The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Surfing Bats, Deep Sea Bologna, Environmental Trolley Problem

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Lauren Leffer joins the show to explain how silver carp are creating an environmental trolley problem. Plus, Laura divulges the story of the surfing bat, and Rachel talks about scientists that ate an ancient bologna sandwich. 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! Give yourself the luxury you deserve with Quince! Go to https://Quince.com/weirdest for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://www.Zocdoc.com/WEIRDEST to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at https://MINTMOBILE.com/weirdest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? 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. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. 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 Rachel Feldman. I'm Laura Bysis. I'm Lauren Leffer. Lauren, welcome back to the show. It's great to have you back on. Thank you. It's so nice to be here after years away. Yeah, it's been years. Yeah. Why not you? tell listeners what you're up to these days. Yeah, of course. So currently I am a contributing writer for popular science and for Scientific American. I also freelance for other outlets. But yeah, I write about all sorts of different tech and science and environmental subjects. I'm like a perennial generalist and I can't help it. No one can make me focus on any one thing. They just can't do it. I am with you on that. I didn't become a science writer because I wanted to focus on one thing.

No, then I would have- I would have been a scientist. Yeah, exactly. I just would have stayed in research. Yeah. Well, it's great to have you, and we are psyched to talk about some weird things today. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting,

et cetera, and we decide which one we just absolutely have to hear about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was in like a chatty, non-competitive way, where sometimes we don't even discuss what the weirdest thing was. Sometimes the show is just over, and that's fine. I'm here to win. Yeah. We're here to make friends. We really are. Laura, what's your teas? Bats can surf. Of course they can. Why not? Good news. I feel like a surfing bat is That's a great vibe because you're a little spooky. A little spooky, but also very chill and relaxed and one with the ocean.

Yeah. I'm picturing the bad in sunglasses, even though presumably it's nighttime. Of course. And in the ocean or maybe goggles. Oh, cute. A little swim cap. I know nothing about surfing if that wasn't apparent. My cheese is that I'm going to talk about a submarine sandwich.

And I'm from South Jersey, so you know I'm not talking about. a hoagie. I was going to say ogie. You knew it was coming. Come on. Lauren, what's your tease? My tease is one sentence, simple. What if pollution was preventing a river monster invasion?

Wow. River monster invasion. Yeah. Great. I'm picturing like a bunch of, you know, soda bottles and, you know, like instead of like a ship in a bottle, it's like a Godzilla in a bottle. Something kind of along those lines. I cannot wait for this one.

Yeah. Well, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, if you trap the Godzilla in the bottle, then it can't wreak havoc upon Tokyo. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody knows that. Problem solved. Laura, why don't you get us started with surfing bats? Happy to.

So, we know that dolphins can surf. There's plenty of videos of them kind of like surfing along the waves and even dogs. Basically, like the early YouTube days were full of viral videos. of dog surfing and there's also a very, very fun little sequence in the credit sequence to the 20 to the 2003 cinematic classic blue crush that shows some surfing dogs. Not that I've not that I've seen that movie a lot like three times in the theater but here and are there. Apparently bats can surf too but not exactly in the way you might be thinking they can surf on air. A study published earlier this month in the journal Science found that when

And some of these winged mammals take on long haul journeys, they will surf along warm fronts of storms. This enables them to make it a little bit further while spending less energy. They've essentially harnessed the whole idea of working smarter, not harder. And they're taking advantage of the air in order to travel at a longer distance with a lot less work. And that is always something I even double-checked right before coming on to the show. Bats are mammals. They're the only mammals that can really sustain long flights. And I think that that's always like one of those fun facts to share at parties because I think sometimes people assume that they're birds or maybe something like a platypus where they're kind of in the middle of both worlds.

But they are in fact mammals and they are one of the larger groups of mammals. Yeah, they're fuzzy little guys. They are. So when you say surf on air, like are there videos of this? Have you seen it? Like what is it? Can I still picture the sunglasses on the little board under their legs? I don't, I'm not in the business of dashing dreams.

So I'm going to say, yes, you can still picture that, but we will get to that as far as, like, if we can actually see this just yet. So for the, you know, going forward, picture whatever you want. Picture, you know, they can be on boards just maybe not at the beach, but they could still have the sunglasses on. I think that's acceptable. They're super sensitive to light. Of course, they would need them. So this particular study looked at a group of common noctool bats. These bats are found across parts of Europe, Asia, North Africa, and they're one of only four bat species that are

known to migrate across all of Europe so they can kind of spread along the whole continent. They're pretty small. They're roughly the size of a human palm, although if you're scared of bats, that might seem kind of big. They have these broad brown ears and a distinctive like mushroom-shaped nose. I'll be sure to include some pictures in the show notes because they are pretty darn cute if you are, if you are like me and you like bats. They also have these long and narrow wings that they use to fly in a fairly straight line up at higher altitudes and speeds. And these wings are apparently pretty good for surfing. So that dream dash number one, I think they pretty much can rely on their wings and no surfboard, unfortunately. But who knows? We still don't. We might not know that for now.

