May 21, 2025 • 60 mins
Primates have been found to be three times faster than humans at healing, so what's up with that? Plus, there's a mouse out there who can regrow ears and survive 60% of its skin being ripped off—turns out, it's a feature, not a bug! I'm joined by (medical) Dr. Kaveh Hoda to discuss why we're the best (at being the worst) at wound healing!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, humans are the best at
being the worst at healing ourselves. That's right. Research now
confirms it. We are the suckiest at wound healing. And
(00:28):
we're gonna get into it. Why are humans so bad
at healing? Why is it not that big of a deal?
And we will look at an animal that is one
of the most dead Pool esque critters out there with
incredible healing skills that are it borders on the grotesque.
So joining me today is I found one a medical
(00:52):
professional host of the House of Pod medical podcast, doctor
cave Hodo, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
We'd number one at being the worst.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Exactly human human pride at sucking h I just love
it when a study comes out just to confirm what
we've all already expected that we're not in basically every
way except our ability to cooperate and pound one rock
against another rock. We're really not great animals.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
We're great at rock pounding, though, you're really good at that.
We throw them good, we break them good. You just
watch the Little Boy I have. I have young sons,
and the just it's so funny. There is a very
innate biological drive to throw and break rocks. Just watch
it in them at a young age is picking up
rocks and smashing them.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And it's fun. It is, you know, it's very fun
and it's and we eventually broken enough rocks and one
broke into the perfect shape of like, you know, an
arrow head, a hammer and air, and we're like, wait
a minute, huh, that's how that's how early evolutionary nail
psychology works. Yeah. So the reason I brought you on
(02:09):
and I want to talk about this is there was
a there's a new review out by Matsumoto Oda at
All which found that human wound healing is three times
slower than that of other primates. So yeah, it's we're
not doing so great in terms of our ability to heal.
(02:30):
Do you find with like this is a this is
a question. You don't necessarily just deal with cuts and scrapes,
but healing like recuperation times, say, between patients. Is there
a lot of variability of between individuals.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
There's lots of factors that go into it in humans. Again,
I can't compare. I've never taken care of an ape
or any sort of non human primate. But in humans,
there is variation based on your other medical problems. You know,
their age, medications they're taking, if they are taking things
(03:06):
like steroids or ammusipressants, that will affect the way they heal.
So there is quite a bit of variability in terms
of how humans can heal. And there is a lot
of danger in the wounds becoming infected as they're healing.
So there are large portions of the medical system that
are dedicated solely to helping wound healing. There's lots of
(03:30):
devices that we have, there's lots of medications, there's lots
of techniques. There are wound care nurse specialists who have
expertise in helping that. But yes, there is a wide
variability and a lot of factors play into it for humans.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, and that's so interesting to me because there is
also a lot of different strategies when you compare species.
So even within say mammals, right, different animals will use
different strategies for healing, including like say, superficial wounds, which
is we're going to focus mostly on superficial wounds. You know,
I think the medical terminology is booboos, so we're gonna
(04:10):
focus on booboos. And so even within species, though, different breeds,
like within a species, can sometimes have vastly different methods
of wound healing. So, for instance, ponies and horses, they're
different breeds within the same species, have very different healing
(04:31):
rates and methods. So ponies actually heal much faster than horses.
This is great validation for Broni's you pick the right horse,
they're really really fast healers. The ponies will deal with
wounds with something called wound contraction. The skin sort of
like cinching shut, like I don't know, like sealing off
(04:55):
a balloon or something. I'm trying to think of a
good analogy for it. But the wounds sort of contract.
So it's a technique that's really useful for wound healing
because it reduces the amount of surface area exposed to
bacteria and the amount of surface area that you have
to heal.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, we don't do that great on our own. That's
why we have stitches and butterfly tape and a whole
other host of mechanism to approximate the edges of a wound.
Although I will say again I'm not a booboologist, but
I will say that there are times when you don't
(05:34):
necessarily want to close off that wound right away. You
want to make sure it stays clean, and you want
to be able to debrid it. You want to be
able to get the bacteria out of it. But again,
that's humans, and it actually can I be totally honest
with you, Yes, I don't know if I said this
on the last time I was on the show. This
is really embarrassing, but it just goes to prove that really,
(05:56):
literally anyone can be a doctor. Is I didn't until
about a year ago, realized that ponies were not just
young horses.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
M I do, well, they are little horses, yeah, but
I thought they were just like you thought they were.
They would keep going, they would keep growing.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I thought eventually a pony would become a horse.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah. I mean, you know, I can see the mistake
because they are little ponies. But yeah, it's sort of
like the difference between a Great Dane and a Chihuahua.
Like the chihuahua is never gonna become a great day
no matter how much it wants and puts it up
on its vision board.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, I know it now I know that, like you know.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
But it's the thing is like if when I'm selecting
a doctor and I have a serious issue, like it
doesn't really matter if they know that ponies are never
going to become horses, Like, that's not that's not gonna
help me necessarily.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Being vulnerable here with you and telling you the truth.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Right, And I'm reassured and I'm reassuring you that that
when I when I have a if I'm going into surgery,
like what I want to know is that they know,
you know, which leg to operate on, doesn't matter to me.
If they understand pony biology, I'm much better humans. Right,
that's good.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
About that's generally good.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But speaking of pony biology, yeah, ponies heal a lot
faster than horses, which is really interesting. The skin is
drawn together faster, it heals faster. Horses have a weaker
inflammatory response. They are more dependent on a process called
I'm going to pronounce this the first time I do it.
(07:46):
Here we go re epithelialization. Does that sound right? Does
that sound.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
It's a tough one. No, that's you said it right,
I stumble on it.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
It's a lot. But that's as far as I understand,
and please do correct me if I'm wrong, as I
will correct you when you're wrong about ponies. It's like,
rather than sort of cinching the wound shut, it's building
a new surface layer of skin over the wound, kind
of like brick, laying over the wound with new skin,
like new skin cell turnover.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's exactly right. It's just placing more epithelium and lighting there.
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Right, And so that's a slower process than the wound
contraction because essentially you're like repaving the entire skin area
versus sort of just pulling it taut drying it together
exactly exactly. And in general, animals that have looser skin,
so skin that is less connected to the structures underneath
(08:47):
the skin, rely more on wound contraction versus animals that
have skin that is more tightly he's he'd one, am
I trying to say tightly adhere to the underlying structures
like our skin like have you if you've ever noticed
an animal like if fly lands on them, they can
do that cool thing where their skin just twitches and
(09:10):
chases off the fly. We can't do that. Our skin
is too thick and it's too tightly secured to the
underlying structures. So we're not the best at doing that
wound contraction versus other animals.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, it'd be weird. I mean, there are some theories
right about like hair human hair.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Oh, we're gonna get into that. We're getting into We're
getting into the hair get hairy, We're getting hairy. Oh yeah,
Because this is what's really interesting is that, in addition
to the various factors that may play a role in
faster wound healing in some animals versus others, like inflammatory response,
(09:51):
the amount of blood vessels in the skin, how firmly
attached the skin is to the muscle tissue, how thick
the skin is, et cetera. Even behavioral things such as grooming.
