white chest, white little socks. But he just has like a very grumpy face too. And he loves drinking water out of plant trays. So like the things that we have on the bottom of our plants to like catch any water that's overfilled, even though he has plenty of fresh clean water. He's always like, what if I drink the water that has dirt in it? It's interesting.

It's spicy. Spicy water. He's like, this is my Fiji water. Yeah. It's interesting because cats notoriously like sometimes will refuse to even drink water out of the bowl because it's still. And the idea is like they've evolved to be like, ooh, still water gross. I want a gently babbling brook. So, you know, you have those little fountains.

So I love that your cat is like, hmm, the stiller and dirtier the better. No, literally, like, anytime I have an open, like a wide cup on my desk, he'll try and stick his head into it. And I'm like, sir, like, he has had coffee before. And like, thank goodness. He was just doing a bit more zoom. that day. So anyway, have you all seen the tweets where it's like, I love smelling my partner? I love smelling my partner's armpits. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I've seen the tweets. I've seen the, you know, the other stuff. Other stuff in varying versions of appropriateness. So anyway,

exactly. Not to sound creepy, but I am kind of like that with junk junk. I love putting my face in his fur and just taking a big old whiff. And I can only categorize his scent as coming, like smelling your bed after coming home from a trip. Like it's not clean laundry. Like it doesn't have that like fresh powdery smell, but it, it smells lived in and homie. But it's not stinky. Very, very big distinction. Um, so. naturally I love to Google. My search history is a mess. So I googled why does my cat smell so good? Because he smells so good. And thankfully, there are some legit answers in perfumery and olifaction. Like making perfume is just chemistry at the end of the day. So some cat owners have described their cats as smelling like

cinnamon or laundry, perfunemy has even been used, and there are some specific compounds that cats secrete out of their nine glands that give off scent that sort of contribute to these smells. So there's a ketone called four-thiophenyl pentin two-one. Rolls off the tongue. Rolls off the tongue. It's characterized as light, fruity, or powdery. It's most strong in female cats or neutered males. Another fun fact, if you've ever smelled a black currant bush and thought to yourself, it kind of smells like cat pee or some varying level of catness. Congrats. Both cat urine and black corant bushes contain varying concentrations of this ketone. So cats who give off a nutty scent are secreting a specific sort of, they're secreting this nutty smell from this, from their

pina glands, which are on their cats, on the cat's head just behind their ears. It's nutty, it's nutty, It's earthy. It's similar to Jasmine Rice. Naturally, also what your cat sits on can affect how they smell, what they eat, what breed they are, and how much they groom themselves also accounts into how they smell. I'm sure if anyone else has brought a cat home from like a shelter. or like off the street, when you first get them, those boys are stinky, stinky, stinky. But they get less stinky over time. Also, and this is where the sniffing your partner's armpits and liking how they smell factors into play, things we love smell good to us. So our olfactory senses are probably our most primal. we release pheromones, right?

And if we like the way that someone smells, it's like, all right, like they're a good, a good partner in our little eukaryote brain. Is that the single cell organism? Well, yeah, it is, it can be. It's a type of cell that has a nucleus, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm thinking about like our... We are descended from...

Okay, perfect. I'm like high school biology, high school biology. So it's like an evolutionary thing. It's a survival thing. Naturally, not to say it's a one-to-one comparison, but like when you think about it, it makes sense. Like, okay, like I let this little guy crawl all over my desk and like, sure, he eats my plants sometimes, but I would do anything. for him, much like the way we would do anything for our partners who eat our plans and lay in the bed. Also, huffing your cat can save their life. So, cat owners, I know I certainly am as a long time cat owner. You sort of notice when they smell off or bad in some way. Like, for example, if they've peed in a corner, you know if they peed in the litter box and the litter box smells a little funky, you absolutely know, like if it's super fresh. And a bad cat smell can be connected to poor dental health, impacted anal glands, digestion issues, incontinence, kidney disease, urine spraying, which is definitely super common in male cats, and poor grooming.