For now that maybe they just haven't found the right surfboard shaper. Who knows? There's much to discover. There's much to discover with surfing bats. So every spring female noctool bats migrate for up to a thousand miles from parts of northern Europe down to southern Europe where they roost and then they fly back north. In the past, biologists have tried using drones, weather radar, and even ultrasonic sound recordings to examine this migration, but there's been some mixed success with those methods. In this new study, they decided to try something different. A team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior tracked 71 bats. They took these tiny little sensors that weigh about a gram and attached them to the bats with a temporary surgical glue. The sensor stayed on

for roughly 14 days, about two weeks. And in that time, they recorded all sorts of data. So the bats acceleration and their core temperature. They also assess their activity levels and some environmental conditions like wind and temperature data. And these sensors were pretty sensitive. They were taking these recordings up to a thousand times per day. So even though two weeks doesn't seem like a huge, huge time period,

a thousand times a day over two weeks, roughly 14,000 readings there. So you can kind of get it. so you can kind of make some detailed patterns with that. So they attach these tags every spring for about three years, so multiply it even more by three years, to a group of bats that are based in Switzerland, and they focused exclusively on those migratory females. The sensor data revealed that changes in air temperature

had a strong association with their migratory flight. The bats were much more likely to begin their movements just before warm fronts came in, leaving on nights where the air pressure dropped, and the temperature spiked. So they were basically leaving before incoming storms and then surfing along the air movements that come from warm fronts. These are things like drops in barometric pressure, temperature, and better wind.

If you've ever surfed, waves come in sets, sets of about seven, depending upon where you are, and a lot of time is spent kind of waiting to examine and figure out maybe which wave in the set is best. Is it that fourth one? Is it that fifth? this is kind of along those lines, but a little bit obviously in the air, not the water. It has more to do with how with some of the cues actually in the air and not just so much visual.

You know, it's kind of a feeling. Now, this isn't to say that they were exclusively going surfing before storms, which is also not something I can endorse. That's very dangerous. Don't go out and do that. Whether you're a bat or a human, do not. any bats listening any bats listening do not make perilous journeys do not make perilous don't swim in the sea and don't take we'll have to release like a translated high frequency echolocation version of the morning that's the dream you know i'll get on that that's my list of you know possible translations and transcriptions i could get going for weirdest thing bat high on the list bat and whale both and i was going to say it could be like instead of dory speaking whale you

We could be speaking bat. I mean, we should be at this point in society. The old men who email me about vocal fry are going to love this. Yeah, tired of vocal fry, try shrieking. Go the complete opposite end of vocal fry. I love it. So yes, bats listening, you know, might be a little perilous. Humans listening do not go out surfing before a storm, you know, unless you're super-duper experienced.

So they weren't, this isn't to say that they can. can't migrate when the air temperature might be colder or there's less wind support, but it means that they're wasting up some of that precious energy. And kind of in addition to this surfing ability, the sensors showed a little bit more about their elusive migrations. Lauren, this kind of goes to your first question about video. Unfortunately, we do not have a video of this. Thankfully, this is an audio medium. Exactly. Right, right. I used to work in video and the stress of, oh my gosh, can I cover this? Do I have footage of this still wakes me up at night. And also, you know, don't quite know about their migrations in general because they are so much more, they are

more difficult than even whales to track. And whales are pretty darn tough to track, but bats are even harder. And also, unlike birds and whales, they don't have a standard migration corridor. It's not like they're not quite as seasonal where they leave one place right away. Their migratory patterns are a little bit more vague. Even like the authors on the study had assumed that they were following some sort of a unified path, but they're, some sort of a unified path. But they found that they were actually moving in a more generalized northeast direction. I'm not even pointing northeast in my own house. It's just a hand motion.

Let me start that. I'm literally pointing southwest. The fact that you know that incredible, I would have to spend a lot more time thinking about that. I'm very excited about gardening, so I've been track in the spring in the new house. So I've been tracking where I've been like meticulously looking because I want to know what I can put wherever that's another. That could be a whole series right there. like city girl shore girl meat turned city girl gardens anyway weird tangent so they thought they thought that the bats might be going in some sort of a prescribed path the way that whales and some birds will go but

they were going in a more general north northeast directions and they also found that the bats are alternating these migratory flights with frequent stops and that's not just because they really like visiting various rest stops and seeing what sort of food items. It's just because they need to feed continuously. That's also why I visit rest stops. I mean, I'm more of a, if I really have to use the bathroom, than a food rest stop visitor. But I feel you. I mean, I've driven the opposite direction to go to a rest stop with better food. So personally, I like a little roadside attraction. Like there's that stretch in Iowa, I think, that has like the biggest rake in the world or something. to see that once. It was fine.