There is this question of like, well, why do we
heal slower than say, are really close relatives like chimpanzees,
Like it seems like we should have about the same
(10:15):
rate of healing, and yet chimpanzees and other apes primates
that were related to heal three times faster than us
on average. But yeah, so, like you pointed out, one
of the most notable things about humans compared to other
land mammals is our lack of fur, so we don't
(10:35):
have a lot of dense hair follicles, and each of
our hair are I mean definitely varies between individuals, but
for in general, when we're comparing ourselves to say other
primates or other mammals, our hair is less thick and
it's less dense. So, you know, research have found that
(11:01):
hairless rodents heal more slowly compared to rodents that have fur.
So that's a very interesting thing. It's again it's not
yet it's smoking gun though, right, because if you have
a hairless rodent, there's a whole bunch of other factors
that go into well, it's hairless, so maybe it's inflammatory
response is sort of a more sensitive in terms of
(11:25):
other things going on because it doesn't have this gene
for hair growth. There's a lot of potential factors. But yeah,
so when we look at us versus chimpanzees, the interesting
thing is that chimpanzees compared to say mandrels or baboons,
(11:48):
heal a lot about the same rate, and chimpanzees compared
to humans heal three times faster than us. But when
you look at hair density, like follicular density, uh, chimpanzees
and humans are about the same. That sounds weird, right,
because it's like, well, no, chimpanzees are way hairer than us.
What do you mean that the hair density is about
(12:10):
the same. It's that their hair is a lot thicker
and longer than us, so they have bigger hair follicles
than us, whereas we have we don't have anything.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
We have the same nules.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yes, they're okay.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
They're bigger, yeah, exactly, so a similar number of hair
follicles differently distributed, but also their hair follicles are bigger.
So the idea is that potentially either having more hair
of fault, either having more hair follicles or having thicker
(12:46):
hair follicles could both be away that helps enhance wound
healing because of the presence of stem cells in the
hair follicles. So sort of this theory is that when
you have more hair follicles and or you have bigger
hair follicles, you're able to recruit more stem cells from
those hair follicles to help in wound healing.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
As a Iranian male, I love where this conversation is
going because I like to believe that that makes me
a little bit more superhuman, right, Feeling wolverine was known
to be a very hairy mutant. That is the lore.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, it was a here suit man.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
That's very interesting. Now this is I'm sure way more
depth than is necessary for this. But where are these
stem cells? Are they sort of in the base of
the follicle and do they are they released down to
the skin around it? Like how is this working on
an anatomic level?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Like I don't Yeah, I don't know that they know
yet because they don't even know if this is how
why this is enhancing the wound healing? Right, Like the
the in terms of like the stem cells potentially migrat,
like where the stem cells are along the hair follicle.
I believe they are at the very sort of base
of the hair follicle where they're sort of going through
(14:07):
the whole hair growth cycle. Right, they have some undifferentiated
cells down there that then can be used to promote
this hair growth and you know, turn into hair cells.
But the in terms of how they would potentially be
say recruited in nearby tissue to help in mound healing,
(14:29):
I don't know, and I couldn't find research on it.
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So someone please write
to me tell me I'm dumb. I'm always welcome that.
But yeah, it's but it's also just not known for
sure if hair follicles are the sort of like magical reason,
the smoking gun of who heals better than others, but
(14:52):
it is. It is a very interesting idea, and it's
also kind of I really want to talk about he
humans sort of making this trade off for why aren't
we all that hairy, right, Like why did we lose
all of our hair? Seems like if these hair follicles
represent better wound healing, which we don't know yet, but
(15:16):
that's a theory. It just adds one more positive attribute
to having fur, right, Like, if you have fur, you
have a lot of hair. There's a lot of benefits.
There's a warmth, there's a protective layer, it's like armor.
There's also things like social signaling. Having different colored hair
(15:36):
can help signal like sexual maturity, it can help signal fitness.
So there's also the social aspect of grooming that is
present in primates that can be really really good for
cooperation within a group of apes. So there's a lot
of benefits to having hair, and yet we only have hair.
We do have hair all over our bodies actually.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Big for yourself, my friend. No, that is fascinating to
me because I always wonder that too. I'm like, it
doesn't really make that much sense you think that having
more body hair would be I mean, we take it
for granted because we wear clothing. We have to wear clothing,
that's our thing to stay warm in certain climates. But yeah,
(16:21):
what benefit do we get? Why are we And also,
I guess another question. I don't know if this is
evolutionary or if this is a social sort of question.
Why is less hair considered beautiful? Has that always been
the case? This might be like a more of an
anthropology question, like are there cultures in the past where
(16:44):
being her suit was considered more beautiful? Like, I mean,
there's been times in our current modern day world where
being hairy as a man, for example, has been good.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But yeah, like Gaston right, like remember right, he's covered
every inch of them is covered in hair, and the
ladies love it, and the men everyone, and the nbas.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I am what? I am curious? In general, I can't
think of any culture offhand where the it's been considered
a sign of beauty for women to be her suit,
which seems unfair, but I get, and maybe there is
one I just don't know. But I'm wondering why that is.
I'm wondering, like why we are as a society sort
(17:32):
of more and more over time trying to become less hairy,
Like what it is about us? If there's some inherent
biological need or desire to be less hairy, to be
less furry.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's interesting. So I would say that the the human
like current human preference for less body hair is cultural,
and it's it's not something that is static throughout time.
Women shaving their underarms really only popped up, I think,
kind of in the nineteen around the nineteen twenties, and
(18:08):
that had to do with fashion changing, because all of
a sudden, women were actually wearing clothing where you could
see your armpits and you could see some leg and
so at that point there was this kind of like
seeing armpit hair or leg hair as kind of a
weirdly like sexual thing, and so shaving was introduced as like, well,
this is good hygiene, right, you want to shave, you
(18:30):
want to be clean, so that it didn't have this
kind of like it may have sanitized a bit this
shift in women's fashion. You see it in also in
like Greek sculpture, where a lot of Greek sculpture would
have male body hair sculpted but no female body hair.