Sometimes you might sniff your cat and go, hmm, it smells like maple syrup or cotton candy. Like there's this sweet smell coming from my cat. And although we consider sweet things to be good as humans, a cat smelling sweet is not great. Oh, no. That can actually be a sign that your cat has diabetes, especially if you're sort of smelling them. Yeah. Sweet diabetes. It makes sense.

Yeah. Human urine does actually smell sweet when you have high blood sugar. It's just that now that we have better ways of testing blood sugar, most people are not like, you know. Sniffing the total. Let me sniff that urine. See how you're doing. But there was a time when that was the best medicine had to offer, you know? Which I also think, like, you can, you can smell when you have a UTI as well.

Like, I can totally, yeah. Like, yeah, so it's, we are kind of doing some sniffing around still for medicinal reasons. That's very true. The nose knows. The nose knows. So, yeah, if you're smelling something sweet from your cat's mouth, maybe, just maybe, plan a trip to the vet. do some precautionary testing. And fun fact, it's also not just in domestic cats.

So big cats like leopards, tigers, and lions have a compound in their urine called 2 AP, which smells like buttered popcorn. So. I've heard that one before. I've heard about cats smelling like butter popcorn or big cat smelling better popcorn, which is fascinating to me. There's also the thing of dogs' feet smelling like Fritos. Yes.

I've never spent enough time with a dog to really investigate their feet, so I can neither confirm or deny. But it looks like Jess has thoughts. There was definitely an explanation circulating at some point. And I think we might have talked about it on this show. It's possible. After doing some. I love my cat's stinky breath too. I was going to say my cats are.

very like funky smelling and I love it so much and when they like lick me and breathe on me and I'm just like oh my god you have fart breath I love it I don't know why so yeah I try not to think about where that mouth has been but yeah no truly I um I actually saw a um a comedy show last night and the person who was performing is vegan. And they're like, I'm mostly vegan because I think about like, where has this animal been? You know, like, how much dirt have they rolled in before? That's very real. Well, I was just thinking, like, what's been in their mouth?

What's been in their track? And, you know, that's a very, I think that's a real. valid reason to be vegan. There are many, any reason to be vegan is valid if you want it to be. And that one, I'm like, it's true. If I thought too much about that, I do, I am reducing my

animal product consumption once again. Periodically, I'm like, it is time to once again tighten the screws. But it's good. But no, that's something I'll definitely, I'll keep that in my back pocket for the next time that I'm I'm tempted to eat more meat.

It's like this guy, this guy was rolling around in the shelf. You don't want to eat him. No, but a quick, a quick Google search has, again, quick Google search has concluded that dogs smell like fritos or dog's paws smell like fritos because of yeasty overgrowth in their paws, which makes. sense. Yeah. He's like yeast, chip, all good. So, conclusion, sniff your boyfriends, sniff your girlfriends, sniff anyone else in your life, sniff your pets. The nose knows. Well, I feel like my desire to sniff my cats has been normalized. I feel validated. So, so thank you. Now I'm I'm like, okay, like, I need to figure out, do some more Googling, figure out all of the chemical compounds of my cat, and then just make my own perfume so I can wear it all the time. I feel like the armpits are being neglected in this whole analysis here.

Like, are we just sampling like armpits and like making sure we understand why that smells good? Yeah. Or maybe that's just only the armpits of those you love. Yeah, I do think it's probably, well, I mean, you know, your mileage may vary. I think there are probably some people who are like the stranger, the armpit, the better. Yeah, but I would say probably for the average person who's like, I love smelling my partner's armpits, it is probably more like that is a very, a very saturated source of their unique smelliness, you know, and. Sets not the oxytocin. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like vulnerable and intimate. and all that kind of stuff too. So yeah, there's a little culture that goes into it as well. Yeah. I wrote way back in the day, I wrote a piece for the Atlantic about like, scent and attraction and memory. It was a very like self-indulgent essay about like realizing that a guy I'd got on like two dates with who I'm now friends with at the time. I was like, why doesn't he want to go on more dates with me? It was a very, very, very, 21-year-old Rachel vibe.

