The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Spiny Female Penises, Goth Girl Summer, Hardcore Flamingoes

Episode Date: September 13, 2019

This week, we've got another voice messages edition of Weirdest Thing! We listen and react to extra weird, listener-provided facts that range from how a volcanic eruption led to the invention of the bicycle to female bugs with spiky penises. It's always great to hear from you all—to submit your own fact, download the Anchor podcast app on Apple or Google Play, and look up our show, The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. Click the voice message button, introduce yourself, maybe tell us where you're from, and record up to 60 seconds of gab about your favorite weird fact. Don't worry, we'll make sure it's accurate before posting it anywhere. Thanks for calling, weirdos! The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share more of 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!  Click here to buy tickets for Weirdest Thing Live on June 14th!  Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton.com. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Hey, weirdos, it's Rachel, and I'm here with...

Jess. And we... Jess has been on the other side of the microphone too long. And we're here for a very special, promised bonus episode while we continue to prep for season three, which is coming to you on September 25th, a Wednesday. Wednesday, obviously. Woo! The best Wednesday of September, I would argue.

So we will wake you up when September ends with Weird Sings Season 3. But in the meantime, we are here to share some facts that you shared via voice message. Before we get into it, just a reminder of what voice messages are. So we make this podcast using an app called Anchor. And it's great, and we love it. And if you're interested in making a podcast, you should check it out. But even if you're not interested in making a podcast, you should check out the anchor app or website. Because when you go to the weirdest things dashboard, you are able to send us voice messages.

They can be up to 60 seconds long and you can say whatever you want. This one is a personal favorite of mine. Hey guys, do you actually get these messages? I find your show really good. I'm from Mexico. And I just wanted to let you guys know that you guys got some listeners. listeners down here and you guys are pretty cool. I would love to hang out with you guys sometime. Bye-bye. Oh my God. We want to hang out with you. Same. Absolutely same. So yeah, you can send us all sorts of

voice messages. You can send us ideas or facts for an episode like the one you're about to hear. Or you can just send us nice messages about how we're cool and you want to hang out. I love that. Or you could leave those in five-star Apple reviews. Jess is nodding. Just knows how I'm It is for us to get five-star Apple reviews. Crucial. Here's the thing, though. Even if you don't listen to the weirdest thing I learned this week on Apple, leaving a five-star review helps us algorithmically.

It means more readers see the show. And with us gearing up for season three, that is especially important because we really want to have the best shot of reaching as many weird, wonderful people as possible. The more people listen, the more support we get for the show, the more able we are to do things like, I don't know, maybe have a live show somewhere other than New York City. Oh. What an idea. You can make it happen by leaving a five-star review on Apple.

Wow. So much power. And one more very important thing you can do via voice message or on Twitter at Weirdest underscore Thing or on our secret Facebook group, which you can find by searching Weirdest Thing on Facebook or in a five-star Apple review. What can you do in all of those locations? I'll tell you what, Jess. you can leave a question for me, for you, for anyone on weirdest thing. So if you have questions about like how we make the podcast, what we do when we're hanging out and singing karaoke together.

My favorite snacks. Yeah. Those are all the questions I can think of asking anyone. But that's why it's not my job to come up with questions for the Q&A. It's my job to come up with answers. So please send us your Q&A questions ASAP because we would love to have some fun. teaching you the weirdest things they're already to know about us. All right, with all that housekeeping out of the way,

I'm going to start by reading a couple of our favorite five-star reviews. I will pepper these throughout our episode. Don't worry, we are getting to weird facts, and if you sent one in, it's probably about to be played. Hopefully, you fact-checked at first, because I sure did. Okay, so still weird, left us a review titled, I miss you, and by the way, you're amazing. Hi, you don't know me, but I love you.

Not in a creepy way. But in listening to your podcast, save me through my commute from hell. Yes, science. Yes, good journalism. Yes, girl power kind of way. Oh, my God. So please skip the episodes coming, but also enjoy your break because hashtag self-care. Love, weirdo for life.

Oh, my God. She gets it. Wow. Yes. Hashtag self-care, indeed. The same to you. Still weird. The same to you.