(18:50):
That didn't mean women were shaving a lot back in
ancient Greece. It actually was because a lot of sculptors
saw female body hair as an apparently sexual thing, right,
so they wouldn't want to represent it in sculptures. So
I would say, yes, today, our preference for doing a
lot of shaping. Sorry, a lot of what am I
(19:12):
trying to say a lot of landscaping is is more
of a modern preference based on some interesting cultural shifts,
based on fashion changes. So it's a it is. I
wouldn't say, I can't think of any.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I mean, I'm sure it's not a biological imperative. It's
like men deciding what is beauty on some level. Like
it's funny that all these things they all kind of
come down to men, or not just men, but women
having to do the extra work, right A lot more well.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
There is there is manscaping now. So I personally, I'm
I'm of the brand of feminism where it's like we
got to drag men down to you know, basically even
things out so we gotta make more maandscaping gottah, you know,
make pay win less, just pull you down to our
like crabs in a bucket. Now. But the one, the
(20:13):
one possible benefit to not having hair, both culturally right
like shaving, and in terms of our evolutionary history is parasites,
so ectoparasites, anything that would come and latch on, so
fleas and ticks. It's a much more hostile environment for
(20:35):
them if they don't have body hair, because for the ticks,
they can't really survive unless there's hair around them. They
would dry out too quickly, and for the ticks they
can they of course everyone's probably had some bad experience
with a tick, but you can find it much easier
if you're not covered in hair. And so, of course
(20:57):
we still have ectoparasites. We have demodecks which get into
our eyebrows. It's a tiny horrifying looking thing if you've
ever looked at it in a microscope. You have them
on you right now, and they're not They look like
sort of a monster from Dune. Not not great to
look at. They're mostly harmless, but you know, head lice,
(21:19):
pubic license are both things that we can have so
there is, but is it sc Scabies is something that
can affect the skin even when you don't have hair.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
That's I'm sure that's true. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Bed bugs. Bed bugs also can like it's it often
you like the things that like. Things like bedbugs can
survive because they don't actually live on you. They bite you,
but they live in your bedding, which is super annoying.
So we do still have ectoparasites. But there is a
theory that by losing some of our hair, it made
(21:58):
it harder for parasites to latch onto us. That's another
sort of theory for why maybe grooming like pubic hair
or grooming beard hair may have gone in and out
of fashion. Maybe it followed some sort of like when
cities became more rife with, say, parasites. I'm not exactly sure.
(22:20):
I think that explains everything, both culturally and in terms
of evolution. The theory to me that makes the most
sense as to why human beings lost our hair as
actually thermal regulation, because we moved from more of a
kind of like a jungle habitat to the savannah, and
(22:43):
we had to change our method of living quite a
bit in order to do that, and one was that
if we're living out in the savannah where it's very
hot and we want to be able to eat anything
that can possibly outrun us, we need to be able
(23:03):
to thermoregulate and we need to be able to sweat.
So we potentially made a trade off where we instead
of having been covered in a bunch of hair, we
traded that hair for sweat glands. Because we can't any
organ This is true of any organism. You can't just
put infinity resources into everything, right. It's like when you're
(23:26):
making a character in I don't know, Oblivion or Baldersgate
or any kind of thing where you get the sliders
and you have to put points and stuff. That's basically
evolutionary biology where there's sliders right when you turn the
you know, the endocrine glands up and you have a
lot of sweat glands, you gotta push down the hairiness
(23:47):
slider of it.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah. No, And I think it's been shown that people
who sweat right are tend to be a little bit
healthier overall. Like there is a study that I should
have looked this up before orient but like you know,
that showed the people who had a little bit more
sweat a little bit more freely and quicker. Actually tended
(24:09):
to have better exercise capacity, which makes sense for what
you're saying. Actually, completely my.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Personal experience is that's true. I'm not much. It's interesting.
I'm not much of a sweater when it comes to exercise.
If I'm nervous, like then I start sweating, which is
really useful. But yeah, I like, I basically don't start
to get over the hump, like if I'm hiking or
doing some intensive exercise, until after I find my body
(24:39):
finally catches on that, oh, I have to start sweating now,
and then I'm Actually it's like such a relief when
that happens, because then I feel better and I get
over this sort of like hump of like just not
just it's like I'm going to die, and then realizing
I'm actually fine, I'm nowhere near death.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I just well, this is where I again, this is
where I again am superhuman because I somehow man should
be both hairy and sweaty. So that's the.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Ideal human form.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I am this.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, it's peak peak human performance sweaty and hairy. But yeah,
so we potentially traded a lot of that hair. The
not just the hair density, because like I said, the
champanzees actually may have a similar number of hair follicles,
but we traded in the hair thickness for more sweat glands.
(25:30):
This is a theory. We we can't necessarily prove this,
but that to me is one of the more convincing ideas,
because there's other theories about like, well, we lost hair
on our faces so that we could use social signaling
like looking at people blushing or something, so we could
tell if someone's like happy with us or angry. And
I think that may have been a side benefit, right,
(25:51):
and it may have influenced say like facial hair patterns,
but I just don't think that would have been enough
to have us lose all of our hair. I think
the thermal regulation it makes a lot of sense in
terms of our evolutionary history from where we moved basically
from these essentially like seeing like the difference between humans
(26:13):
and a lot of primates is where we ended up
moving to the savannah and away from these these more
sort of like forest regions, although there are mandrils and
baboons that also do.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
This, but it is really it makes more sense on
like a more basic level of what it does for
your survival chances. Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
It's such a It's like, it's such a dramatic change
that it seems to me something dramatic like being able
to thermo regulate in an environment that is very hot
and hostile to something that cannot run effectively in the heat.
That makes a lot of sense to me. And so
we potentially lost our hair because of that, And so
(26:57):
it's interesting because also that the thermoregulation idea and losing
our hair may have actually resulted in our skin being
a bit thicker. Our skin is actually thicker than a
lot of primates, and one of the potential reasons for
that is without hair, now we don't have that armor,
so we kind of have to make up for it
(27:19):
by having thicker skin. And then ironically, another theory is
that with this thicker skin, that actually makes wound healing harder,
so you can There's just so many odd trade offs
that happen with evolution, and these theories really show how
tricky it is, because you know, what do weigh better
the ability to heal or to not be injured in
(27:41):
the first place, And how do you kind of weigh
both of those things and have them come into balance
for an organism to be successful.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah that I have to say. I'm surprised to learn
that our skin might be thicker than that of other primates.
