The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Why Hammerheads are "Like That," Cartoon Crush Psychology, Entering the Vulture Dimension

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Shark scientist Jasmin Graham joins the show to talk hammerheads. Plus, Amanda explains why your crush on a fictional character is actually ok, and Rachel goes in on saving the vultures. Here's Rachel's Libro link! https://libro.fm/membership?mp=SWITCH&rf_code=lfm417490  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! Get 20% OFF @honeylove by going to https://honeylove.com/WEIRDEST #honeylovepod This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at https://BetterHelp.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. 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, Rachel here. I just wanted to make a quick note about today's episode before we dive in. Because of an error I made while we were recording, some of the audio quality just isn't up to our usual snuff. Now, Jess worked some audio engineering magic to spruce things up and they sound pretty good. But we just wanted to warn you, that, you know, there may be moments where things sound a little distorted or robotic or where there's

background noise we couldn't quite get rid of. We work really hard to make sure this kind of thing doesn't usually happen, but of course, not everything always goes perfectly. So we really appreciate your understanding. Okay, that's it. Enjoy the show. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and text 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 Amanda Reed. And I'm Jasmine Graham. Jasmine, welcome to the show. I'm so psyched to have you. Woo! Why do you tell listeners a little bit

about your very awesome job and the awesome book you just wrote before we get into the show. Yeah, so I'm a shark scientist. I study sharks and rays. And I recently published a book called Sharks Don't Sink, Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist, which is a really awesome book about sharks and social Justin. And it's just fun and silly and casual. But you learn accidentally, which is fun. Yeah, those are the best kinds of books. And I'm really excited to have you on to talk about some weird shark stuff. And I think listeners would definitely enjoy your book. So I highly recommend they get it. And I will be reminding them at the end of the show that they should get it.

I was going to say, like, I'm, I'm in, you got me. All right, let's get into it. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact, story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, touching sharks, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was, sort of, kind of, not really anymore, but that's fine. My tease is that it's possible that half a million people died over the course of five years

simply because there were not enough vultures around. And so we are in for some vulture vindication. Amanda, what's your tease? My tease is it's totally normal to have a crush on a cartoon. Thank God. Thank God. I needed. Yeah, yeah.

Not that I need to be normal, but still, that it's definitely this is relevant to be in my life. so I'm excited to hear more. Jasmine, what's your tease? A lot of people wonder why hammerheads have weird heads, and the truth is, maybe we don't know. Maybe they just want to be that way. Wonderful.

Amanda, why don't you kick us off? Yes. I think I've been waiting for this, possibly my whole life. So to celebrate the occasion, would we all like to go around and talk about our cartoon crushes just real quick? I thought you might ask. And wow, it's hard. The one that jumps out in my head as like, Rachel, this is the cartoon character you have a crush on.

And it's the one that it's like, it's weird how much you had a crush on this cartoon character. Did you watch Teen Titans? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So the villain played by Ron Perlman, Slade. Yes. That was, you didn't even see a real face.

It was a cartoon character in a mask, several layers of, you know, non-prilman. her sodification. But listen, Ron Perlman, man, he's got a great voice. So yeah, yeah, that's me. The mystery and the ambiguity of it all. It's true. It's very true. A strong voice will take you a long way. That is exactly. So true. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I am mutuals with one of the writers from that show on Twitter. And sometimes I do want to kind of slide into his DMs and be like, you were a really interesting dynamic there. What were you doing? What were you? What are you? Where are you? What were you trying to awaken in me specifically? Yeah.

What about you, Amanda? So I think Jasmine should go first before I tell mine because mine's a doozy. Oh, man. So I'm going to say my like normal one that I, well, normal, that I feel like from people I've talked to, they agree. So Aladdin. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a beautiful boy.

And then my other one is actually not a human. So, Kovu wrote a life. Listen, I think that is also pretty universal. I think I've seen several memes about people being like, why was Kovu so hot? He was definitely the, he was the Rufio of animated Disney movies.