I love you and not in a creepy way, but in a hashtag self-care kind of way. Definitely. Amy Layla says, delightful. I just finished the last episode from the first season, meaning I am officially caught up. I feel both A, sad and empty, and B, stoked to delight and horrify people at cocktail parties. But I might have to re-listen to a few highlights before my next get-together, so I don't accidentally tell a story about a woman whose head exploded in the Parthenon while giving birth to rabbits. My memory isn't the best.

It must be all the cocktails. I feel you, girl. I feel you. Wow, definitely been there. There's so much emotion packed into that. Yeah. I feel deep connection to everyone who listens to this show, but especially the people who leave us five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Big time.

So, okay, now we're going to get started with some of our listener facts. I have heard these to make sure that they are in fact facts. Jess has not heard them. I'm in the dark. Here we go. Hi there. This is Brandon Mullins. I'm a teacher done here in Clearwater, Florida.

I had a weird fact that I had always told people. was true. And I remember reading about a long time ago, but I bet there's more truth to it than I know. I come from the animal husbandry world, and I had talked with some colleagues or read an article with them about a gentleman in Baltimore that had trained one or two ravens to pick up loose change, and those ravens would then take that loose change into a special made vending machine that would dispense raven food. And because they're a social animal, they would then teach other ravens how to to do it. And so this gentleman in Baltimore ended up making like tens of thousands of dollars off of a colony of Ravens that all taught each other how to go find change all over the city.

I thought that was interesting. And I would love to hear more about it if you know if that's true or not. Thanks. Oh, my God. So I did some Googling. And at first, Baltimore Ravens did not turn up any of the stories I wanted it to. Luckily, I'm a champion Googler. Yes. To avoid all. all of the sports. Yes. And so it turns out this was actually someone in Brooklyn using crows. So the guy named Josh Klein, who was like a hacker, a maker, a writer, he had potty trained

his cat, which is a thing you can do. Totally. And I know that's a thing you can do because you can do it on the Sims. And it's also in real life. It's true. Nothing on the Sims is fake. Correct. It's also where I learned how you make babies.

Woo-hooing. Yes, woo-hooing. Babies can be. he made in bed in the shower, end of list. Correct. So Josh Klein potty trained his cat and inspired by the mess of pesky crows in his native Seattle, which some people were talking about figuring out how to exterminate, he started wondering how you could put them to work.

And so he decided to train them. He built a vending machine designed to dispense peanuts, which crows like to eat. Oh. And so he started by giving them coins, peanuts, and access to the vending machine. And then in a second stage, he gave them only coins. without the peanuts and they would bang them on the machine in frustration. Then he rigged the machine to dispense a peanut as a reward for each coin, which they learned how to do because crows are very, very smart.

And then he did a final step where they got nothing, but he like strew the coins around near the machine. And crows are smart enough that they were like, get to pick a back coin, put it in the machine, get a freaking peanut. But then there was all this controversy because according to Klein, the New York Times wrote a really shoddy article, and then when they had to correct some of the details, they like overcorrected and implied that he lied to them and his whole experiment was made up. And I would have to do a bit deeper of a dive to really, you know, come out one way or the other. But there are a lot of articles about this experiment that have not had corrections run saying that it didn't happen.

So either a lot of outlets never bothered to correct. their fraudulent articles, or he did indeed train some crows to do something with a vending machine. Yeah. So as far as I can tell, he never actually used this to, like, make tens of thousands of dollars in street change. But he did release a open source platform called Crow Box. Oh, boy. Where it's basically the original bird box.

So it's basically like the basic instructions you need to build. a contraption and then train crows to deposit a particular thing in it. Sure. So they're like, they could pick up trash. They could get spare coins. But I couldn't find anything actually reporting like successful use cases. Yeah. But like all of the components of the experiment are very believable because crows are

incredibly smart and great at using tools. So yeah, this is fascinating. And I will definitely work on finding more on it. Yeah. also like imagining a kind of miniature vending machine. Like it's just like an incredibly cute image. Yeah. Adorable.

Yeah. And we actually have a second one from the same weirder. So let's get into that now. Hi there. This is Brandon Mullins from the Clearwater, Florida area. I'm a science teacher down here. I had read a while ago that bedbugs reproduced by something called traumatic insemination, which is essentially where they impregnate the female bug by stabbinger.

them anywhere on their body with their reproductive organs. I just thought that was interesting. And I had wondered if this is a successful way of reproduction. Also, what other animals use something like that. Anyway, thank you for what you do. I really enjoy your podcast. Thank you for what you do, Brandon. The children are our future.