But yeah, wondering like, have.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
You ever tried to insult a chimpanzee?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
They really roll with it. Yeah, give them credit. I mean,
not great at roasting though, they don't seem to get it,
but they do take a joke.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Well huh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I I personally
don't want to insult a gorilla. I don't want to
see what happens. They're generally nice.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
But did you weigh in on the one hundred men
versus you know, one gorilla thing? Have you? I'm assuming
you've covered this at Nauvoom.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I mean, do the men like, do they have is
this a is it one man at a time? Do
they have weapons? Are they wearing the armor?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
No, it's one hundred naked men. Okay, wine, well groom
didn't clothed gorilla, all right, I have details.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
One hundred naked men. I mean, okay, so obviously I
think the men went in this situation. I think that
it's gonna be. It's the it's gonna be sort of
like the It's sort of like bees versus murder hornets,
where the bees surround the murder hornets and wiggle until
the murder hornets die and some bees may be lost
(29:15):
in the process. This is how I imagine one hundred
naked men versus a gorilla. They dog pile the gorilla.
Of course, some of them are going to valiantly lose
their lives in the great gorilla battle. I'm also wondering, though,
It's just like, but why gorilla is generally very nice, right,
I mean, they're actually quite chill.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
That is really, that is really the question is why
are you thinking about this? Leave these poor gorillas alone,
them alone, relatively non violent primates, and let them do
the thing. I think exactly. I'm assuming it's a they're
being attacked. They're the ones being attacked, and they're defending themselves.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
In this scenario, the men are the gorilla. The gorilla
glas being attacked. Yeah, I would assume that too.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
I don't think the girl is starting the melee against
the hundred.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I don't yeah, I don't think. Yeah. I think gorillas
are too focused on leaf and termite to do that.
You know, they just want to hang out and do
leaf and termite, and men are going like writing on
Twitter or whatever, going like I think I could beat
a gorilla.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Guess what.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
The girl is not even thinking about you, man, girl
is not even thinking about you.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That's so sad. It's true. We're humans are the only
species that would take the time to yeh about this.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, no, no, there they're out. They're living their best
life while we're seething online. So keep that in mind.
We're going to take a quick break and when we
get back, we're going to talk about a tiny deadpool.
This is really interesting to me because when I was
reading this, this report on this new review of the studies, like,
(31:01):
I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite
little freaks of nature, which is the spiny mouse, which
is such a strange Anneal, have you ever heard of
this cave?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I have not heard of the spiny mouse. No, so.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
We have talked about this on the show before, but
it bears repeating if you haven't heard that episode. It also,
I think is just so relevant because it's such an
interesting connection to everything we've been talking about, the wound healing,
the loose skin, the presence of hair. So there is
this it's a genus, so there's multiple species within it.
(31:39):
It's these adorable little mice called spiny mice. They're more
closely related to durbils than to the house mouse, but
they look very much like mice.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I'm looking at a picture of them now, very cute.
They almost look like the kangaroo, rat or something. They
have a little longer nose than I expected, small nutsing spines,
the spine, the aspect.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Of this they have. It's more. They should be called
bristle mice, but I guess nobody put me in charge
of naming things. They should. But you know, they you know,
all right, But they have guard hairs that are coarser
and a little bit sturdier. So their guard hairs make
them less appealing of a prey versus maybe a little
(32:26):
rodent who has soft hairs. It's just like it hasn't
reached the level of say like a porcupine or a hedgehog,
where those those hairs have become really hard in stuff
such that they really hurt and they can really pokey good.
These ones, the bristles are unpleasant for predator and kind
of pokey like if you've ever like with a hair
(32:47):
brush or you know, something like or a piece of wheat,
you know, like or grass or something, and you kind
of sticks on your hand. You're like, ah, it's not
a great feeling, but it's not like hurry.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
So that's.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
If I'm really hungry, I'm eating a hairbrush. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
So.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So spiny mice are found in African deserts. They are
these amazingly cute little guys. And then it just turns
into this like horror show, which is that they have
this cool trick if they do get caught, which is
just letting their skin fall off, so they will wiggle around,
(33:31):
and the strength of which their skin clings to the
underlying structure is much weaker than other rodents and much
much weaker than like most other animals. So if you know,
if you're like kind of holding the skin of this
mouth and it's like wiggling it around, that skin just
pops right off at a certain point. Yeah, and it's
(33:55):
this is not this is not a mistake. This is
a feature, not a bug, because this is essentially giving
them a chance to escape. So the predator gets like
a fistful of hair and skin and it's like, Okay,
I have something, and the mouse gets away. And so
(34:15):
the question though, is now that it has this huge,
gaping wound on its body, because it's skin just popped off,
what does it do right. It seems like this would
be a terrible strategy because now you're wounded, you risk infections.
It's really nasty. Within a single day, that wound has
(34:37):
already clotted, scabbed over, and the surface area has been reduced.
Using that we talked about, that wound contraction method of
just sort of the wound cinching shut, it has already
contracted by over half of the surface area that was
exposed is now reduced by half. That's the first day
(34:59):
of healing. In three days, new skin has already grown
over the wound, including follicle regeneration, and even parts of
their bodies that normally mammals in general can't heal very well,
like ear cartilage, which doesn't heal very well. That's one
(35:19):
of the reason we can do piercings right and keep
that hole in our ear. Those their ears can actually
completely regrow, which is wild.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
This is fascinating, especially because so it sounds like these
spiny mice live in the desert and that's you're losing
your skin along with the infection you're mentioning also just
the risk of dehydration. Yes, your skin helps you maintain
that hydration to lose that. I mean, it seems like
(35:50):
such a counterintuitive skill set for an animal living out
there to have. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, I mean it's something where yes, they could still die,
but they will definitely die if they're caught by a
predator and eaten. And so it's it's this trade off
where their chance of survival seems to increase by having
this like disconnectable skin, and then they compensate for all
(36:19):
these risks by having this incredible healing process unlike anything
we really see in other mammals. So and yeah, so
like essentially, in order to help protect them from that
massive dehydration, they're sensing that moonshet as quickly as possible,
reducing the surface area that's exposed to evaporation, exposed to bacteria.
(36:43):
Uh and then yeah, immediately kind of like putting like
they're sinching it. They're using the Okay, I'm gonna get
this re epithelialization. Did they do that? You get it? Great?