Anyway, I realized that he smelled like laundry. And then I was like, oh, my God, now every time I do laundry, I'm going to think of this guy. Turns out that only lasted like two weeks. Sorry, Jeff. But I did write this essay about like, yeah, there's a lot of research on, you know, both our brains do the thing where it's like we tune out sense that we smell all the time because otherwise we would be like we would have sensory overload all the time. So I think to some extent,

like the things that are unpleasantly stinky about folks and animals you're in close proximity with, your brain has kind of like dulled those out. So then it's like, oh no, this is just the bouquet that I associate with happy, wonderful feelings, even if like maybe the exact same smell from a stranger with just like, you know, their own little microbes thrown in, you'd be like, yeah, that's, that's B.O. Man. And that gives me the end. It's fascinating. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Amazing. Well, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some 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 weas. 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 you feel different ways isn't just about the THC. It seems like it's also based on other components called terpenes. Turpines influence how a product tastes and smells. And it seems like they can also impact the way you feel. Mood partnered with dozens of small American farms to custom cultivate flour with specific turpine profiles.

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While supplies last, ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.S. College PC. Okay, we're back. And Anali, I would love to, before we get into more animal stuff, I would love to hear about this little robot. Hell of wheels, I assume. Yes.

This robot also is, I would say, fashioned to look kind of like a cute animal. So a group of roboticists, mostly in Europe, decided to do an experiment to see how they could create. I mean, it's this highly specific thing. They're like, we need a food delivery robot for an urban area. and it's kind of this idea of the last mile delivery. Like how do you, you know, prevent people from having to like drive around in cars and, like, do deliveries in a city? And it's like, you know, they have a lot of great euphemisms in their paper for things like cities being stinky and full of traffic and piles of garbage, which is one of the things I immediately loved about it.

Like they were like, the challenges of the urban environment include locomotion across. varied terrains and the ability to navigate efficiently around complex dynamic obstacles. And you're just like, you know what they're just like, yeah, this is literally poop on the street. Yeah. Like a pile of garbage and like crumbling stairs. So they're like, okay, how do we make a robot do this? And they came to the conclusion that they wanted a robot that could go fast, so like on wheels. But it's encountering stairs.

and other kinds of like weird obstacles that it's going to need to climb on. So it can't use wheels exclusively. You come up against what Doctor Who fans will know as the Dalek problem, which is like when you have a bad guy who's on wheels and it encounters stairs, it doesn't really seem that bad anymore. I assume they didn't just make them levitate several seasons. Oh, no, they did. Oh, sorry, the Daleks. Right, yeah, yeah. I'm saying I assume the robot didn't also do that.

So deep into my Doctor Who metaphor that I was like, oh, no, of course, all robots levitate. So in order to do this, they said, all right, how about if we give the robot the ability to switch back and forth between walking or trotting, as they put it, and rolling? And so this meant they had to invent a bunch of new ways to tackle terrain. Nobody's ever really tried to create a robot that does this because a lot of robots that walk around, like, that you may have seen, like, the Boston Dynamics, the famous big dog. those are all biomimetic, right? They're based on actual biological organisms and they try to imitate the behavior of those organisms. But we don't have, as far as we know, any organisms that have both wheels and legs. So they were like, great, how do we figure this out? So they designed seriously the most adorable robot. It looks like kind of like a cross between like a baby carriage

and maybe like a big dog. It has like a red chassis and it on one end. It definitely looks like it has two eyes and a mouth that are kind of smiling. And the wheels are really big and kind of soft. They're almost like one of the bicycle wheels from those fold-up bikes. And in fact, the robot can fold up and sit down, almost like a fold-up bike. So they're like, great, we've got this wheeled robot. how do we how do we train it because again we don't have any models for this so they put the