So I don't know how things are down in Clearwater, but as New Yorker, I have to say, is it a successful reproductive strategy? Unfortunately, yes. Have you ever had bedbuck? I haven't, but I know so many people who have. Same. And like it's, yeah, sorry. No, I was just going to say, I always think of the Broad City episode where they just like literally have breakdowns and they have to put all their clothes like in the garbage or like in the oven. Right.

It makes me so upset and not because of the whole like, ew, yuck, bedbugs. Like that's a stigma we should definitely get rid of. It's not something that happens because people are dirty. Totally. But it upsets me because I think about like having to do that much work to make my possessions safe. Again, and like I just, I think I would just sit down and die. Literally same. I would let the bedbugs take me.

I surrender to you. But yes, they do use something called traumatic insemination. Oh, my God. Females have sperm receptacles where the sperm can then migrate to the ovaries. And what's interesting is that there is a functional dental tract, but it's only, they only use it for laying fertilized eggs. You're kidding me. So they always just get impaled? Yes. And so some, depending on the species of bedbug, they can be that sometimes the receptacles are like visible from the outside. And so the male bedbug like stabs there specifically. Others, they are not visible. So that's the ones where they just do random stabbing. Oh my God. Which sounds very not great.

Not very sexy. Also, one fact I found is that male bedbugs have evolved receptors on their pokey bits. if you will. It's a scientific term. I will. And after impaling a female, they can taste, in quotes, taste if a female has been recently made it. And if they take note of the presence of another male, they will not copulate as long and ejaculate less fluid.

So I guess to be like, what's the point? Why bother? And as to whether or not there are other instances of this in the animal kingdom, there are but all like very tiny things like rotifers, which is the group that water bears are in, pinworms, fruit flies. And these are all like not all of the species in this category do this. Okay. Apparently with fruit flies, they will stab through the body wall into the genital tract. That's one way to get in there.

Flatworms have something called penis fencing, so that's exciting. There are some spiders and sea slugs. This is just great. I'm going to read this. They'll make repeated small injections into the dorsal surface of their mate, interrupted by synchronized circling movements culminating in standard general insemination. So sometimes traumatic insemination can just be foreplay. What purpose does it serve? I don't know. But just stab.

It certainly sounds poetic. So yeah, that's everything I have to say about that. Wow. This is already so much. Yeah, okay. Let's get in one more before we go to a break. Cool. Hello, weirdest thing. This is Ian, PhD in plant science.

My weird fact to share with the world is that seagrasses, like those in the genus, Zostera, used to live on land or at least close to land. And they did the reverse evolutionary trend of algae that colonized freshwater and then eventually became terrestrial plants. and Zostera were flowering plants that move from land to fresh water back into the ocean and now are an important global ecosystem. I love that. And it's true. There are algae that migrated back to the sea like 75 to 100 million years ago, according to what I found because all life originated from under to sea.

Totally. And was that a Sebastian voice? It was. then some of it went back. You know, you have like your standard fish that are just, they've been there. But then any mammals in the water had to come to land and then make a return. It's funny because one time I was in Hawaii on a beautiful beach and I may have been on a substance. Was it pizza?

I won't say. But I got very emotional and spent like 45 minutes floating in the water talking about how amazing it is that whales emerged from the sea and then returned to the sea. Yeah. And I was just like they came back to the sea. So anyway, Ian, I also find this story of the seagrass really beautiful. Aren't you an Aquarius? I am. That sea.

That's it. That makes complete sense. I just love crying about oceans. But yeah, I think that the like weird evolutionary trajectory of the tree of life as a whole is so fascinating. It really is. And when you look at whale evolution, I was looking at a picture of it to remind myself before we got to the studio. And you've got all of these things that look like like little, like awkward little pups, you know, becoming whales. And then you have one line at the top that just shoot straight out to the hippo.

Oh, my God. That was just the proto whale being like, I'm going back to the water, but not too far. Just a little bit. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be right back with more of your facts. And before we get back into the facts, I want to share a couple more of our favorite five-star Apple reviews, which, reminder, please leave one. Do it. Get your mom to leave one. It's great.

We love them. Okay, this one, I don't know what this username is. It's either I won't REM or I won't trem. Fun banter. The host's humor and rapport is my favorite thing. I'm also often surprised by how often the host get me sucked into all their stories, even when I thought the topics wouldn't interest me, like sports or corpses. Relatable.