Kay pronunciation? So uh, yeah, they they regenerate that really
quickly and amazingly though. Not only are they fast, they
(37:03):
don't generate a lot of scar tissues, so they actually
have this kind of loose collagen matrix that matches the
other tissues. So you'd think like they would just kind
of you know, I compared them to Deadpool. They're actually
way better than Deadpool because of it. Instead of Ryan
Reynolds basically having sort of like this patchwork face where
(37:24):
he's still handsome but he looks kind of sunburned, but
he's supposed to look really grotesque, they the.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Most beautiful man in the world.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah, it's yeah, they didn't, you know. It's sort of
one of those things.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
All yeah, look at.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Me, I'm unlovable. I'm Ryan Reynolds with a bad subburn. Yeah,
come on, guy. Anyways, but yeah, these mice, actually they're
more I should say, they're more like Wolverine. Right, he's
got the regeneration, right, I'm getting that. Please, I don't
want to be attacked.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
I will sidetrack this whole episode and to extended detail
on the Wolverine weaponex lore. But yes, you are right.
They both share a similar, if not the exact same
regenerator properties.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Right, all right, it's only a short period of time
where they do look kind of gnarly because like their
skin just pops off in big chunks, which is, you know,
a little bit of a nightmare. But yeah, So they
are able to regenerate hair, follicles, epidermis, dermis, sweat glands,
fat cells, nerves, muscles, cartilage, and they even have some
(38:36):
evidence that they can regenerate parts of spinal nerves that
are really difficult for say, other mammals to regenerate. Right, Like,
when we have a spinal energy, it does not regenerate
very well.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
No, this is fascinating to me, and I have the
sinking fear that you're going to follow this up by
saying that we have almost driven it to extinction and
will never be able to stay to learn about how
we as humans could benefit from this.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
No, we're actually studying, like this is one of the
rare cases where we are studying it and it's not
it's it doesn't seem to be a near extinction.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
It's fantastic because this is amazing. I'm just thinking about
all the potential benefits from it. You're exactly right, Like
just in terms of burn patients, in terms of patients
with neurologic damage, nerve damage. To find as many ways
possible as we can to learn to regenerate those things
which are very difficult, as many options and as angles
we can find is fascinating. What's also fascinating to me
(39:37):
is when I did google it once you started talking
about it and spiny mouse comes up, the first question
it offers to answer for you is why do spiny
mice ment straight? I don't know why that is of
all the things that we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I mean, as as far as I know, they probably
amin straight in this for the same reason every.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Every y mammal, unsuccessful pregnancy results into crosis, the shedding
of the functional layer of the uterus, the endometrium. So
I don't don't know why for the spike be bouse.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Fastening. There must but that must be that some that
feels like it's too deep of a cut for like
random people to be doing. There's got to be some
like research intern who's like, wait, why is this dying
thing menstruating all the time. I'm trying to study it.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
A lot, just view.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah that's wild. So yeah, I mean it's it's it's
really amazing. It's healing ability is really amazing. So a
couple of things are really interesting about this Uh. It
also demonstrates a better cardiac healing than other mouse species,
which again is very interesting. And so there's a few
things going on with this mouse. I mean, let me
(40:53):
preface it by saying, I don't know, and I don't
think anyone knows exactly what's going going on with the
spiny mouse. It's mostly this sort of conjecture because they're
working on research and hopefully at some point we will
know more about them. But one of the things with
(41:15):
the spiny mice is that when you look at their skin, right,
they have really loose skin. So, like we talked about
in the first part of the show, where you got
loose skin, it's easier to kind of synch that up
like a draw string bag and do a wound contraction.
But they also have a really high density of hair follicles,
(41:36):
and they have really thick hair follicles. So they've got
like everything going on that we've talked about earlier in
terms of animals that have faster wound healing, right, loose skin,
a lot of hair, and thick hair. But that obviously
doesn't necessarily explain everything, right, because if they have faster
cardiac healing. It's hard for me to imagine by what
(41:59):
process their skin would help in that, right, Like I
suppose there could be some weird migration of stem cells
from the skin to cardiac tissue, but I don't. I
have never heard of anything like that.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
It's probably a separate mechanism, but how it's related is interesting.
What there are cells that line, you know, your cardiac
the cardiac lining. I mean, I guess when you talk
about cardiac healing, I mean, what does that mean. Are
they like injuring the heart or are they doing what
humans do, which is like they plug up the arteries
and then see if they can re epitheliize that or
(42:36):
if there can be like new vasculature that forms, because
what could I've done really just hand waving here, But
you know, I'm wondering if what they're showing is that
there is a growth of vasculature to feed blood vessels
to the rest of the heart if one is injured,
for example, because that could make sense. That could be
(42:58):
like stem cell active, causing more or hyper vascularization of
the tissue of the heart. So that's fascinating. I mean,
I would love to know about what they're actually doing
in regards to these studies, how they're studying this. I mean,
because it sounds like we could learn not only the
(43:18):
skin stuff, not only the wound healing, not only nerve damage,
but we could also learn how to heal scarred cardiac
tissue potentially from these animals.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, I believe it does have something to do with
the revascularization around the heart. I think it might also
have some ability to tolerate, say like heart attacks, and
to heal the heart tissue after like an schema schemic event.
I hope I'm saying that.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yeah right, yeah event, Yeah, blood flow.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Right exactly, So damaged heart tissue as well as potentially
healing more of the blood vessels. It might be sort
of both things. They can't regenerate the tissue in the
same way that they can regenerate their skin tissue. It's
not like you can they can just like completely damage
to the heart and then regrow the heart like they
can with their skin. So it's there's definitely some separate
(44:15):
process going on. Another interesting aspect to the mices, when
they look at one thing they do understand a little
better is their their ear healing is they can see
that they form again, really hoping I nail the pronunciation
of this. I think it's called a blastema, which is
like this this cluster of undifferentiated cells like stem cells
(44:40):
that form sort of this glob, and then from that
glob it can start like you know, sit like these
little undifferentiated cells move on out and start rebuilding whatever
tissue is needed in that area. And so you see
similar actually similar structures in say salamander limbs, where salamanders
can rea grow entire limbs, and so they also have
(45:03):
a similar like it's just a blob of undifferentiated cells
them forms in the area and then basically sends out
like different units like Okay, you go over here and
then you figure out like hey, I need to be
this kind of tissue cell and then develops into it
and then it can regrow entire limbs that way.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
You know. I've heard about that with lizards that they're
in going back to Marvel Lore doctor Connor's and the
lizard and how he regrows his arm but becomes a monster,
But I haven't heard about it much with mammals. I mean,
in warm blooded creatures. Are there other mammals that can
(45:47):
have the same sort of regenerative growth.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I mean, most mammals can to some extent have regenerative growth,
but we can't do entire limbs. Don't know of any
mammal that can regrow an entire limb, uh it has
we we can partially regrow things though, right like, so
with this spiny mice them regrowing entire skin structures is
(46:13):
pretty similar. That's maybe they're may be the most similar
when you can compare mammals to salamanders, to lizards, but
even like people, right like, if you it depends on
like we can regrow structures to some extent, it just
really the point at which you can chop an arm
off for a human being to regrow is basically just
(46:35):
the very tippy tippy tips of our fingers, right like,
we can regrow a little bit of our fingertips, but
any any further down where we can't. We can't handle that.