Yeah. Yeah. Also, I thought of another big one for me was Shigo from Kim Possible. I was, yeah, beautiful, exquisite, perfect. Well, mine is Kofu from the Lion King to Simba's Pride. So Jasmine, we're on, we're on the same wavelength. And I personally have been consuming a lot of media where I find myself sort of just like

kicking my feet and giggling over people who don't exist. Like I'm playing boulder's gate three. I'm watching Naruto. I'm seeing Resident Evil playthrus on TikTok and I'm like, ooh, these polygonal people, those shapes. Dang girl, that shape. There was a girl in my first grade class who was obsessed with Jack Skellington of the Nightmare Before Christmas fame. And she wrote and illustrated so much me in Jack Skellington work that our teacher had to be like, hey girl, you've got to find something else to write about. That teacher's dead. It's just ahead of her time. Exactly. I was like,

I think about her Jack Skellington girl every day and I know that she's carrying A-O-3 on her back. She's single-handedly contributing to the nightmare before Christmas fan fiction. Like, she's the queen of that community. I bet. I know it. So there's a little research on the subject. I found this 2020 study by these two Norwich. Norwegian scientists who collected a bunch of qualitative data by scraping Google for posts and forums with words relating to Thictophilia, which is sort of their term for being attracted to a cartoon. And they found that so many of the posts ask something along the lines of, is it normal to have a crush on a childhood cartoon? And this is a quote from one of the discussants.

I've been in love with a fictional character for literally years now, an obsessive kind of love. And honestly, he's kind of a random character from a comedy cartoon. I fantasize constantly about him, no matter where I am, who I am with. It honestly doesn't bother me. I just wonder for my sanity sometimes. I mean, it's been years now. All I do anymore is draw him, think about him, write about him, etc. it's gotten to the point where I just can't focus in school or do anything productive.

I just want to do something that has to do with him, even if it's just thinking about him. It puts extreme stress on my relationship. I didn't think of it much at first. I just expected it to kind of fade out along with my other temporary obsessions. But this has only ever gotten stronger. So I think we first have to. I want to know what character that was wrong. I want to know.

I want to know too. I'm like from a comedy. It's like I'm in love with Beavis of Beavis and Butthead. Yeah, like was it Cosmo from Fairly Odd Parents? Yeah. Mr. Crabs. I don't know. Exactly.

There are so many, there are so many comedy characters to choose from. So thankfully, we know a lot about the psychology of developing a crush. So there are five main components to attraction, physical attractiveness, proximity, similarity, reciprocity, and familiarity. And all of these components happen when you just like play a game with, alongside this character where you're logging in so many hours, or if you watch the show frequently, especially anime, where there's so many episodes and the lore goes just like crazy, crazy deep.

Like my favorite anime trope is like the guy who just like walked in randomly having just like crazy crazy lore. So we as people and our evolutionary little goblin brains are drawn to people who are similar to us, who remind us of loved ones. We also like projecting our ideas and values onto that person that they also believe have certain attributes, the same attributes as they have and like want to be associated with. So this person has created this image that the crush or the person with the crush attaches to. Right. So it's just just sort of ye old fantasy. It's like, ah, you don't know Bob in front of you. You think he's such a cutie little cutie cutie cutie cutie. You haven't discovered his ick yet, you know. Um,

You were just piling on all of the nice things about him. So research has shown there are good sides to having a crush. It can increase your self-confidence. It can reduce your loneliness. And it can help you understand what you want from a relationship. However, the brain chemicals can leave your palm sweaty, your heart racing, and your cheeks very flushed. On the negative side, crushes can lead. to obsessive thoughts that can result in dysfunctional relationships, like neglecting your own life

or maladaptive behavior like stalking. As we've seen so many times with celebrity and celebrity culture, I feel like there's, when I was researching this topic, there was also so much about like parisocial relationships and celebrity worship that I think is like in a very similar vein of like having a crush on a cartoon because at least in the worst case scenario, right? Like there have been like you all remember like the slender man attempted murders where the, I think the two girls. Yeah.