The two genders. Yeah, I'm definitely more of a corpse. I'm more of a sport. Wow, a perfect pair. Then we have Sadie Too Sassy, quenching my science thirst. Being someone with a biology background who works in accounting, my science brain is dying of thirst. This podcast is a cool drink of water, bringing my poor, shriveled science brain back to life. I also like to share snippets with my coworkers who probably don't care.

Love this podcast. Sadie, your coworkers do care. They must. They must. You're doing great work. Good luck with your hydration. It's very important. hashtag self-care.

Yes, hashtag self-care. Okay, now we've got some more facts. Hi, it's Betsy from Massachusetts. I learned today that elephants are the only animal that cannot jump. Also, fleas can jump 350 times their length. Yeah, so looking into this, I found some really interesting stuff. It's not 100% true. So it is commonly said that elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.

But even that, there's like a little more to it. Can they do a little hop? So I think baby elephants can jump a bit. They can... They're more spry. Yeah. But if your definition of a jump is like an upward movement where none of your feet are on the ground, elephants cannot do that because they're very heavy. Really?

It makes sense as an evolutionary tradeoff because like jumping is an evasive move if you're not like a predator. And elephants are too big. to get their bodies off the ground that way, but also because they're that big, they can just lift one of their feet and be like, go away. Yeah, totally. Yeah, then there are some other animals like hippos also can't, like, shoot themselves up off the ground, but they can, according to one source I was reading, these animals can run in ways that get all four their feet off.

They can, like, gallop. I was going to say, I'm imagining a galloping. Yeah, a nice horsey hippo gallop. Yeah. So again, it's like, what is a jump? Very complex. And then there are non-mammals that definitely cannot jump. For example, a snake can lunge, but a snake can't like hoist its whole body.

And thinking, trying to do that, made me really happy. It made me think of that viral python, whose name I always forget, even though he was my favorite. Yeah. There was this great video of him. The door opens that he said he was down. So I feel like he probably. probably tried to jump every day of his life and just never quite do it. Also, like, have you ever seen an earthworm jump, snail?

These are all good questions. Yeah. So, like, there are a lot of animals that can't jump because of how they exist by staying stuck to the ground where their body is a tube. Yeah. But they have their own kinds of evasive maneuvers, and it's all okay. Then I believe we have another one from Betsy. Hi, it's Betsy from Massachusetts. I learned today that flamingos can drink water at boiling point.

Oh. Yeah. So this was another one that I thought was so fascinating. And again, there is a little bit of a correction maker, but it's so fascinating. So some species of flamingos live in these super salty lakes that are hostile to most life. And they rely on their really tough skin and scales to prevent burns on their feet and legs. Oh. They're very, very, like, tough birds.

Who knew? Hardy. And so they can drink water at near boiling point, which like, you know, we could quibble about boiling point, but I can't drink water at near boiling point. Yeah. Or I guess I could, but I would be really unhappy afterwards. Are you like an ice water drinker or a room temperature water drinker? I actually like drinking hot water. Like hot? Yeah. Like I love a tea temperature water just like in my water thermos. That's a hot take. I don't know why I do. I find it soothing, I guess. So yeah, they. They can drink this hot water so that they can take advantage of freshwater geysers because the lakes they're living in are very salty. That's really interesting. Yeah. And they also sometimes have glands in their head to remove the salt. Really? And drain it out their nasal cavity. What?

Like a built-in netty pot. Oh, my God. Flamingos, the clearest cytuses in the animal kingdom. Here's one from another Rachel. I don't believe in that, but, you know. Whatever, live your life. Hi, guys. My name is Rachel, and I have the weirdest fact for you.

My weirdest fact is that the giant Canadian goose was thought to be extinct, and then the 1950s, they experimented and successfully brought it back. Isn't that nuts? I thought so, too. Okay, bye, other Rachel. Oh, other Rachel. And that was only 23 seconds. I'm impressed.

We're impressed, too. You sure got Jess. What a delight. Thank you, other Rachel. Yeah, so apparently they did think the giant Canada goose was extinct in the 1950s. And then they found a small population in Rochester, Minnesota. Biologists were able to identify them as indeed being giant Canada geese, not some other manner of a large goose. They were just hiding away.