The last time I stopped for a roadside attraction, it was for what used to be the biggest garden gnome, Gnomes, who's up in upstate New York. Yeah, he's great. I do think that, if I'm remembering correctly, he is no longer the largest gnome, but he's great. Because he's shrunk or someone made a bigger one? Someone made a bigger gnome. You know, they could not let Nome Chomsky just live. That gnome competition is fierce. I mean. I was going to guess Lucy the elephant But then I was like, no, that's nothing for you Oh yeah, I mean I definitely saw Lucy the elephant

But it's been a long time I actually I was at the winter train show At the New York Botanical Gardens Which is a great time if it's haven't been The one up in the Bronx, not the one in Brooklyn Which is also great Don't just the one at Brooklyn Oh also great

No also great But I feel like there are a lot of people who live in Brooklyn And people don't pay as much attention into the Botanical Park Garden in the Bronx. Absolutely. And they have this awesome train show where they do miniatures of a bunch of New York attractions made out of plant materials. It's great if you want to see like the Empire State Building made out of acorns. It's amazing.

A lot more artistically profound than it might sound. But anyway, the point of this tangent is that I walked in this year and there was a giant beautiful elephant. And I was like, Lucy the elephant is in New Jersey. New York. Why did she hear? And then of course, my husband was like, Rachel, there's also a giant elephant that used to be in New York. It was a hotel. And I was like, well, fine. Whatever. They probably copied Lucy. This is like a Russian nesting doll of tangents. I like can't even totally remember how we got here. Yeah. Neither. I got, I got, I'll get us traction.

You're going to surf the stop. I'm going to surf this tangent and get us back. Watch. Just watch. In three. And three. Three, two, one. They also found that the bats were having to stop fairly frequently. And this wasn't for a roadside attraction, like the largest garden gnome or the beloved Lucy, the elephant in South Jersey. It was to do everyone's arguably favorite rest stop activity, but for eating. Noctual bats eat a wide variety of insects like most bats, and they must refuel at least once and sometimes twice per night. unlike other animals with their migrations, they do not gain a bunch of weight beforehand to sustain them.

So they need to stop and feed and their quick little metabolisms, just take all of that lovely protein from the insects and gobbles it right up. This also makes their migration pattern look a little bit more hoppy, kind of like a bunny, and not a nice little straight shot, like if they were riding a current or something like that. The other last little fun thing that they found is that they were flying a little bit further than expected in one. in one leap. They can make it up to 238 miles in a night much further than the previous estimates. That's better than a Tesla on a single church. Really seriously.

And, you know, while these sensors are a big leap in understanding the species, we're still a ways away from tracking their complete yearly cycle and also, like Lauren alluded to getting some lovely surfing video of them. According to the authors, this was the first time that

we have this ability to harness this seemingly invisible wind energy and how it is supporting how these bats moves. Now, they're also not the only bats that have been recorded doing this. So this study also complements another one that was recently published in movement ecology that looked at another migratory bat species in Europe. It also surfs on warm fronts as it crosses the English Channel into Europe. When and if I ever swim across the English Channel, I would like that as well, although something tells me I will get flagged for cheating if I try to fly across.

Maybe the thing to hope for is that you'll look up and a bat will be surfing along with you. And I'll be able to be like, hello, I've advocated for you. And it'll help me get across faster. But that's way, way, way down the road. When these bats do this across the English Channel, it more than doubles their speed from that study. So all of these studies on this elusive bat migration, depending on the species, can have implications for bat conservation. bats are one of those species that can run into wind turbines,

and Europe has a lot of wind energy, and it's only growing. So if we know a little bit more about when and where the bats are going to be, the turbines could maybe turn off for a little bit so that they can avoid collisions. Now, I love ending my segments with a question because I'm that annoying journalist. And so if you could tag along on any animal's migration, what animal would it be? Ooh. That's a really good question. I guess it depends what you want to get out of it.

Right. There are, I guess if you're trying to go for like distance, there are definitely some birds that I would be like really interested to track. Oh, God, I need to think of the name really quick. Godwitz. There are Godwits that breed in the Arctic and spend the off season in New Zealand. And I said Arctic, not Antarctic. So they're literally doing like a trans-global migration.

Pretty crazy. Thousands of miles. That'd be pretty sick to follow along. I'd have to get in better shape, though, I think. The only thing I can think of is like the turtles from Vytic Nemo. I just suddenly have forgotten every other migratory animal. But it does seem like that would be a really fun one. Also very surfy and a lot ofers.

Surfing. Mine's definitely Pacific humpback whales, not so much Atlantic because I like how they feed in Alaska and then kind of cab and hang out in Hawaii. So kind of like what Lauren was saying, it depends on what you want to get out of it. You can be in, you get to spend your time in very different climates. And I love seasons. I love that kind of change. So I think that swimming along with them would be wonderful. Actually, I might follow eels since we don't know what they're doing.

You'd find out the business. You'd solve it. Yeah. And I would like promise what to tell. I'd be like, you guys, it'll go to the grave with me. I just want to know. Yeah. So that's developing that eel technology, that's after bats, though, right?