So there's definitely like if you got a crush, you got to act with discretion. And talk to your doctor if you've been experiencing flights of fancy and wanting to move across the country for a celebrity that you've never met. So if a crash lasts longer than two years, it may be what psychologists call limerence, which is, quote, a state of overwhelming and unexpected longing for emotional reciprocation from another human. And I think this is a great leeway into talking about a crush on a cartoon because, as we can tell from past tragic past events, people have done crazy stuff in the name of

of a fictional character. So kind of like in real life, when we interact with cartoons and fictional characters, there's just a lot of room for fantasy to exist and grow. And we simply are just filling in those blanks. So Dr. Robin Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist from California, who is a contributor to the psychology of Harry Potter and a co-author in a psychological study of cosplay spoke with Forbes on a very similar subject. You know, she sort of mentioned how fantasy is the big part of this attraction, right? Like if you enliven an anime, this is her quote, by the way. If you enliven an anime character enough with personality characteristics, it doesn't matter that it's a cartoon. If a stick figure were animated and had personality and human-like

characteristics, we would probably get a crush on a stick figure. So back to just like, ye old goblin brain stuff of like, we see something and we go, ooh, that piques my interest. And per Dr. Rosenberg, no one should cartoon crush shame you. So she says this very banger quote, if you have a crush on Justin Bieber, for example, it's as two dimensional as having a crush on an anime character. The concept of Justin Bieber that you're in love with is not a real person. That does go really hard. Yeah. She was like, they're not real, short and simple.

And that's okay. And that's okay. Keep the poster on the wall. Say he's dreamy. Do not move. Do not go on treacherous journeys for this man. So, and then there's more. So this is from Dr. Catherine Seifert, who is a psychologist, who is studied and written

extensively about child development and sexuality. So she pretty much puts, hits the nail on the head with this. She says outright, children having feelings toward a cartoon character is perfectly normal. Because I feel like a lot of this, it, it happens to me now, right? But like I feel like it deeply, deeply originates in childhood. Seafurt goes on to say, children liking or having a crush on an imaginary character or a teacher or anyone is perfectly. normal. Children are not looking for a partner. They are trying to understand relationships. They are curious and learning about relationships and what they mean. It does not mean the same thing for a child to have a crush on someone and an adult falling in love with another person

and having adult sexual feelings towards that person. So cartoon crushes are normal. You just have to realize they aren't real people and just be. I don't want to say normal with fandom because normal. like who cares about normal but again who decides what normal is exactly normal is a constantly moving point exactly like write your fan fiction girl but like do not move across the country so yeah your cartoon crushes are normal they can tell you a lot about what characteristics you find attractive so for example Leon Kennedy of Resident Evil the video game franchise He's kind. He is strong as seen by his ability to shoot a bunch of zombies and only die a little, you know, a couple times.

He's a man who listens, crazy. He has great bangs. And you know what? My partner has all three of those things. Incredible. So I need to be looking for a lion. Exactly. Exactly.

Just blowing kisses at him in the zoo. Just be like, hey girl, I see you. I think it was his name. The main, Covo's man. You know, he had the little puffle. Yes. And I think I'm like, okay, as what was going on with that unpacking it. And I'm like, oh, Kovo's a little bit of a bad boy.

Yeah. But with a good heart. But with a good heart. Understood bad boy. Yeah. We could fix him. I feel like if we dive super deep, I definitely feel like idea that he has like chosen to put himself in a situation where he goes against his family in favor of his love interest is like as an adult.

I'm like, yeah, that's probably why I have issues with men who have like, really strong attachments with their moms where they not let it go. Yeah. Like disobeying family for the love of your life, very romantic in a Romeo and Juliet sense, but also Romeo and Juliet, those two kids should have just chilled out for a little bit before doing anything rash. Yeah. I feel like all of my like cartoon villain crushes, it was because the villains on kids' shows

where there are like heroes and villains. The villains are always the ones who like respect the kid heroes who like talk to them like they are people and who are like, yeah, who like see all of their great qualities. And then also like, sorry, the writing was often really horny. That wasn't on me. Yes. The teta tete. My God.

The writers were writing someone bad. evil equals horny And then that's just like They're just constantly tapping that sign In the writer's room Wow, that was great What a journey, crushes are great Proceed with caution

Proceed with caution Crushes are great Protect your heart What was that term for more than two years Of a cress? Oh, limerence Limerence And wait, was this a bad thing?