Yeah. And the subspecies numbers have gone up. So now you can find them in parks and other urban areas. Wow. Yeah. I had no idea that we thought they'd gone extinct. That was news to me. Is this like the regular goose?

Like, or is it the giant Canada goose? Yeah. So the giant Canada goose is a subspecies of Canada goose. Oh. It is the largest subspecies. Big boys. They are indeed. It's often mistaken for Moffat's Canada goose.

Oh. But they have a lower call and a larger build to body size ratio. Just a little thicker. Yeah. Oh, this is a really cool one. My name is Kaelin, and my weird fact is about the unsung heroes, nine scientists that died in 16 rooms full of food. So our story begins with the siege of Leningrad that lasted over 900 days and accounted for thousands, hundreds of thousands of different casualties because of starvation. So these eight scientists were protecting 16 rooms full of over 200,000 different varieties.

of seeds because they knew that the disappearance of plant diversity was a huge danger to the way we grow food. So although they could have been saved by the very seeds that they were guarding, they chose rather to invest in our future rather than looking to their present. And many of those varieties we actually eat today because we've crossbred the seeds that they protected with different other varieties and then got new types of seeds. So I think this is a really cool story. I love the show and I hope you liked my fact. Thank you. I loved it. I love this fact. I feel speechless.

Yeah. What a saga. Truly. So yeah, this refers to the Pavlov station, which was started in 1926 by Nikolai Vavlov, with thousands of varieties of seeds that he'd collected from all over. And it was your standard like gene bank similar to modern seed vaults where we are protecting the genetic diversity of plants in case things get wiped out for one reason or another. We have these seeds.

So we can make sure we always have a good variety of crops to play. plant because variety is the best way to breed resilience. So during the siege of Leningrad, which was 1941 to 1944, the actually had already moved some of the station's tuber collection and seeds to another location in the city because the station itself did fall to German soldiers during the siege. And so then according to what I found, it was actually 12 of the scientists who died of starvation during the course of the siege. And they successfully, you know, protected and preserved this plant diversity. And then in 2010, there was like a land development proposal that threatened the historic

station. But people were like, no, no, no. And that did not go through. Also, the December's song, when the war came. Oh, my God. Is it about these scientists in the seed vault? I don't listen to the Decemberus, but maybe I should now. I mean, I haven't really listened to the December since I was like 14 years old.

Sure. And I know, like, I can kind of hear in my head part of the refrain for when the war came, but I don't remember anything more about it. So I'm going to have to go back and listen. Time to revisit. Yeah. Of course, the Decembris wrote a song. Yeah. The Seed Vault during the Siege of Leningrad.

It's totally their vibe. Anyway, this is an awesome story, and I definitely am going to look into it some more. Cool. Now we have a gross one. Nice. Yay. Hi, this is Dr. Stephen McDavid. I'm in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.

I'm a wound care physician, and I don't know if you're aware of the use of medical maggots. Medical maggots are actually sold by a company called Monarch Labs, MonarchLab.com. Now, I've never used them, but it is noteworthy that we've had patients come in, that have had maggots in their wound beds, and it can be pretty disgusting, obviously. Medical maggots do have a role, though. They help debreed necrotic tissue, but they leave healthy tissue alone. Anyway, it is an interesting side light of medicine, the medical use of maggots, and I thought you might be interested in exploring that.

Thanks very much. I have so many thoughts and feelings. Were you not familiar with medical maggotry? No. My only familiarity with this kind of thing is I remember our former intern, Marianne Rennon, wrote a story for us about the medical use of leeches. Right. No, maggots are still a thing.

Yeah. Because they're really good about only eating dead tissues. I assume because it takes so much less energy for them to break those down. That makes total sense. It's predigested, really. Love that. Love a little necrosis nibble. No, I really don't.

I regret it. I say that as soon as it came out of my mouth. But yeah, it's like a not super uncommon thing, especially for burn victims, where you have very delicate areas of both dead tissue and like very delicate new healthy tissue. Right. So maggots can be the safest way to keep those wounds clean. I guess. You're like at what cause. The phrase maggots in the wound bed is just a.

bit much. Yeah, I mean, I think we can all agree it's gross. Do I wish there was an alternative? Yes. Science, please find a way. Yeah. All right, we're going to take another quick break and then we'll be back with more of your facts. Okay, we are back and I'm going to share just a couple more five-star Apple reviews to inspire you to leave your own five-star Apple reviews. Maybe we'll read them. Maybe they'll just help other rados find our show, but either way. So from, We have the podcast I've always wanted, and you do too. Science trivia is the only kind of trivia I really like. Science podcasts are my favorite podcasts.