robot's brain inside basically a video game engine that procedurally generated a bunch of random environments so it learned how to navigate all these random environments just the way we when we play procedurally generated video games learn how to navigate constantly changing terrain all the time some of us better than others I have um and F several video games because I'm like, well, here's, I literally can't figure out how to get up this, this thing. So, uh, you need to trot. Yeah, that's, that's, as the robot learned. Truly. So, um, so basically the robot played video games for a while. Um, and then they unleashed it, um, in Zurich, uh, where they were, a lot of them were based while they were doing

this research. And, um, they did, they created this great video, which, um, I shared with you guys earlier because I just thought it was adorable, where the robot is like kind of just going around in the city and it's climbing stairs. We see it navigating around people. We see like kids gawking at it and dogs barking at it and it's like squishes itself really small and it like has to climb over obstacles. And one of the things that's really cool is like you'll see it like putting along on its wheels. And then it gets to an obstacle that's really high. Like it's just sort of a big cement slab. and it starts to roll on top of it and then it kind of collapses its wheels down

and starts literally walking on what looks like its elbows. And so it like kind of walks on its elbows over top and then puts its wheels down again. But at other points when it uses its feet and putting feet in quotation marks, it's just kind of put the brakes on the wheels. And so the wheels are braked and it like trots up a flight of stairs. And it's, and again, it's freaking adorable.

And the reminds me. of a very specific thing, which is that back when Gotham Roller Derby, the season starts June 22nd, come out to Brothback Park, support your local Roller Derby League. Anyway, back when they used to have like really tiny juniors, they still have juniors classes, but there was a time when they had classes for like actual babies. And sometimes they would play little screwinges at halftime at the grown-up games. and the youngest group, they would have their wheels tightened all the way on their skates. So they were literally just clapping around on their stuck skates.

So, yeah, I'm really charmed by this robot because it will now always remind me of five-year-olds playing roller derby. Yeah, it pretty much is. And, you know, they have the thing that's really delightful about this paper for me was that it's full of pictures. of both the robot's successes on things such as, I love, again, all these euphemisms, irregular steps, mixed surfaces. A mixed surface is literally just steps where they're completely overgrown with weeds. So it's mixed. And then there's the interventions that they had to do when the robot did not quite figure out

how to get around. And so one of the interventions they had to do was, again, what they refer to as the untroversible path, which was literally the robot just like drove off the sidewalk into a giant pile of like plants and, um, dirt and stuff. So it's like, it's not really an untroversible path. It's literally not a path. Okay. Like it just drove off the sidewalk. So it's, you know, um, the other thing about this paper that I thought was so funny was, um, and I was talking to you about this beforehand is so it's how specific it is in the sense that they're like we need a robot to deliver food. It's not, you know, they're not doing this grandiose thing that I hear about a lot because

I live here in the San Francisco Bay area surrounded by like AI weirdos who are like, we are going to invent the next evolutionary step in humanity. And it's like, these guys are like, no, all we want to do is deliver food. And we want to do it safely in a cute kind of creature. that people won't be afraid of. And they don't have any, like, you know, discussion of like, what are the ethics of designing, like, something that'll have super intelligence. It's like, no, all we want to do is navigate a hallway and go up some stairs. And so congratulations on to these guys for, like, just being like, we have one task. We're designing a robot for it. Thank you, sir. Goodbye. Yeah. Every time I've talked to, you know, experts in AI and robotics who do

don't like, you know, work for a startup that's trying to do AI and robotic stuff. They're always like, yeah, it's really attainable for us to pick a specific thing for a robot with artificial intelligence to do. It's like really unrealistic to be like, we just will make it, it can do everything. And also, yeah, then you get into a bunch of ethical implications, which you don't if it's just like, you know, this little. This little. guy is for delivering hamburgers and we've helped this robot be really good at that. Yeah. I mean, I assume since they're in Switzerland, it will also be delivering a fondue. Like, it has to have like a fondue pocket or something like that.