We're going to develop this speaking bats first and then we'll go to eels. We just have to, I just want to make sure. Yeah. No. It's, listen, perhaps I'm already working on eel communication. I wouldn't, there would be signs, but I wouldn't say anything. You heard it here. folks.

Well, what a great image. Looking forward to the day when we can finally capture some video of these little guys. But in the meantime, I'll just look up pictures of them and imagine them on surfboards. Have you seen the video, though, of the bats on the treadmills? Yes. Because that is a really wild video that you can watch. Any research video involving animal on treadmill is probably going to be a good time. You kind of can't go wrong.

The like tinier and weirder the animals are, the better. Sea slug on a treadmill. Oh, my gosh. I don't think that sea slug's going to do what you want to do. Roll off. Hey, listen, maybe there's some important science in there. Who am I to say? You never know.

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 tea? right to your door. I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis gummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code weirdest. I'm not a smoker myself, but I do love the occasional weed gummy to, you know, help me go off to Dreamland. And I can't have one right now because I have a new kit. And, you know, I definitely miss it a little bit. But maybe you can have a weed gummy and you can get one at mood.com. So the reason that different cannabis drains can make you feel different ways isn't just about the THC. It seems like it's also

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This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies last, price invalid May 14th or May 27th, U.S. only exclusions apply. See Home Depot.com slash price match for details. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to jump into my fact, which, as I said, is about a submarine sandwich, not a hoagie. So let's set the scene. You may think of the year 1969 as, you know, a year when humans explored new heights. But really October.

Yeah, yeah. We went to the moon in 1969. That's when we made a landing that was lunar. All right. I'll stop. What of a beautiful voice, Laura? Oh, thank you. Thank you.

So the truth is that it was October 16th, 1968. when some intrepid explorers really set off on a journey that changed the course of humankind. So these three intrepid explorers were about to take a submersible named Alvin for a spin off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. Alvin had just had its first dip a little more than three years earlier, and this vessel was no stranger to adventure. In 1966, it had been used to locate a submerged 1.45 megaton hydrogen bomb that had been lost in a U.S. Air Force mid-air accident over Spain. That's a big oopsie. But thanks, Alvin. Then in 1967, this is great, it was attacked by a swordfish at 2,000 feet deep.

And I guess that was enough of it to do that it got written down. The swordfish did get trapped in some of Alvin's hardware and was brought back up with Alvin and then was cooked for dinner. Yeah, swordfish lost that one. Yeah, I was going to ask who won that battle. No, Alvin won swordfish zero. But this was not going to be Alvin's day, October 16th, 1968. So this vessel, which was under the purview of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,

It was being lowered into the water. They were going to look for some whales, a pretty chill assignment for Alvin, given all of the like H-bomb and swordfish adventures that had been on. But then a cable snapped and it started to slide into the water. This was a very slow sinking situation. And luckily, the hatch was still open. So everyone got out. Apparently the pilot sprained his ankle, but that was like the worst of it. But unfortunately, the hatch was still open.

So Alvin dipped under the water, sank 5,000 feet down and settled at the bottom of the sea. Not so great. And it would actually take almost a year for Alvin to make it back to the surface. There was like some poor weather. And then there were some difficulty getting a hold of an appropriate rescue vessel. I guess it just wasn't super urgent to save this, this very like embarrassingly sunk submarine. And then finally, you know, a little less than a year later. I think it was like Labor Day.

Alvin comes up, mostly unscathed, definitely in need of an overhaul because it had been waterlogged for a year. Kind of amazing that it would work at all after that, you know, after being so down for so long and at such a depth. Yes. Well, I'm sure, I'm sure like all of the like radios and stuff like that had to be totally replaced. But I think like, you know, structurally, it was mostly intact. In fact, it's actually still operational today, though apparently it's had at this point all of its parts swapped out over time. Yes, I was like a very literal ship of these this kind of situation. Amazing.

So it's arguable whether Alvin still exists, but the Alvin is still in operation. Anyway, we're not here to talk about the Alvin submarine or philosophical paradoxes. We're here to talk about some sandwiches because. When those three crew members set out in October of 1968, they had packed lunches to eat when they were, you know, down there in the drink. Very important. And then when folks took a peek inside Alvin on Libra Day of 1969, they found that lunch was in surprisingly pristine condition. Wow. Yeah.

So there was this metal lunchbox where the food was stashed. And when they opened it, they found some apples. They found bologna sandwiches wrapped in everything says wax paper, but in the pictures it looks like there was also some plastic wrap, which did exist at the time. So I think there was also plastic wrap on there. And there were also these thermuses full of beef bouillon delicious. Maybe they got more salty. Yeah, well, actually, I will get into that second. Okay, please do.