Here's the intersection. But what makes TW, T-W, T-I-L-T-W? A great podcast, beyond its topic, is the fact that the hosts are great storytellers. They don't just drop the facts and a bunch of science on your head. They share the story behind the science, including fascinating, and often weird, people, animals, situations, and, if available, Story resolutions. Absolutely. The host, particularly Rachel Feltman, have great radio voices too.

Aw. My only gripe is that I get sad when each season ends. Me too. That's why we're coming back. Don't worry. Literally same. Lavinia says, this podcast helped my marriage. Oh.

Huh? Huh? Let's investigate. My husband has always called me, quote, pod, but now he says he has found, quote, my people. Oh. These adorably brilliant and contagious. giggling science nerds exploring all the weirdest and creepiest and unexpected things in the history of the world has helped him understand me a little better and has given him something to talk to me his own little quote up talking millennial about at home how are you an up talking millennial twinkie that's the real yeah join the club which we both love even if it has made me more of a liability at parties i already got us a uranium glass serving set Oh, my God.

So thank you, Popsie, and you visionary ladies who knew deep down that we all needed to know about hippo butt leeches. Wow. I love it. Not going to lie. I kind of want to dunk on your husband because it sounds like he did not realize he was married to one of the coolest people in the world. Totally. Into listening to our show. So I'm really glad we could help him understand that.

But we always knew. Mm-hmm. We knew. You great. Thank you. Okay. Here are our last few weirdos submitted facts. Hi, weirdos.

I'm Shanee from Philly, long-time listener and fan, second-time contributor. The weirdest slash most interesting slash saddest thing I recently learned was that sloths can die of starvation even on a full stomach. You see, sloths aren't great at temperature regulation, which is why they only live in tropical climates that have relatively standard temperatures. However, because of climate change, the tropics have been experiencing major storms, bringing lower temperatures than normal, below even 20 degrees centigrade. When it gets too cold for the sloths, the bacteria in their stomachs, which are temperature dependent, start to die. So even though there's plenty of food around and they can have stomachs full of food, they don't have any way to digest and get the nutrients they need and end up dying. So if you don't want sloths, the cutest animals in the world to die, help save our planet. Oh, my God.

Amazing. Another amazing weird fact from an amazing weirdo. What was her one last time? Was it the Dildo machine? No. Her fact during our last episode was about how CAPTCHA helps train AI. So a really diverse range of subject matter. Yeah, we love you, Shini.

Yeah, thank you so much. And, yeah, this is true. I'm devastated. Yeah, it's pretty upsetting. Also, it reminded me of a freelance piece I edited by Jason Biddle back at the Washington Post about the harrowing journey a sloth makes weekly to poop. Oh. It's the only time they come down from their trees. To poop?

Yeah. And they have to come down from the trees because otherwise they'll fall out probably. Oh. And so they just shoo me down real slow and they hug the tree and they do like a little poop dance that wiggle their butt. God. I love slots. It's a very dangerous process because they are not well adapted to surviving on the ground. I'm sure they're very vulnerable. Yeah, and the reason they have these very, like, slow, precious poop sessions

is because their digestion is so slow because their whole bodies are so slow. Their metabolisms are as well. But, yeah, they do have this microbiome that's very fussy and temperature dependent. And why, I shouldn't say fussy because it worked fine until we started messaging. like everything up. Sure. But they do need those particular microbes in order to digest their food really at all, which really makes one think about like all the stuff we've yet to learn about our own

microbiomes. Like there's probably so much digestion that they help out with that we are like unaware of. And yeah, there are other animals that have similar things like koalas. I was going to bring up koalas. Coalas. E. elliptis, which is like toxic. unless they have these gut microbes.

So mamas pass their gut microbes with their babies by feeding them pap, which is poop. Yeah. It's like a special boom, air quotes, but it's poop. You know, it's just a nice dose of poop, a pap. The problem that is emerging, not so much temperature related there, but there's a lot of koala chlamydia, which has always been a problem, but has been a real problem lately. and the kind of recent intervention has been grabbing koalas and dosing them with antibiotics. But then you kill the microbes in their pap.