Whereas uh, salamanders essentially just have a much higher higher
tolerance for having their limb regrowth start at like being
able to have that limb bud essentially reform and then
(46:59):
start developed being a new limb, which we cannot and
other mammals cannot.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Do what a bummer.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
I know, it would be great. I I wanna, I
wanna have that ability. But I'd like it to be
where you not only grow like a new limb, but
like maybe an extra one. So every time you get hurt,
like you get like a little hand that comes out
of like that injury. That would be so cool.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
You have to buy a new wardrobe like all the
time though.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah, but then imagine all the snacks you could hold
in all the little hands that you have. Now fair,
I think about this a lot. Yeah, yeah, So yeah,
we got we got weird mice that are growing their skin,
which could be uh if we player cards right which
(47:51):
right now we don't seem to be, but it could
be if we research them more, they may help us
understand our own uh slow heat healing process and maybe
how we can improve healing both boo boos and heart booboos.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Yeah cardio.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Sorry, the scientific term is cardiac booboo.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah yeah, I mean, don't embarrass me in front of
my doctor friends. That is what we call it. I know,
I think that is That's fascinating. Again. One thing I
love about coming on the show is just being introduced
to these these animals that have all the the in
(48:32):
vivo studies we could want right there, Yeah, to learn
more about ourselves, Like, I think it's a great way. Two,
it's a great way to build the science is to
to learn about these animals, you know, of course in
an ethical way, and you know too, to learn a
little bit more about their healing process and how different
(48:54):
things can be. It's just nothing else. It opens up
our minds to the possibilities of what we could be
doing with humans. I think that's really fun. It's really
fun because if you get so as doctors, we get
so like at some point locked into what we can
do and what we do know and what happens currently
with the human body. It requires people thinking outside of
the box like this, to be like, Okay, what is
(49:17):
this animal doing that's different, and then someone to take
that information and to eventually work multiple steps, obviously to
the point where how can this benefit us? Which I
know makes me sound like a monster. I do love animals,
even if they can't help us. But I think it's
really exciting. It's really exciting to another great reason why
(49:38):
we need to be doing research.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Because I mean, I'm not an I'm not a vegetarian,
So the idea that I would make draw the line
at doing animal research as long as it's you know,
done humanely, right that it's you know, I don't need
to eat meat, but I think help people with survive
(50:02):
heart attacks and stuff is very important. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, it's really exciting. It's really fun to yeah, to
see that and to be like this, to keep thinking
of new possibilities. A lot of that the animals are fantastic.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean hopefully also gives us more
incentive to Like you said, even though the spiny mouse,
there could be some species that are in trouble. I
don't actually know if there are any that are endangered,
but certainly a lot of species are not endangered. But
I think it just when we keep our natural ecosystems functioning,
(50:38):
and there's just like an incredible library of genetic knowledge
that is completely irreplaceable, right. Like we've talked about this
before actually when I had you on, Like we talked
about the gas rooting frog, this frog that has this
amazing ability not to kill its own offspring that it
has in its stomach and somehow its stomach acid doesn't
burn through its own offspring. And just the fact that
(51:02):
that went extinct and we don't have that incredible sort
of like you imagine if these spiny mice went extinct,
right like this, this incredible ability that this animal has,
So yeah, it's a I think it's it is something
that really it's a good way to be humbled too,
that like, look, humans are great, we're very very smart,
(51:23):
but we can't just regrow a huge chunks of our
skin in like three days. We can't lose like sixty
percent of our skin and then regrow it and be okay.
So yeah, just respecting these little guys.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I mean, and we talked about this last time too.
It is one of those things where I could easily
see some politician saying, can you believe that we're spending
a million dollars to keep a mouse alive in this environment?
In you were like, yeah, there's a really good reason
for that. There's a really good reason. It may not
(51:59):
be obvious right away, but research is always good, you know,
learning good research is always good for us. So whether
or not it's obvious initially right away or not, it is.
I'm sure whoever started looking at the desert mouse, I'm sorry,
not the spiny mouse didn't know at first all the
(52:20):
potential benefits of what it can do or what it
can be, and they just start studying it because they're interested.
And now we know it can do these remarkable things.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
So yeah, grant writers, just just include in your grant
somewhere that this might help the libido of aging white
men in Congress and you know that's there. You go,
funding that's it.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
All right.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Before we go, we got to play a little game
called Guests, Who's Squawk and the Men the Mystery Animal
Sound Game. Every week I play a mystery animal sound
in you the guests, and you the listener, try to
guess who is making this sound. It could be any
animal in the world. Last week's Mister Animals sound hint
was this found in eastern North America. You might find
this little guy boogie wogging, and who can blame him
(53:11):
with a call like this? Okay, here we go. Oh yeah, god,
I love this guy. Okay, Oh it's so cute. Favorite
bird call the bird? Okay, Oh I dang, this is
(53:35):
a first. I've never accidentally given a hint. I didn't
mean to, but yes it is a bird.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Hint to new hint because I can't keep my mouth shut.
But yeah, this ahe is so cute. COVID, you got
any guesses for this adorable little sound?
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Is that this week's or last week?
Speaker 1 (53:55):
So that you're playing that's last week's that I'm flu fun.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
It's okay. It's a bird and as like a little squeak,
and I think blue jays are squeaky. Is it a
blue jay?
Speaker 1 (54:07):
No?
Speaker 2 (54:09):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (54:11):
It is the American woodcock. So congratulations to Chad F.
Max and Laura W. Who guessed correctly. American woodcocks. Uh
kind of you gotta google it. They're so cute they
they make. In addition to that adorable little pink sound,
(54:32):
they have these cute little bodies and they have long
beaks that are way too big for their tininess. But
another thing that they do that is just so adorable
is they like to rock back and forth on the ground.
And if you've seen like a gift of a weird
little bird doing what looks like the boogie woogie, that's
an American woodcock because they and one of the theories
(54:55):
for why they do this is that they're trying to
coax earthworms up out of the ground, essentially by mimicking
the vibrations of rain on the ground, which for worms
would be bad news because when it rains, they come
out of the ground because they can drown if they
stay in the soil. And so wow, one of the
(55:16):
one of the theories, like, there are a few theories
about why they do this, and this is one of them.