So there's a picture of the late Woods Hole researcher Cliff Winget, who, side-n know, side-n-n-known. know, according to his 2006 obituary, lived in Sandwich, Massachusetts. So thank you for that, Cliffs. R-I-P. It's all connecting. It's all, yeah, it's all connected. This foundation of a great new conspiracy theory. Yeah. This was destined to the day he was born.

Yeah, completely. This is perfect. Or did he move to Sandwich, Massachusetts after this incredible day? Who knows? But so there's a picture of him holding up one of those sandwiches, possibly having just taken a bite. Like the picture kind of looks like it's been nibbled on. Cannot confirm or disprove this. But we know that they said that the broth tasted fine, so they certainly weren't opposed to sampling the goods. That's always my first question

when like archaeologists find like a 2,000-year-old cask of wine. I'm like, what did it taste like? I'm so glad that these oceanographers, whatever they were, decided to do some real science and tell us how the Boolean tasted. Exactly. There's a note that, you know, from general appearance, taste, smell, consistency, and preliminary bacteriological and biochemical assays, these food materials were strikingly well preserved. So they said it themselves.

Somebody tasted it. The thermoses themselves had actually been partially crushed by the pressure of the ocean. So the, like, seal of the thermos had been compromised. and they noted that there was actually like some salt water had gotten in there. So yeah, it was the bouillon was probably even saltier. But they were like, yeah, this this bouillon still tastes like broth that we would drink. They did say that the apples looked pickled. Their words, not mine.

I don't really know what a pickled apple looks like. But I think, you know, it was kind of like wrinkly and waterlogged, but like not rotten is what I would imagine. And there were six sandwiches. they were just slightly soggy, otherwise seemed pretty unchanged. The bologna had gone gray on the outside, but was still pink in the middle. Okay. So like a bull's eye? Yeah.

Unclear. When you say slightly soggy, like, I mean, these were like submerged in water, right? Like, they had to be like fully. So that was one of my main questions. I think what happened is that they were in this metal lunch. box. And then they were wrapped in both plastic and wax paper from the photos. So I think it really was like the lunchbox was not full of water. It was maybe just some excess moisture that wouldn't have gotten in. Yeah. Or maybe it was full of water, but they were wrapped well enough that the

sandwiches apparently had not been fully soaked. This was an advertisement for cling wrap, I think. Yeah, for real. It reminds me, like, last year when the Stanley Cup craze started and somebody had posted a picture of, like, their Stanley surviving a car accident, you know, like coming out unscathed in a car accident. It's like, hey, buy this thermos. It can withstand ridiculous amounts of pressure and, you know, being 5,000 feet under the water. Yeah. Yeah. Like Ray Bologna and, like, slightly saw the sandwich, though, makes me question exactly why the scientists may have taken a bite.

but yeah, that's okay. Agreed. Agreed. Exactly. I would hope that there was, you know, some sort of medical professionals seated right next to him. I seriously thought there was. Based on what I knew about dudes doing science in the 60s, I bet there was not. There was not. No.

But they did, you know, they didn't just, you know, giggle and take a bite and write down some notes. There is a 1971 paper in science about this lunchbox because. they did everything they could think of to study it. And this is a quote from the paper, the food exhibited a degree of preservation that in the case of the fruit equal that of careful storage and in the case of starch and proteinaceous materials, aka, baloney, appeared to surpass by far that of normal refrigeration. First of all, love proteanious materials for baloney.

Yeah. Talk about a way to really, you know, beef up. You were, oh, no. Talk about a way to really beef up your meat. Unfortunately, it does sound like one of the phrases that was used in like the boar's head Listeria documentation. Oh, God, so true. And yeah, then they stored the food in like normal refrigerator conditions and everything spoiled within a few weeks as if it had started out fresh.

And so they were like, what was going on down there? Why didn't this food go bad in the ocean? And they confirmed that there was a. normal amount of oxygen in the water of the sub. They even confirmed that there wasn't anything leaking that could have served as like an accidental preservative. And then they checked, you know, that the seals of the thermoses had broken under the pressure of the water. So like the contents hadn't even been isolated. So they were like, okay, what's up with this? And based on all of their testing, they figured out that the spoilage had been happening at 1% of the rate it would have

at the surface. And that was when they controlled for temperature. But why? They were like, are there, they were like, are there fewer microbes down there or like the wrong kinds of microbes? Or was it something to do with the cold and or the pressure?

And the truth is they like didn't really come up with an answer. But we have some ideas. It was probably the pressure. And researchers now, I was reading an article by Gregory Barber and Wired. There's a lot of, this article was about sort of like why this interesting scientific question is relevant to our interest today. And I was like, I don't really care. I just want to talk about the sandwiches.