Funny enough, towards like the tail end of my college career. I live in Pittsburgh, which has like a weird, like techie epicenter. Also, that's where the hitchhiking robot met its demise was in Pittsburgh. Perfect. It's so sad. But also, yeah, it was on brand for Pittsburgh. Yeah, no, absolutely. They, some company tried rolling out something similar where it's like little robot on wheels that delivers food to you.

And it makes me chuckle because it's like in here in America, it's like, how do we get this guy to, you know, not stop in the middle of the sidewalk and, like, not crash into the trash can. And then the Europeans are like, our guy goes downstairs, you wish. Yeah. Well, also because they're thinking about a device, they're thinking about creating a creature modeled on something that doesn't exist in nature, right? So that's what I think is. also really cool about it. And I have to admit, I found this paper because I'm working on a novella right now about robots because, you know, it's in the future. The robots are running a restaurant, as one does, as robots do. And one of the robots is a robot with legs that have wheels on the end.

And I'm like, has anybody done this? Like, what would it be like? And like, she keeps having, people keep stealing her wheels. So she keeps having to replace her wheels with all different things. And I was like, what would happen if that was going on? And then I found this paper. And I was like, wow, they've explained everything to me, except for the part where people keep stealing her wheels. But I guarantee when they unleash these robots in the real world, that will be an issue. Like, how do you recover from having your wheels stolen? It's like, oh, we've got the walking part right there. So we can just switch over.

Maybe they'll get their ideas from you. Yeah, I'll send them my novella. I'll be like, you guys, like, I have an important contribution to your actual research. Like, I've thought about robots making noodles, okay? I love that. Cool. We're going to take one more break, and then we'll be back with one more fact. Have you ever rearranged your furniture and discovered the carpet underneath looks brand new,

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This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to talk about some self-medicating primates. Some of the monkeys, some of them, not monkeys. Back in 2022, researchers were observing some orangutans in Indonesia. And one of the 150 individuals they were watching that day had a very nasty looking open wound on his flange flange which is the proper term for the big plate-like cheeks you know kind of the the like mutton chops that they have going on in the face area there is a picture and honestly

I did not enjoy looking at it because it did not look fun this poor guy had like a sizable chunk missing and unfortunately a wound like that isn't particularly noteworthy for researchers in the field males fight each other a lot and they inflict a lot of injuries to that area. You know, I think like that sort of face structure is like very tied to sort of, you know, meeting and like social dominance. So I guess, you know, you kind of go for the horns. But the behavior of the wounded orangutan who was an adult in his mid-30s called Racas, that absolutely got their attention because they saw him.

chewing up leaves and pressing them into the wound. So this was three days after the injury. He was ripping off leaves from this plant with the common name Akar Kuning. He was chewing on the leaves, putting the juice on his wound. And then at one point they saw some like flies were kind of buzzing around. And so then he started pressing the leaves to completely cover the wound. And what's cool about this is that self-medicating in animals isn't new. And I was going to get into a bunch more examples of it, but actually I ended up finding so much to say about primates that I'm like, I'll talk more about how other animals self-medicate on another day.

The kind of classic example is like cats eating grass to like purge them of parasites and stuff. very annoying for you as a cat owner if your cat is just eating grass and throwing up, though. But anyway, there were a few special things about what this particular guy was doing. For starters, the plant he used is one that we know has actual medicinal properties. Humans have historically used it and continue to use it today for reducing inflammation, for killing off microbes, both bacteria and fungi, and for treating pain. in a lot of cases of animals self-medicating, either we don't know what the potential mechanism of the plant they're using is, or in some cases we actually like learn about like the medicinal

properties of the plant from trying it out because we've like seen an animal do it, which again, I'll get into on a later episode. But yeah, this is one where it's like, okay, yeah, this is a thing that we know work specifically for the thing he is trying to use it for. And they say that his poultice was actually pretty effective. His wound closed up in just a few days. And like a month later, it was like hard to tell that anything had happened to him at all. It's also pretty unusual for non-human animals to use topical treatments.