Was limerence a bad thing? Oh yeah, limerence is no, not good. Specifically if there's no, it's like the crush persisting when there's no real world sort of movement of it, right?

Yeah. So, yeah. It's pretty much like, all right, you've had this crush for two years. Like, it can even be as low as six months. But it's sort of like,

like I think in on the scale of limerence, Like cartoon crush is like, sure, whatever. It's like so chill. Like that character was drawn crazy. Yeah. You know, like we all can agree on that. But like when it comes to a real person and that person has not spoken to you in years,

it's just like read a book, do some self-care. Focus on yourself, girl. Take care of yourself. But I've also had some strong attachments to book character. Oh no, same. And it does. I feel like all of this like cartoon stuff like just encompasses like fictional characters in general, right? Because like, and I think when we do like get these crushes, like these crushes on fictional people, I think it's sort of a testament to the author or like the game writers or the character designers for just like making.

really believable, well-fleshed-out characters and making them slay. Yeah. It's not my fault. I have a crush on every NPC in Dimension 20. That's, Brennan Lee Mulligan did that to me. He did that. That's okay. That's okay. He's designers know what they're doing. Yeah, that is so true. They know. I recently on TikTok, they know. I'm like, listen, on TikTok, I'm no better than a man because I have, think there's a game out there with butt jiggling physics. And I'm like, you know what? Sure. Yeah. I'm, I dig it. I'm like, when hot lady go down, when hot lady goes down rope and butt then jiggle, like, whoa. Nothing wrong with it. Not a thing wrong with it.

Okay, 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 T-HC right to your door. I'm talking about mood.com. They have an incredible line of cannabis dummies and a lot more. And you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code weirdest. I'm not a smoker myself, but I do love the occasional weed gummy to, you know, help me go off to Dreamland.

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get a bad rap, as we've discussed, on previous episodes. You know, people like to focus on the fact that they project child vomit when they're stressed, which, you know, I agree is not awesome if you're in close proximity. They, I think I talked a few years ago on we're just saying about how they have evolved to eat their prey. But first, which is just smart, you know, work smarter, not harder. Yeah. But they're really cool birds.

They've got like industrial grade cleaning supplies in their guts and microbiomes of deal. And they also help keep humans happy and healthy, which is what I'm going to talk about today. The main upside of a vulture is that they can pick a carcass clean in like less than half an hour, like whole cow in 40 minutes. They are efficient eaters. And that means like less stuff rotting on the ground. And when stuff is rotting on the ground, dangerous bacteria can grow in it. Insects, you know, can thrive. And there actually, there are of course other animals that scavenge like this, but they are really good at it. They're way better than other scavengers like hyenas and wild dogs, for example. One study found that if vultures aren't around

to clean up the mess, decomposition happens three times slower. And they're actually so good at finding food that poachers often kill them. This is increasingly a problem in several countries in Africa. Poachers will kill them because otherwise the vultures will always signal to like game wardens where a rhino or an elephant has been poached because they're just like they'll always find it. So poachers are like we we got to get rid of these guys because it's basically like a flare signal that goes up every time we poach something. And they're also considered a sentinel species, which basically just means they're on like the front lines when it comes to picking up pathogens and other dangerous stuff. You know, if your local vultures are getting sick, that's a sign something

is, like, really wrong with the animals that are dying. Or it can be a sign that there's something that there's like really toxic substance in those animals. When this anti-inflammatory drug called dichlophenic, which was once used really widely in livestock for like wound care and pain relief, it started killing off vultures in South Asia in huge numbers. And then, actually helped us realize that it was toxic to a lot of animals and plants. But they were sort of the canary in the coal mine because they were eating the carcasses of animals with this medication in their tissues and dying. And that actually brings me to the recent study that I want to talk about today, which looked at how the dichlophonic-driven dip in vulture populations

impacted humans. And it turns out it impacted humans a lot. So this starts back in the early 80s when there were more than 40 million vultures of various species in South Asia. But folks started to notice a pretty sharp decline in the early 90s, especially in India. The population dropped by around 95%. And some individual species dropped by like 99.9.9%. I've seen a few experts say that this was the fastest wild bird decline in recorded history. And it wasn't until 2003 that researchers realized that this very common anti-inflammatory used in livestock was to blame. It was super toxic to vultures.