And so then their babies aren't getting the right microbes and they can't eat their eucalyptus. Yeah. It's real bad. It's terrible. I also just like thinking about the symptoms of chlamydia, how it manifests in koalas is very, like, scary and sad because they like screech and get angry and their eyes. Right. Their eyes get all, like, crusty and they go blind. Yeah, it's not great.

No. So yeah, be kind to any sloths or koalas you meet. They may be fighting a hard battle. Here's one about bicycles. Hi, weirdos. This is Darren White from New Brunswick, Canada. And the weirdest thing I learned this week was at the bicycle, which we think of as a solution to our carbon problem,

was invented in response to climate change. So in 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, and the resulting ash crack, cloud caused massive crop failures in Europe the following year. 1816 was known as the year without a summer and more darkly, it was known as 1800 and froze to death. The massive crop failures led to horses and oxen being slaughtered because they were just too expensive to feed, and so people had to walk wherever they were going. So in 1817, Carl Dres invented his luff machine or dandy horse, which was a precursor to the bicycle,

and it was invented as an alternate means of transportation. So weirdly, if you're now hopping on your dandy horse to go out and help produce global warming, you're able to do so in part due to a historical cooling event. I love a good dandy horse. Yeah, wow. When Bill and I was on and I talked about bicycle face, which is a fascinating little slice of history, I almost went into the whole history of bicycles because this origin is genuinely so fascinating. Darren, great voice, great fact, loved it. And yeah, indeed, the bicycle was one of, I will say the dandy horse is like arguably not really a bicycle. It's more like a scooter that you literally like sit on and like scoot your feet. Oh, right. Because Bill was talking about it being Flintstone style or something. Yeah. Yeah. It took a while before peddling was involved at all. But it was like it resembled. Sure. The point of a bicycle at least. And yet it was one of many things that came out of. this frozen gray summer, including very famously, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Really?

Yeah, she was hanging out in like a chill goth manner with her chill goth friends, including like Lord Byra and then, you know, everyone else who was chill and goth in the literary world at that time. And they decide, there was like nothing to do except lay around being goth and beautiful. They're like, we can't go outside. The sun is covered by smog. It's cold. It's dreary. Again, goals.

Yeah, and then they decided they would have like a ghost story competition. And she wrote what would become Frankenstein. Seriously? Yeah. That's amazing. There's also a lot of this is coming from, I think, an episode of the Memory Palace by Nathan Mayo, which I've talked about in the show before. A lot of people argue that like the Church of Latter-day Saints would not exist, if not for this event,

because it like prompted the end times migration that the founder of LDS was on when he had his supposed meeting with the Lord. Yeah. So yeah, there are a bunch of, a bunch of cool, weird things that happened because like when the entire world is just plunged into like a summer of relative cold and darkness, like some weird stuff's going to go down. Totally. Okay, we have a couple more facts. Hello, I'm Carla. I'm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And I want to show you something that makes Jurassic World even cooler. So we see the big Mosasaur and Jurassic World eating the shark. And if we look, when its mouth is open, there is a set of teeth in the center of its jaw. Those are called pterogoid teeth. And this is a really interesting feature because it's shared with snakes. And one of the ideas is that the Mosasaur may not actually be a dinosaur. It may be a monitor lizard that is a sister group to pythons. And so this may not be a dinosaur.

It may actually be a giant snake or a giant monitor lizard. And this is one of the coolest facts I learned when I was taking courses with the University of Alberta. Whoa. Yeah. I love a reptile fact. Yes, absolutely. What's cool about this one is that there's still like some work to be done on figuring out exactly where these guys fit on the evolutionary tree.