And my favorite one is that they're doing this to
try to coax worms up out of the ground with
their little boogie woggeeing dance. It's adorable. They're so cute, very.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Poly trees of them.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
It's like very like exactly if you walk with if
you walk with rhythm, you will attract the worm.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah, exactly. All right, let me let me let me
hear the wine for next week. I think I'm gonna
get this.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, ah yeah, all right. So the
hint for this week's the ceria sound is this. This
fierce little carnivore is like a wolf that you can
fit in your pocket. All right. Can you hear that.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
Very high pitched sound.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
You do not need to adjust your headphones. It is
that thing that sounds like something is wrong.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
With the audio, guess, and it's wolf like.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
I'll just repeat the hint. It is that this fierce
little carnivore is like a wolf that you can fit
in your pocket.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Okay, here one more time.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
They hear it in a sentence, the sentences.
Speaker 2 (56:42):
And then wolf. Okay, do you know what I think?
That's a trick question. I think it's a wolf spider
and somehow making the squeaky sound, which I don't know
spiders can make a sound. That's between that and my
pony reference. I think I have out of myself as
someone doesn't know much about any animals.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
That's an amazing guest. There are spiders who can make sounds,
so that is not a bad guess.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
At all, but it's not correct.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Fine, I can't tell you. Okay, no spoilers because you
got to wait until next week when I answer who
is making that sound? And if you out there think
you know who that is, you can write to me
at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. That's right,
you can compete directly head to head with an actual
(57:33):
medical doctor. Tell your friends Kevin, thank you so much
for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I always
learned so much when I come on the show. It's
so much fun. I really have in the recent months
to year has really been trying to learn as much
as I can about stuff because I feel like it
keeps me young when I do. I'm trying to like
reignite my love of education and learning, and this show
is such a great way to do that. So I
(58:03):
really appreciate that. Thanks for having me on and thanks
for doing the show.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
Yeah. Absolutely. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (58:10):
I am on a podcast called The House of Pod.
It is a humor adjacent, fun little medical podcast. You'll
hear lots of people come on the show, from Peter
Hotez and other world renowned infectious disease doctors and specialist
physicians of all kinds, to musicians like Portugal de man
(58:32):
or comedians like mos Er Browny or amazing podcast host
Slash and well behavior offficionados like Katie Golden, who's going
to be on as we speak, is on this week's episode.
By the time you hear this, it will be last week's.
So go back and.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
Listen to that's right, cross politics, cross pollination people.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
That's right. So you'll if you like this show, we're
sort of in a similar vein but more human y,
and I promise I know more about human bodies than
to animals. So but you're gonna like it. It's a
similar vibe. It's like, you know, let's wear animals too.
So if you like animals.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Exactly, as long as you stick to human doctoring and
you don't do pony doctoring, then you should be fine.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
But I.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
I highly recommend the podcast. I actually, when I have
to fly, like say, I'm visiting my family back in
the US, that's one of my go to things to
load up on my phone so I can just listen
and learn stuff about medicine. But it's not intimidating because.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
You know, I'm not not intimidating.
Speaker 1 (59:37):
Yeah, you're not intimidating. I know what were until, right,
So if you're if you're interested in medical topics and
you're curious about stuff and you want to learn in
a fun, friendly way, highly recommend that podcast.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Thank you guys for listening to the show. If you
leave writing a review, I read every single one. Appreciate
all the reviews. Thank to the Space Classics for their
super awesome song. Ex Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the iHeartRadio, app Apple podcasts are you guess what?
Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Where?
Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Have you listen to your favorite shows? I'm not your mother.
I can't tell you what to do. But don't go
out there and try to get bit by a radioactive
spiny mouse. You're just probably gonna get real sick, mostly
from the radiation and maybe a little bit from the
mouse bite. So don't do that. We can all be.
We can't all be Peter Parker. Some of us just
(01:00:31):
get mad mouse tumors. So don't do that, all right, everybody,
see you next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, humans are the best at
being the worst at healing ourselves. That's right. Research now
confirms it. We are the suckiest at wound healing. And
(00:28):
we're gonna get into it. Why are humans so bad
at healing? Why is it not that big of a deal?
And we will look at an animal that is one
of the most dead Pool esque critters out there with
incredible healing skills that are it borders on the grotesque.
So joining me today is I found one a medical
(00:52):
professional host of the House of Pod medical podcast, doctor
cave Hodo, Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
We'd number one at being the worst.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Exactly human human pride at sucking h I just love
it when a study comes out just to confirm what
we've all already expected that we're not in basically every
way except our ability to cooperate and pound one rock
against another rock. We're really not great animals.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
We're great at rock pounding, though, you're really good at that.
We throw them good, we break them good. You just
watch the Little Boy I have. I have young sons,
and the just it's so funny. There is a very
innate biological drive to throw and break rocks. Just watch
it in them at a young age is picking up
rocks and smashing them.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And it's fun. It is, you know, it's very fun
and it's and we eventually broken enough rocks and one
broke into the perfect shape of like, you know, an
arrow head, a hammer and air, and we're like, wait
a minute, huh, that's how that's how early evolutionary nail
psychology works. Yeah. So the reason I brought you on
(02:09):
and I want to talk about this is there was
a there's a new review out by Matsumoto Oda at
All which found that human wound healing is three times
slower than that of other primates. So yeah, it's we're
not doing so great in terms of our ability to heal.
(02:30):
Do you find with like this is a this is
a question. You don't necessarily just deal with cuts and scrapes,
but healing like recuperation times, say, between patients. Is there
a lot of variability of between individuals.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
There's lots of factors that go into it in humans. Again,
I can't compare. I've never taken care of an ape
or any sort of non human primate. But in humans,
there is variation based on your other medical problems. You know,
their age, medications they're taking, if they are taking things
(03:06):
like steroids or ammusipressants, that will affect the way they heal.
So there is quite a bit of variability in terms
of how humans can heal. And there is a lot
of danger in the wounds becoming infected as they're healing.
So there are large portions of the medical system that
are dedicated solely to helping wound healing. There's lots of
(03:30):
devices that we have, there's lots of medications, there's lots
of techniques. There are wound care nurse specialists who have
expertise in helping that. But yes, there is a wide
variability and a lot of factors play into it for humans.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, and that's so interesting to me because there is
also a lot of different strategies when you compare species.
So even within say mammals, right, different animals will use
different strategies for healing, including like say, superficial wounds, which
is we're going to focus mostly on superficial wounds. You know,
I think the medical terminology is booboos, so we're gonna
(04:10):
focus on booboos. And so even within species, though, different breeds,
like within a species, can sometimes have vastly different methods
of wound healing. So, for instance, ponies and horses, they're
different breeds within the same species, have very different healing
(04:31):
rates and methods. So ponies actually heal much faster than horses.