It caused kidney failure. There was this one simulation model that somebody did that showed that if 1% of carcasses were contaminated by dichlyrophenic, the Indian vulture populations would fall by up to 90% every year. and a study of the carcasses showed that 10% of them were contaminated. So this was very bad. And India actually banned the use of the drug in animals in 2006, though people say that some farmers still use it and that that's a problem. It has definitely really cut down on the use of this drug,

and the vultures have stopped having this kind of population plummet. But their numbers are really low. We're talking like tens of thousands down from tens of millions, and they're considered critically endangered. And the thing about this like fast decline in the vulture population is that it meant scavengers weren't eating animal carcasses, in particular cow carcasses. This is a particular issue in India because people aren't supposed to eat cattle there. So dairy cows die and leave carcasses. And it has always been that the vultures have taken care of that.

It is a great system, very efficient. Suddenly there were basically no vultures to do that. And this like led to an uptick in tons of diseases, tuberculosis, anthrax, foot and mouth disease, other stuff as well. And yeah, there were other scavenging animals like rats and feral dogs. But the thing is that vultures are basically a dead end for most pathogens. Like like I said earlier, their stomachs have like such gnarly acid in there and such a robust microbiome that they basically there are a lot of pathogens they can consume that just will then die or stay in the vulture

and not spread elsewhere. And that's not the case for dogs and rats, right? Like when they're eating stuff that has pathogens in it, they then carry that pathogen elsewhere. And then we also saw in India a huge increase in the wild dog population or the feral dog population, like millions more dogs than there had been. before. In one area in particular, they had counted that there were like about a hundred dogs hanging out by these garbage dumps before the vulture population declined. And then that like rose to 1,200 as the vultures declined. So that also led to an increase in rabies. And yeah,

like all of this information has been out there. And then in July, a study came out that was like, how much of an impact did this actually have? So they looked at excess deaths in India from 2000 to 2005, and they did a bunch of work to, you know, sort of isolate all the variables. And they were looking at places that had never had a lot of vultures and still didn't because now the vultures are gone and places that used to have a ton of vultures

and now have almost done because the vultures are gone, controlled for a bunch of other things that might have changed. And they estimated that in those five, years, half a million people had died because the vulture population had dropped 100,000 people every single year. And that was just because of all of these diseases becoming more common. And, you know, they were able to show that the purchase of rabies vaccines went up, but not enough to actually, you know, stop the spread of rabies. They showed that pathogen levels in the water supply went way up. So just all around, like, things got yuckier and a lot of people died

because these vultures weren't here to clean up the trash. And in places where, you know, they hadn't historically had a bunch of vultures, things stayed pretty much the same. So, yeah, and I think what was the coolest thing to me about this study is that outside experts were not surprised. They were like, we've been saying this. This is what we've been saying. Those numbers seem about right, that is how important vultures are. And they were like, but nobody was like mad that this study happened. They were like, if people need to see the big flashing numbers to get that this is serious, it's awesome that we have the big flashing numbers. But tons of people who study vultures and how they impact the ecosystem were like, yep, that that is what we've been saying.

And vultures are not as threatened out as they were a few years ago, but they're still really not doing well. And they're not going to fully recover in India specifically without a lot of investment in conservation and restoration. And there are people working on this, but there hasn't been a bunch of, there hasn't been much government buy-in to improving and increasing vulture populations. And I get it, right? Like, they're not the most charismatic animals. One article I read pointed out that the Indian government spends about $3 million a year to save India's native tigers and the justification is that they're so important for tourism. And these researchers are like, we showed that losing vultures costs $69 billion a year

and kills loads of people. So, like, I get that they're not as charismatic as a tiger, but could we maybe get some vulture money, please? Yeah. Vulture money. Yeah. And I think it's such an important thing to remember that, like, there are animals that are really important to our ecosystem and not just in sort of and I don't know I think a lot of times when

people think about conservation who aren't actually scientists in the field they think of it as being it's like well yeah in principle we shouldn't let animals die like we should we should try not to let animals go extinct because that's obviously a bummer but it's like yes that is true and also if you run out of vultures things are bad like I it's I think it's just such an important thing to remember that It's like even the animals that you don't necessarily like interacting with on a daily basis, probably evolved to fit a very specific niche that we might really miss when they're gone. I grew up in an area with a ton of turkey vultures. I definitely did not think highly of them, but I have come to really admire them in recent years.