So monitor lizards and most other lizards have teeth that form upright and then gradually move to replace the old teeth. Snake teeth come in horizontally and then like manage to like rotate up and erupt, which sounds so narrowly to me. I mean, I've never been a snake. I don't know how it feels, but it sounds unpleasant. And so the question of like based on the fossils we do have, like can we determine which kind of teeth these were. Yeah. It's like ongoing. Oh my God. I'm on the edge of my seat. Science. Hurry it up. Okay. Here's one more. Actually, these last two, these last three were from before my recent call to action. These were ones that people just sent in after our last voice message

episode wanting to be a part of it. So you can do that too. You can send a voice message with a fact any dang time you please. Okay. Here's a great one. Hi. My name's Eric from Princeton, New Jersey. And my favorite weird fact is that there is a genus of bark flies that live in Brazilian caves where the females have penises. So the four species of the genus Neotrogla, so classified because they are responsible for producing and laying the eggs, also have an organ called the gynosome, which, unlike the hyena zudopinus, which has been discussed on a previous weirdest thing episode, is a bona fide penetrative sex organ. There's way more details than I could go into in a minute, But some other fun facts about it is that mating between these two, between these species can last for 40 to 70 hours.

And the gynosome actually has spines on it, which the female uses to latch on so tightly to the male that if you try to pull them apart, the male's body will actually break before they become detached. So she is actually attached to him more firmly than he is attached to himself. I love that phrasing. I don't know why. It's so metal. Yeah. So this is fascinating. As Eric said, we did talk about pseudoponuses, these very large clitorises on hyenas that make

one ask whether any of the words we use to classify sex and sex organs even have any meaning at all. Yeah. But that's a whole other discussion. But, yeah, those can be kind of horrifying because they actually give birth through their clitorises. It's going to be a bell for me, duh. Yeah. But these flies. They do indeed have what you would call a more true penetrative sex organ.

So the male does ejaculate, but it's inside his own body. What? And an erect. Why is bug sex so weird? And then the female has an erect, again, words. What do they mean? Yeah. I ask you.

Science. Come on. So the quote female shoves this erect member, this church. organ in there and the semen like finds its way into like a pocket in the erect organ. That penis has an inflated base. It is covered in spines.

So it's not just, you know, what a true penis? It's a truly horrifying penis. Like duck penis level horrifying. Oh, those are really scary. And so like the question is like, why? Why? And of course that, you know, if you're like, well, then why do they call them the females and them the males? It's because the female with the hardened organ is still the one that has the eggs and then is carrying or fertilizing the eggs and laying them.

Sure. Again, words, meaningless. Science. We love to put things in boxes. Maybe some of them are made up. Wow. Really getting into it today. Yeah. So the question is why.

And I was reading some work from researchers who think that maybe it's because they live in these super dry caves and live mostly off of bat droppings and carcasses. So, like, really just, like, not a great life. Totally. And those food sources are hard to come by. But females actually get a meal along with their sperm because the males package their sperm into spermodipores that also are loaded with nutrients. Oh. So the argument is that, like, usually the male. female sex dynamic is that males benefit from mating as much as possible because they can produce

like practically infinite offspring if they can just find females that are fertile to keep meeting with. So they're competing for mates and trying to meet with as many females as they can. And then the females have to carry the actual burden by having enough nutrients to grow this offspring and then often have the nutrients to like care for that offspring. That's why in many animals that reproduce sexually, the females are very picky. The males have to, like, compete for their attention. I was just doing a little bird's script. Your gestures through this whole bit have just been on point.

Just, you know, sex ed with Rachel Falman. Yes. So in these animals, the females have the incentive to want to meet as much as possible because it's not just excess sperm if they meet with more males than it takes. to create one, you know, brood. It's free food. So the males then have to, like, be choosy. That's interesting.

Because they can't just keep giving up these nutrient packets all the time. It's a whole different structure. Yeah. And so it may be that the females evolved this way of, like, anchoring themselves to their mate to get around that. Yeah. Which is just so fascinating because, like, the idea that. once you flip the script on who carries the burden during reproduction, once you change that, like, it like all the politics changed.

Yeah, totally. And then suddenly you've got a penis covered in spine. So how? What a journey. These were some great facts. I'm really proud of all of our weirdos for bringing these to our attention. Jess, what was the weirdest thing you learned this week? That's a good question.

The weirdest thing I learned this week is that the Decembris wrote a song about a seed vault in the siege of Leningrad. That's not true. The weirdest thing was definitely the spiny penises because now I'm thinking about like the concept of sex. Yeah, I agree. Spiny penises. Bugs that are attached more to their mate than their mate is attached to themselves. Wow, that's something. That's like, that's codependency.

Big time. Yeah. You got to love yourself. before you can love someone else or maybe they'll rip out your internal sperm pouch. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms, so subscribe wherever you're listening now.

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