But it is true. Yeah, yeah. It is true that scientists are very interested in sort of how microbial decay works in the ocean, specifically with regards. to carbon sinking, you know, carbon sequestration because, you know, when things decompose in the ocean, you know, that's like part of how carbon gets released back up. And pretty recently researchers were like studying this and they found that when they pulled water up to the deck of a research vessel to like measure microbial activity, they were seeing like pretty normal microbial activity, very like hungry microbes. And they were like, we know there aren't

actually enough nutrients to feed microbes that hungry in the deep ocean. So we know that that's like some kind of mismatch is going on. So pretty recently researchers started sending autonomous instruments to actually like incubate microbes down in the deep to see what goes on there. And they found that very few of them like around 10 percent sort of thrive in extreme pressure. And the rest are not very good at living at that pressure, so they don't, like, metabolize as much material. So probably those are microbes that are adapted to live closer to the surface and just kind of float their way down. But then there's this relatively small percentage of microbes that, like, are happy and hungry, which is how you get, you know, like a whale fall decomposing at the bottom

of the ocean. So the best guess is just at the pressures of, you know, 5,000 feet under the sea, there just weren't enough microbes that were up to the task of making this food decompose. But we don't like really know for sure. There's still so much we don't know about how the ocean works in this regard, which is kind of wild. Logically, that would make some sense because it's, you know, not to anthropomorphize some microbes here, but, you know, they might be like, ugh, I don't know what that is. I don't want to eat it. That's not in my, that's not, you know, in my dietary.

repertoire, you know, baloney, what's baloney? You know, so it, logically without... Like a Victorian child getting a flaming hot chito. Exactly. Yeah. Like, it would, it would kind of make some sense that they were, you know, that they wouldn't have eaten it just purely out of like, I don't know what that is, therefore I'm not going to take a bite of it. You know, they weren't as curious as the scientist. Sure. Yeah. I see a little, I could see that working maybe. Yeah, yeah. And also just, you know, not a lot of microbes that are thriving at that, at the those pressures. So less, less activity, less stuff going on. What's cool is that, you know,

even though in the 60s, they weren't really talking about, you know, the carbon sink of the ocean, people were talking about fertilizing the ocean by like sending organic waste down there as a way to rebuild fish populations. And the researchers very wisely saw this sandwich. as, you know, a cautionary tale against that idea. They were like, listen, we don't really know how it works down there. And if this sandwich didn't decompose, maybe all of our trash would not decompose. And we should not just put it down there as a way to feed the fish. I love that just like a goofy baloney sandwich is like what prevented us from filling the deep oceans of trash.

Right. People are like really incredible for just what we're willing to do. So true. That is so true. So yeah, that's the whole story of this sandwich. I was really hoping I could get more information on how the taste test happened, how it proceeded. You know, long time listeners know. I love talking about people being willing to pop weird stuff into their mouths and that ending up in scientific papers like the Kentucky meat rain. And so, yeah, we'll probably not get more information on that. there are a delightful number of institutional blog posts and of course this one scientific paper about this submarine sandwich so yeah I love it thank you elvin baloney sandwich thank you yeah my big takeaway from this is that I should replace my refrigerator with just like a portal to the deep ocean yeah absolutely just sending down the fishing line anytime I want to snack and then occasionally a swordfish will come up and try to mess up your day and

Maybe you'll win. I could take him. I could take him. Oh, yeah. My money's on you, Lauren. All right, we're going to take one more break, and then we'll be back with one more fact. Peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speeds.

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Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Okay, we're back. And Lauren, start talking to me about some monsters, please. Absolutely. We'll do. So we're going to, I'm going to start this off with like a little kind of visual guided meditation. I am bringing visuals to the audio medium, kind of like bringing a knife to a gunfight,

but it's going to be a good idea this time. Okay, so just go with me. Imagine that it's a beautiful sunshine day. You are getting into a motorboat on a wide green river with like all of your bros. You know, you're going to go fishing with your pals. You've got a cooler, chalk full of bruskies. Everything is going so well. And then as soon as you start moving your boat along the surface of the water,

you are bombarded by these 20 to 30 pound fish. catapulting up at every direction. They're landing on your boat. One or two might like clip you in the shoulder or head. Your cooler gets knocked. Your beer, it's spilled. It's just like a total maelstrom of massive flying fish. Obviously, your leisurely afternoon fishing is canceled.

Now you're in survival mode. You just have to escape fish storm. So this is a 100% completely scientifically accurate description of what it looks like when silver carp take over a waterway. So Silver Carp, they're in invasive species in the U.S. originally from East Asia. And in their natural habitat, this level of fish-based violence and chaos doesn't happen because they're a species kept in check by other species in a beautiful ecosystem web. But in the U.S., in the rivers they've been introduced to, they've outcompeted native fish,

multiplied prolifically for decades. And basically, the river population just becomes all. silver carp. And these fish, again, are big fish. We're talking up to three feet long, like, record holders above 50 pounds. When they jump at you, it's like a serious, it gets serious. I don't know if I feel it. Yeah. I remember covering this a few years ago and a researcher compared it to being hit in the phase with a bowling ball, which has stayed with me. Yeah, that'll do it. So these giant invasive fish, They, contrary to what you might think, are not predators.