And yeah, vultures in general around the world, like there are several places where they're not doing great. and it's often because of stuff that is being put into livestock that is harmful to them. And sometimes farmers are deliberately poisoning them because they sort of think of them as being carriers of disease, even though that's the opposite. But like, again, I think it's really reasonable that there are people who, because that's kind of the messaging we've gotten about vultures, that they're like nasty birds. And then again, there's also this issue with poachers being like, these birds are snitches, we got to get rid of them. So, yeah, vultures, like, quite genuinely need our help, maybe not in the U.S., but, like, broadly speaking. And I think they deserve, you know, a good conservation PR campaign. And we can, the projectile vomiting stuff, we can spin that.

I think that's a superpower. Exactly. Like, I also want to projectile vomit when I'm stressed. Like, natural. Quick question. I know they have done the royal they. Like scientists have done conservation stuff where they just like fly in wolves from places and like use the wolves. I read a whole book about it.

It was a fiction book, but it was still very good. Oh. So I'm curious, do you know if they're doing those programs or similar programs with vultures? I know that there have been some like small scale releases of vultures bred in captivity. I think it's sort of, it all goes back to that issue of like who's paying for it. They're definitely conservation scientists who are like, we have, we're ready. We're ready to get the vulture breeding program sput up. And it's just, it's a hard sell.

But hopefully studies like this change that because it's pretty, pretty shocking stuff except to vulture scientists, as I said. Vulture scientists are like, we've known this since 30 years ago. Okay? Like, get on our, get on the train. All right, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact.

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Okay, we're back, and it's time to learn about hammerhead sharks. Why do they look like that? Yeah, it's a great question. So, first of all, people think that there's only one species of hammerhead. like there's just a hammerhead and that's it there's actually 10 there's a bunch of them a whole toolbox worth yes a whole loz department store of hammer so the hammerheads we are really interested in what's up with their heads because other sharks don't have weird hammers for heads so like what's up with that what are they doing what you just said about the vultures like sometimes things evolve to do very

specific things and it's important to know what that is before they all die and then millions of people die. So that is something that people have been interested in for a long time and one of the ways that people understand how evolution works is they study what's called phylogeny, which is basically how things are related to each other. So think of a family tree and you have like a common ancestor of all the hammerheads and then throughout evolutionary history you have new hammerhead species coming to be and so whenever people started looking at this they're like okay let's see what's going on with the hammerheads how did they get their heads let's start there and at first a man by the name of Leonard compagno did a bunch of dissection and looking at this hammerhead

and he put together this family tree, this bilogony, that showed that the most common ancestor of the hammerhead sharks, so the last shark with the regular pointy nose, is most closely related to things like bonnet heads, which are adorable. They look like they have little hats, just like little circular bonnet per heads, not quite a hammer, just a little bonnet, or blink at that. And so the, that is okay, cool. So that means

that sharks had pointy noses, and then they had slightly less pointy noses, and its time went on, their heads got wider and wider. And so the most recent shark to evolve, according to the phylogeny, is the wing head shark, which has a truly ridiculous head. Like the width of the 10th is three-fourths as wide as its body is long, which is ridiculous and if doesn't make sense. Why? The differential is, like, it's like they go from looking like a shovel to look in like a push mop, like a, the bar at the bottom of the mop.

Yeah, I know exactly what we're talking about. And so when Compagno put this forward, everyone was like, yeah, makes sense. evolution, gradual change over time. We buy it. Sounds great. And that stuck for a really long time. And that led to scientists trying to figure out why have they been evolving wider heads. What do their heads do? And so there were tons of theories that were researched. And a lot of them have legs. So one is that they basically have a giant rudder on their face. So that helps them turn really fast. so they can make sharp, quick turn, which is really great when you are an ambush predator or you're chasing things and you need to catch up with them. So you can change directions quickly. And that made sense. People were like, yeah, I buy it.