Most instances of self-medication in the wild involve ingesting certain things. And you can kind of imagine how that might be more likely to happen accidentally because, like, animals eat a lot of different stuff. But yeah, in this case, he was applying stuff to the wound, which again is really unusual. This may be just the second time an animal has been seen applying topical treatments directly to a specific injury. The researchers noted that active wound treatment had been observed in chimps, which is from a study that came out in 2022. Those chimps researchers saw them. they would like catch an insect from the air and then like squeeze it between their lips to immobilize it.

And then they would put it on their wound and like move it around with either their fingers or their lips and then remove the insects. And they would also do this to others. Like particularly mothers would do this to their babies that had wounds. The scientists there were not actually able to like capture the insects and figure out which ones they were using and study them. So no idea what, if any, mechanism there is there, but, like, that did seem like pretty clear, you know, using something as a topical treatment. And, you know, that one's also considered particularly cool because it was also being,

that was a thing you would do to care for others. There's one other supposed case of an animal using topical treatment, but it's like, has a lot of caveats that I think is actually funny and worth mentioning. So this is a study from the 80s about an adult female capuchin monkey. And so she was in captivity. And the wording they used is she spontaneously manufactured and used tools to groom her vaginal area and four of her own wounds over a six month period. The wounds were from fights with other monkeys. And she like made these tools. They're no to make tools. Usually they make tools to like get and eat food. But she took this sugar-based syrup and started applying it to wounds and grooming herself. But the important caveat there is that

her caretakers at the like zoo or whatever facility she was in had previously treated her with topical ointments. So it was like kind of literally a monkey see monkey do situation. And also at least, as far as I can tell, there was no, the sugar-based syrup didn't do anything for her wounds. So it seems pretty clear that this is still cool. Like this is a cool instance of an animal being like, oh, remember when they put goopy stuff on my boo-boos and it made it feel better? So I still think it's super interesting, but it's not so much like, oh, these animals have like developed a routine of treating their wounds using goop. monkeys just like us hoarding goop just like us just putting goops on their bodies

yeah just applying goops now do we have any like evidence of like hominins doing like facial care routine like moisturizing oh my gosh see there's actually a point that the researchers make where they're like this is obviously cool but like it begs the question how many behaviors like this do we

miss because there's only so much time you can spend observing primates in the wild, let alone like every other animal that might potentially do stuff like this. So they were like all these years observing them, we saw one of them do this this one time. And that doesn't mean this one guy is a genius. It means they do stuff all the time that we don't see. So I guess I would say, you know, you. You know, I think it's plausible that they do a skincare routine until I hear evidence otherwise. We just see a monkey put on like one of those red light face masks.

I bet if you like gave one to an ape, they'd probably at least be like, this clearly goes on the face. I think they'd get it. I don't know if they'd like it and have to keep doing it, but maybe they would. I mean, it's soothing. Yeah. Yeah. And one researcher who was commenting on this, you know, pointed out that this is a great reminder that animals don't have to understand the mechanism behind a behavior to like recognize that it's useful. Like that that's, it's intelligent for an animal to recognize that there is a benefit to a thing.

And while it's cool that humans have like gotten to a point culturally and intellectually that we can figure out how things work, that like there are many other animals on the planet that are still figuring stuff out even if they don't understand the how. And yeah, in this particular case, you know, there are still a lot of questions. It's not clear how he figured this out. you know, he, male orangutans leave home to enter adulthood. So there's no way for them to know, like, maybe where he's from, this is a really common behavior and where he is now. It's not at all common behavior. Also, apparently male orangutans spend like a lot of time with their mother and not a lot

of time with any other adults where they are. So it's also kind of difficult to track. how things get passed around in terms of like learning and ideas. They do think that probably, you know, for a topical treatment to get picked up, you know, maybe they were eating this plant. They're known to sometimes eat it. It's not a common source of food for them. And then just like one of them happened to touch their wound with the juice and was like,