The reason that they outcompete native fish is because they're just so darn good at eating everything. They eat plankton and phytoplankton and algae. They're basically grazers at kind of the surface section of a water body because that's where all the photosynthesis is happening. That's where all the tasty stuff to eat is. But unfortunately, all of those tiny plankton also formed the fundamental base of the food web for every other species. and so by being the biggest fish at the buffet, they unfortunately prevent other fish from getting their plate full. So anyway, big invasive fish obviously causes some major problems for recreational boaters,

but maybe more critically than that, causes environmental and ecological mayhem. And their invasions can cause populations of native species to crash. The whole ecosystem changes. And to add insult to injury, silver carp don't even taste good. so we can't eat our way out of the problem. They basically have no economic or culinary value. It's a big bummer all around. You can't boat.

And even if you could, the fish you were planning on catching, they've been out-competed. They've replaced by these gross dive-bombing carp. I famously can't cook at all, but my competitive side is like, no, I'm going to make that cart. I want to solve the problem by coming up with a recipe to make this taste good. It won't happen because literally cannot cook at all. But wow. I mean, look, if a man can eat just the grayest, soggyest bologna sandwich for science,

that you can try and cook a carp. Have they tried feeding the carp the bologna sandwiches instead of the natural things that ecosystem to maybe? Is that a solution we've looked at? I'm just asking questions. We are over here innovating. And that's why we're also going to invent ways to talk to bats. So these silver carp, they're already,

present in a bunch of major U.S. rivers. They were introduced in kind of the mid-20th century in the U.S. and actually intentionally, because of their super voracious appetite, they were introduced to the U.S. so that they could be in agricultural ponds and, like, wastewater treatment facilities and eat up algae that was, like, clogging wastewater treatment centers or just making cow ponds gross, I guess. But surprise, surprise, they escaped containment.

And now they're in the Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Missouri River, like the biggest rivers in the country, have a carp problem. And they are on the cusp of another huge territory gain. Silver carp are very close to entering the Great Lakes. And from there, all other adjoining rivers, yeah, the Great Lakes Basin, big stuff in freshwater. So yeah, they're on, or the carp are in the Illinois River. And they are less than 50 miles from Lake Michigan.

If they clear that last gap, they can spread through all of the lakes shallows. and then like the entire watershed is slowly going to be or maybe not even that slowly will be invaded by these. I'm just watching Jess. Just in Chicago, right? Yeah. So thrilled for you. Yeah. So obviously big problem.

But here's the kicker. They've been stuck in the same spot almost 50 miles from the Great Lakes for about a decade now. It's been 10 years, which is plenty of time for a spit. for a fish species to make it 50 miles. So what's the deal? Skill issue, I would say. Yeah, skill issue. You just got to train them up.

Well, so scientists have been confused by this too. And increasingly, they're becoming convinced that what's holding the fish back is, drum roll please, the city of Chicago. And specifically the city's urban water pollution problem. Woo! Jess is. Yeah, Chicago Pride right there. The Midwest has it on the dog.

You should be so proud, Jess. Oh. Yeah. So a few studies have looked into this, have looked into like the water quality around the Chicago area and tried to see how it's impacting these carp. One of the most recent, which was published last year in scientific reports, evaluated how these fish react to water collected from the Chicago area in the labs. So researchers, well, I mean, like, kind of, yeah, the researchers took a bunch of these carp. They raised them up in nice, clean water, and then suddenly exposed them to a tank full of, Chicago area water, and the fish, like, literally froze. They stopped moving. Their metabolic rates

skyrocketed up. It was like a very clear stress response. Their body started working very hard just to compensate for whatever was present in the water because they actually didn't even isolate specific compounds or anything. They didn't, like, formulate this water to be fish repellent. They just took it from Chicago, and then suddenly it was like the fish could not deal. Wow. And in this study, They also had a control species, which was a native species called Golden Shiner's. And these fish, they, like, seem to deal with whatever's happening around Chicago just fine. That doesn't necessarily mean that, like, pollution is fine for all native species. But it does signal that there is, like, something about the silver carp or there's some sensitivity there that isn't uniform among all fish species.

And a previous study from 2019 from the same lab, they actually, like, collected carp from different points. along the Illinois River and the closer they got to Chicago, they started finding signs of liver damage in the fish. And so clearly like whatever is in the water is having an effect. And you know, this is kind of, there's been some debate, but the science is building to say that actually pollution is is playing a role here. And fortunately or unfortunately that inadvertent barrier is maybe

disappearing because the Illinois River is getting a lot cleaner. There have been infrastructure updates as well as focused water quality efforts that have made Chicago's waters less polluted in recent decades. And like, we love it. We love a good environmental effort and like remediation and water recovery. But soon, you know, there might not be enough pollution to hold the silver carp back. And again, before you get the wrong idea, that doesn't mean that like any environmental expert is like, We have to keep polluting the river. We can't stop silver carp anymore because of woke. Yeah, you got to hold the presses, like release the sewage.