Hydrodynamics, that's a thing. I get it. And then another proposed reason for this head was some divers and scientists and folks around the world had noticed that a lot of hammerheads were using their heads to pin down stingrays to eat them. So they would basically swim up and put their heads on the stingrays so that the stingrays couldn't get their tails up to bar them and then they would eat, which is a real effective strategy.

Just pin it down so it can't use its tail to stack. And so I was like, yeah, we've seen them do that. I buy it and then people started looking at their eyeballs like hey if you put your eyeballs further apart you can see farther if your eyeballs are out here

you can see almost 360 degrees which is better than having them just in front of your face where you can only see out in front of you and then you have this blind spot so that made sense that was logical people are like I buy that too and then people once they were talking about the eyeballs they were like okay let's think about other shark senses

so here's a little side fun sacked about sharks sharks have a sixth sense that we don't have which is they can sense electrical charges they have these little holes in their faces these little pores that are filled with this jelly stuff and they're actually able to use that jelly stuff to conduct electricity back into their bodies so they can feel it. And so you might be like, why do you need electricity in the ocean? Why do you need to be able to sense that? Wow. Every time your muscles contract, there's actually a tiny electrical signal that tells your muscles to do that. And that's why whenever we have our natural pacemakers, which is the thing that tells our heart to beat, when that stops working right, we get an

electronic one installed in our bodies that's made by a person that then sends a little electrical signal that tells our heart to beat. So effectively, these sharks, even if they can't see, hear, or smell the prey, they can sense the heartbeat of the prey just from its electrical shark, which they think is wild and mind-blowing. Justin? Yeah, no, that is, that's hard. That's so hard. Like that's, oh my God. Like, sharks, I think now, like, they can kick in the saloon doors and be like, all right, these other animals, get out. I'm taking over the bar. Yeah. And so obviously, this is a really cool trait. And what people found is that the ampulet, the little pores, are spread all across the hammer part of the hammerhead, which is called a cephalo foil.

So then people thought, well, maybe they're better at sensing electrical charges because they got a lot of them and they're all spread out. And so that was a thought. And people were also like, I buy that. So all of these things that scientists have been kicking around, everyone's like, all of these are plausible. We love all of this. And they were like, maybe it could be a combination. Maybe all of these things are true. And people were like, yeah, hammerheads.

Obviously their head is good for something. And then we figured out how genetics work and DNA. And we started using DNA to see who is related to who and trace the evolutionary history. And what the DNA said was that actually everything Leonard Compagnos said, flip it. Actually, the most closely related shark to the regular pointy nose ancestor is the winghead shark that looks like a pushmop. And then everyone went, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, hold the phone. And this paper came out of Dr. Gavin Naylor's lab, and everyone said, hold the phone. What are you talking about, Naylor?

What's going on, Naylor at all? You were like, you need- You cannot miss the at all. It's like there's someone else involved. And then suddenly, just massive giant heads. and everyone was like, what does that mean? And evolution viewed that way, because a lot of times we think about evolution being this sort of linear path towards like some sort of perfection. But there is no such thing as perfection.

It's like, this is good enough to work right now. And I didn't die and someone still wanted to mate with me. That's all that comes down to. Did you die? Did someone want to mate with you? And so you can have a random mutation that just sticks. Because, like, there is a shark may be born with this giant head. And, like...

And he had a great personality. And they were like, that's weird, but I still want to reproduce with you. Let's do it. And so it's like, he didn't die. He still wanted to reproduce with it. And so it just, like, stuck around. And then the shark that's like most recently to come to be is our sharks like the bonnet head shark that have the small head. So like maybe as time progressed it was like, okay, so this giant head didn't kill me and I'm still sexy.

But like it's a little annoying and I kind of want to get rid of it. And it's like been evolving away over time. Looking to downsides. But it's totally opposite of what everyone thought before that this head has been. getting wider and it must have some advantage. But if it's getting smaller, it's like maybe it doesn't have an advantage. Maybe it's just a random thing that happens. And they were just like, well, yeah, they're making the most of it.