it has really strong pain relief effects, which is probably crucial. Because obviously, you know, it takes a lot of inference to be like, oh, that juice that randomly dripped on my skin made my wound heal faster. But it's very easy to be like, whoa, that made it feel way better. And that then maybe in using it, they were like, whoa, this makes the whole process better. Like, cool, how chill. And it's also possible that, you know, the. the reason that they like started to use it as a poultice instead of just like

casually getting some leaf juice on there is um uh you might remember that I mentioned that there were some flies buzzing around uh this guy's wound before he switched from just juice to uh chewed up leaves and so that could be just like a very straightforward you know use what's around you you're already using the juice for pain relief and now you can uh make a physical barrier to keep the bugs away because well are annoying. You don't need to understand why it's bad for flies to be in your wound to not want them in your face. Oh, and one other thing I love is that they were, they were like, okay, so we've been observing these orangutans. And like I said, they were like, we've only seen this

behavior once. That makes us really wish we could observe them so much more so that we could catch all the stuff we're missing. But they did see one other possible example of like wound treatment. So this male named Pluto had an injured finger and he kept putting it into a pitcher plant and they think the water was cool and made it feel good. And obviously that's a much simpler answer. But I really, I think it's really sweet. Just imagining this guy with an ouchy finger being like, oh, this feels good. I'm going to keep poking this plant. And yeah, there are are, you know, when we're looking at self-medication more broadly, you know, even just among primates, we do see other evidence of animals just figuring stuff out. There was one study where

this very wounded female orangutan was eating ginger leaves and stems. And ginger, of course, has great antimicrobial properties. And in seven years of observing her group, they had only seen two other individuals ever eat ginger where they lived. So this was like not a thing they usually ate. And so they were like this very wounded female, we think, was trying to treat what was wrong with her by eating this ginger. And yeah, there's other instances of, you know, people seeing primates eat things. that we know have some kind of positive effect. But one really fun one, and does kind of come back to the skincare routine, actually,

is that, again, orangutans were observed a few years ago. Chewing leaves, I think, from the same plant. Yeah, the same plant that this guy rackus used on his face. They would chew them for like five minutes and then spend like another five. minutes rubbing the lather onto their arms and legs. Oh, sorry, not five minutes, 35 minutes. It's been 35 minutes, lathering themselves up, like really saturating themselves. They were like, you must understand. They do this until the skin is, the fur is soaked. They are, they are so wet with the plant goo. Wow. Spa day. Yeah. And they would only be doing this on specific body parts,

most often the arms. And again, it took a really long time. And indigenous people use this very often for sore muscles or joint pain and swelling. And it does have really, really good anti-inflammatory agents when it was studied in the lab. So researchers think that these are just orangutans being like, I'm sore. achy, I'm going to rub myself all over. And so that's where the distinction comes in where it's like, this is the first time something's been applied to a wound for healing. But actually, it seems like it's pretty common for orangutans to, you know, give themselves, it's like a little

a little icy hot. Though I don't think it actually, I don't think it burns. But, and one other cool thing about that is that they found way more females doing it. And they think it's because they carry their babies around, their arms get sore. So yeah, you know, apes are really smart. There are also a bunch of studies on capuchin monkeys rubbing themselves with millipedes. Milipedes have defensive chemicals that have been shown to repel mosquitoes, and they are more likely to cover themselves in millipede goo when, it's wet and there are a lot of mosquitoes around. And when you give them a tissue covered in the compound that millipedes have that is known

to repel mosquitoes, they'll like, they won't just wipe themselves over with the tissue. They will, but they'll also start like drooling. They're like, oh, man, this is going to be so good for the mosquitoes. Anyway, those are just some examples of how animals have figured out how to make their lives, you know, better living through chemistry, as they say. and I will definitely talk more about, you know, other instances of self-medication in the animal world at a later date. But I was just delighted. I think it's great stuff.