We got to keep those fish back. But no, I talked with Corey Susky, who's a scientist at the University of Illinois, who was responsible for those two studies I mentioned. And he said emphatically, quote, we're not promoting pollution as carp control. But, you know, he added that. It's not that they have to say it, but I understand. I understand. Yeah.

It makes sense why they have to. In this day and age, you do have to specify. But, you know, he added that it does mean that as we continue to clean the river, which hopefully we do, we have to plan ahead and prepare and have some course of action. Otherwise, we're just going to, you know, leave one environmental catastrophe behind for another one. And the Great Lakes, they're the biggest freshwater system in the world. So to, you know, subject them to yet another terrible species invasion would be, you know,

more than just a bummer. It would be like a massive environmental cost. There would be economic costs. It's really expensive to manage invasive species once they've made it into a waterway. There's a really long history of this in the Great Lakes, too. If you want, you can look up in your own time what happened with the introduction of sea lampreys into the lakes. But Illinois, didn't Illinois also try electrified gates at one point for them? Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. We're getting to electric fences. I just want to make sure it was the same one. I was like, wait, this can't be this, this can't be more than one. Well, and in addition to, there are more that there's, there's so many invasive car. Okay, never mind, never mind, never mind. Well, and in addition to it being an ecological disaster, what if Flora gets hit with a carp, unacceptable. So.

Unacceptable. Full stop. We got to, we got to do something about it. You know, the fish are a legitimate safety hazard. I mean, like, maybe we can link video in, in the show notes. but there's, I mean, you can watch people just get like whacked with these things. So yeah, the point is like pollution's going away. It's been holding the carp back we think.

We need something else to hold them back in its place because we can't just keep putting raw sewage into our urban waterways. So I guess a caveat to that is we don't actually know if raw sewage is the problem. It could be industrial pollution. There's all sorts of things that could be in the water preventing the cart from moving to the dye from when they die the river green. Patrick's name. Oh yeah. That's entirely it. We don't need any more science. We've solved. Yeah. Again. And there are other tools available, you know, besides pollution that could help prevent the

carp from entering the lake. There is already this big electric barrier, basically also 50 miles southwest of Chicago. I'm also trying to figure out directions now with my hands. But in southwest of Chicago and Illinois, there is this electric fence that is specifically in place to try and keep invasive species like silver carp and a handful of other invasive carp species from entering the lakes. Other research has suggested that existing locks and dams can just kind of naturally slow carp progression, although some newer studies indicate that they can just kind of jump over them depending on the size of the fish. There's also been a culling program in place for a while now where basically wildlife managers just go out and kill as many carp as they can.

And it's kind of like, has that been working as well as it needs to? Unclear, but they're going to keep doing it. And then more recently, there's also been bubble nets and sound barriers that people are trying to use to try and deter the carps in like the least environmentally damaging way possible. But in my conversations with Corey Suski, he basically said that like moving forward, we might need to keep innovating newer solutions and keep trying things out because there might not be any single silver bullet to stop the silver carp. Yeah. And I just, I mean, the thing that really strikes me about this is that it's kind of like an environmental trolley problem, right? Like,

I, you know, as a conservation manager, how do you weigh the cost of something like cleaning up a river system or allowing a fish to go on its way and cause mayhem. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not my job to decide. I just get to talk about it on a podcast. I'm not from Chicago, but like I feel like it, you know, has, there's a lot of vibe overlap with Philly. And if we had a similar situation in the Schuylkill, there would be a real sense of pride that our water was too gross to let these fish in. So that I love that aspect. I was going to say it feels like when tourists come to Chicago and they're like, this is too cold. I can't be here.

And all of us were like, we're wearing shorts and of boots. We're like, this is normal, dude. Come on. You know, I've done one swim in the school goal. And it was one of the only swams I ever quit because it was too hot because it's a very shallow river. And it was like 90 degrees outside. The water was like 80. And I like had to take an ice, but I literally thought I was going to die.

But it was. It was cleaner than I was expecting. Yeah. I'll give it that. One of my favorite things is being present when somebody who's not from the Philly area learns how Schuylkill is pronounced for the first time. That's a good one. Yeah.

Good. It always hits right. It does. It's a cool river. You know, I'll have to. Well, it's a hot river. Yeah. It is so hot.

Like, again, this was also like late August. I mean, it was a hot. Yeah. Like, it was, yeah, it was, it was only eight miles. It was not a long one. But I was still just like ready. to, you know, pass out after that. Almost gave up, but I didn't.

Calling eight miles, not a long swim is like... Yeah, I'm a weirdo. It's okay. That's incredible. But yeah, I guess the school kill is not, like, ideal conditions for preserving sandwiches then. No. No, definitely not. Definitely not.

Hogi is just completely fall apart there. Well, thanks so much for a great episode, you guys. So many great weird facts today. Always a pleasure to have both of you. It's so good to be here. Thank you so much. Thank you and thank you, Blody Sandwich. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts,

including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week.

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