Yeah. I really love that for the Hammerhead Sharks, all vibes. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's just so funny because everyone always asks me, because I work on Hammerhead Sharks, everyone likes to ask me, why do they have weird heads? And I go, I don't know. And maybe there isn't a reason.

Maybe it was a total accident, random mutation that Bob the shark had millions of years ago that didn't prevent him from living and didn't prevent anyone from wanting to mate with them. So that is how quirky and weird evolution is. And so we had these two conflicting hypotheses. and I spent like all of my undergrad trying to figure out which of these two was supported. And they did all this work and I came up with neither. A third alternative to both of what these groups said, which is that there was this branch that happened where like small headed hammerheads were on one branch and wide headed hammerheads were on the other.

So maybe there's a different strategy entirely to having just a little cephal foil, a little hammerhead, and then a wide one. So to be determined, nobody knows, science is weird, we don't actually ever know what we're talking about, we're all just guessing, and it's various degrees of confidence. We are not confident in what's going on with the hammerhead sharks. I love that. Like the absurdist, the absurdity of it all. Albert Camus would be like, I'm putting this in a book. I'm writing a book about it. Yeah, the evolutionary trajectory being the opposite of what we thought is maybe my favorite

trope in biology, because it is, it's not the only time that that's happened. People are like, oh, we thought this was a clear literary progression. And turns out, nope. It sort of reminds me whenever, like in your English class, when it's like, what did the blue drapes mean? And it's like, maybe the author just straight up just wanted blue drapes, you know? Yeah, that is what it's like. Doesn't mean you can't decide the blue drapes being something. Exactly.

The sharks are just like, I just have this big head, guys. It's just like, it's chill. It's fine. You know. And all the scientists are like, we got to go deep. It actually reminded me of something from my lore, which is that many people get my last name wrong because Feldman with a D is much more common than Feltman with a T. And my whole life, I wanted to know why that was and had collected a bunch of information

about why it might be, like being like, oh, you know, it's because it was like, we, were German Jews, but then we came to the U.S. by way of what's now Ukraine. So like probably going from like German to Cyrillic to English, like things got, you know, who knows? I was like, are we closely related to the Feltman's that own the hot dog stand in Coney Island? What's their story? Why is theirs with a tea? And then I found out a couple years ago, thanks to a distant cousin who did genealogy research, that my great, great grandfell, father simply changed it after he got here. It wasn't an Ellis Island mix up. It wasn't. He said, I like it better with a T. And he changed it. And that's just what happened. And I was like,

well, okay, I've sure collected a lot of historical data to explain something that turns out to have just been this one guy not liking the letter D, I guess, in the late 1800s. And enjoy the journey we did. Desmond, thanks so much for coming on. This has been so much fun. We loved hearing weird shark facts from you. Would you remind our listeners what your book is called so that they can all go find it? And listen to it because you narrated the audiobook, which I really enjoyed.

Yeah. So it's called Sharks Don't Sink Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist. And yeah, it's on audiobook. format. It's e-book format. You can get a physical hard copy. There are so many options to read it. Also, listeners, actually, buying a hardcover copy is the best way to support an author. I say this as an author with prolific audiobook sales that mean absolutely nothing in earning out my advance. It's fine. I still love that my audiobook sold so well. But you know, buy a hardcover. Buy a copy. Give it to a friend. And don't use Libby to cheat.

Don't use Libby to cheat and put your phone on airplane mode and hold a book for a month. Is that why I can never get books on Libby? Because everybody's squatting on them. Everybody's just on airplane mode. Just reading their book. It's why use hoopla. Exactly. We love hoopla.

We love overdrive. So TLDR, support your library. Yeah. Support Jasmine. Yeah. Wonderful. It's a bookstore. Yes.

Yes. I'm actually going to, I'm going to drop, it's been a while since I did this. I'm going to drop my referral link for Libro.fm in the show notes. And you can get like a whole bunch of extra audio book credits if you sign up. And Libro FM lets you support your local indie bookstore of choice. So you can use that referral link and get yourself a copy of Sharks Don't Sink. And you'll have a great time. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by.

all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman, 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.