I always have like a philosophical question after I read papers like that where it's like, okay, clearly, you know, hominids are doing all this stuff that we used to think of as exclusively for humans, right? Like they have medicine. They have ways of communicating. They have cultural, like they pass on cultural. knowledge. They have wars. They have, you know, all this stuff. And it's like, at what point are we going to have enough evidence to be like, okay, they're basically people? Like, I wonder what you think. Like, when, like, what do we need to prove this? I think it's such a good question. And I was also thinking about that. And I mean, of course, you know, there are folks who argue that we

already have all the evidence we need. But yeah, I like sometimes. I am, when I read about this like really sophisticated behavior in other primates, I'm like, I think weird, the stupid ones, I think we made our lives more complicated than sit-intry and like, I think we really messed up. So that's also part of the philosophical question for me is that I'm like, oh, I think yeah sure we've evolved a lot but like oh what if we kept sitting in tree that seems pretty dope um yeah but i i think it's i don't know what it would take to convince people that aren't already most of the way convinced uh that these are like really sentient uh effectively people um

But it is like even if like this orangutan like saw this person observing him and was like, hey, by the way, you should try this. Like just in English like, you know, just like or whatever language of the person speaks. Like I still think they would just be like, oh, well, we have a way to explain that. That's just some sort of imitation. They're not really speaking a language. You know, I just I feel like yeah, like maybe maybe humans have evolved to not recognize other people that aren't human. or something. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad. Because Corvids are the same way. Like, you'll see papers about, you know, crows and ravens just doing incredible things with tools and, like, cultural transmission and parrots also.

And you're just like, come on, guys. Like, these are people. Let's just, I don't know. I don't know what that would mean. Like, if we all just acknowledge they were people, like, how would we behave differently with crows? I don't know. Maybe say hello more often or something.

We'd be giving them more shiny objects. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We would enter into like barter in exchange with them or something like that. Although I feel like they would be anti-capitalist though. That's definitely true. We do not recognize your bullshit exchange system. Give us the fucking sandwich.

Yeah. Oh, sorry. So too. No, it's okay. We can bleep. Okay. I, yeah, I do love watching videos of that gray parrot who is learning. how to identify different stuff.

He's like, made of glass. Yes. Oh, my God. I'm like, this parrot, like, he's smarter than many humans, I know. He's got it all figured out. He's really entered a great pistachio grift. And he's learning new things every day. I definitely need to be in on the pistachio grift myself.

I recently found a pack of pistachios. in the pocket of a blazer. So I'm like, okay, first of all, how did the, and they came from me. Like, I recognized these pistachios. So I was like, why did I put these pistachios in my blazer? Right. Where were you going to a blazer that you're like,

you know, it'll be a great snack of the go? Literally. Were they in the shell? Like, was this going to be? They were unshelled pistachios. Oh, okay. So they weren't on the go snack. That's a reasonable on the go snack.

Yeah. Imagine having just like in-shell pistachios on the go. It's just like, why is there this trail of pistachios? And it's just like me training that gray parrot. And of course, if we were writing a paper about your behavior, we'd be like, well, this is very sophisticated stashing behavior. And she puts the nuts in her blazer. And then many days later, she can find them again.

So it's an incredible indication of her intelligence. Speaking of, I should find those pistachios. Because pistachios, great nut. They are. Annali, thank you so much for coming on. So many great stories today. And would you remind listeners, not just your new book, but some of your books that they can check out

because I love all of your books. And I want our listeners to read all of them. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on. My new book, which is coming out June 4th, is Stories Are Weapons, Psychological Warfare and the American Mind. And my previous science book is about archaeology and ancient abandoned cities, and that's called Four Lost Cities, a secret history of the urban age. And if you like science fiction, my latest science fiction novel is called The Terraformers. And it is, in fact, about a world of lots and lots of non-human animals who have opinions.

So a good one to read if you're interested in that kind of thing. The Weirdest Thing I Learn 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. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals

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