This is great validation for Broni's you pick the right horse,
they're really really fast healers. The ponies will deal with
wounds with something called wound contraction. The skin sort of
like cinching shut, like I don't know, like sealing off
(04:55):
a balloon or something. I'm trying to think of a
good analogy for it. But the wounds sort of contract.
So it's a technique that's really useful for wound healing
because it reduces the amount of surface area exposed to
bacteria and the amount of surface area that you have
to heal.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, we don't do that great on our own. That's
why we have stitches and butterfly tape and a whole
other host of mechanism to approximate the edges of a wound.
Although I will say again I'm not a booboologist, but
I will say that there are times when you don't
(05:34):
necessarily want to close off that wound right away. You
want to make sure it stays clean, and you want
to be able to debrid it. You want to be
able to get the bacteria out of it. But again,
that's humans, and it actually can I be totally honest
with you, Yes, I don't know if I said this
on the last time I was on the show. This
is really embarrassing, but it just goes to prove that really,
(05:56):
literally anyone can be a doctor. Is I didn't until
about a year ago, realized that ponies were not just
young horses.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
M I do, well, they are little horses, yeah, but
I thought they were just like you thought they were.
They would keep going, they would keep growing.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I thought eventually a pony would become a horse.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah. I mean, you know, I can see the mistake
because they are little ponies. But yeah, it's sort of
like the difference between a Great Dane and a Chihuahua.
Like the chihuahua is never gonna become a great day
no matter how much it wants and puts it up
on its vision board.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, I know it now I know that, like you know.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
But it's the thing is like if when I'm selecting
a doctor and I have a serious issue, like it
doesn't really matter if they know that ponies are never
going to become horses, Like, that's not that's not gonna
help me necessarily.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Being vulnerable here with you and telling you the truth.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Right, And I'm reassured and I'm reassuring you that that
when I when I have a if I'm going into surgery,
like what I want to know is that they know,
you know, which leg to operate on, doesn't matter to me.
If they understand pony biology, I'm much better humans. Right,
that's good.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
About that's generally good.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But speaking of pony biology, yeah, ponies heal a lot
faster than horses, which is really interesting. The skin is
drawn together faster, it heals faster. Horses have a weaker
inflammatory response. They are more dependent on a process called
I'm going to pronounce this the first time I do it.
(07:46):
Here we go re epithelialization. Does that sound right? Does
that sound.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
It's a tough one. No, that's you said it right,
I stumble on it.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
It's a lot. But that's as far as I understand,
and please do correct me if I'm wrong, as I
will correct you when you're wrong about ponies. It's like,
rather than sort of cinching the wound shut, it's building
a new surface layer of skin over the wound, kind
of like brick, laying over the wound with new skin,
like new skin cell turnover.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
That's exactly right. It's just placing more epithelium and lighting there.
That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Right, And so that's a slower process than the wound
contraction because essentially you're like repaving the entire skin area
versus sort of just pulling it taut drying it together
exactly exactly. And in general, animals that have looser skin,
so skin that is less connected to the structures underneath
(08:47):
the skin, rely more on wound contraction versus animals that
have skin that is more tightly he's he'd one, am
I trying to say tightly adhere to the underlying structures
like our skin like have you if you've ever noticed
an animal like if fly lands on them, they can
do that cool thing where their skin just twitches and
(09:10):
chases off the fly. We can't do that. Our skin
is too thick and it's too tightly secured to the
underlying structures. So we're not the best at doing that
wound contraction versus other animals.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, it'd be weird. I mean, there are some theories
right about like hair human hair.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Oh, we're gonna get into that. We're getting into We're
getting into the hair get hairy, We're getting hairy. Oh yeah,
Because this is what's really interesting is that, in addition
to the various factors that may play a role in
faster wound healing in some animals versus others, like inflammatory response,
(09:51):
the amount of blood vessels in the skin, how firmly
attached the skin is to the muscle tissue, how thick
the skin is, et cetera. Even behavioral things such as grooming.
There is this question of like, well, why do we
heal slower than say, are really close relatives like chimpanzees,
Like it seems like we should have about the same
(10:15):
rate of healing, and yet chimpanzees and other apes primates
that were related to heal three times faster than us
on average. But yeah, so, like you pointed out, one
of the most notable things about humans compared to other
land mammals is our lack of fur, so we don't
(10:35):
have a lot of dense hair follicles, and each of
our hair are I mean definitely varies between individuals, but
for in general, when we're comparing ourselves to say other
primates or other mammals, our hair is less thick and
it's less dense. So, you know, research have found that
(11:01):
hairless rodents heal more slowly compared to rodents that have fur.
So that's a very interesting thing. It's again it's not
yet it's smoking gun though, right, because if you have
a hairless rodent, there's a whole bunch of other factors
that go into well, it's hairless, so maybe it's inflammatory
response is sort of a more sensitive in terms of
(11:25):
other things going on because it doesn't have this gene
for hair growth. There's a lot of potential factors. But yeah,
so when we look at us versus chimpanzees, the interesting
thing is that chimpanzees compared to say mandrels or baboons,
(11:48):
heal a lot about the same rate, and chimpanzees compared
to humans heal three times faster than us. But when
you look at hair density, like follicular density, uh, chimpanzees
and humans are about the same. That sounds weird, right,
because it's like, well, no, chimpanzees are way hairer than us.
What do you mean that the hair density is about
(12:10):
the same. It's that their hair is a lot thicker
and longer than us, so they have bigger hair follicles
than us, whereas we have we don't have anything.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
We have the same nules.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yes, they're okay.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
They're bigger, yeah, exactly, so a similar number of hair
follicles differently distributed, but also their hair follicles are bigger.
So the idea is that potentially either having more hair
of fault, either having more hair follicles or having thicker
(12:46):
hair follicles could both be away that helps enhance wound
healing because of the presence of stem cells in the
hair follicles. So sort of this theory is that when
you have more hair follicles and or you have bigger
hair follicles, you're able to recruit more stem cells from
those hair follicles to help in wound healing.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
As a Iranian male, I love where this conversation is
going because I like to believe that that makes me
a little bit more superhuman, right, Feeling wolverine was known
to be a very hairy mutant. That is the lore.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, it was a here suit man.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
That's very interesting. Now this is I'm sure way more
depth than is necessary for this. But where are these
stem cells? Are they sort of in the base of
the follicle and do they are they released down to
the skin around it? Like how is this working on
an anatomic level?
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Like I don't Yeah, I don't know that they know
yet because they don't even know if this is how
why this is enhancing the wound healing? Right, Like the
the in terms of like the stem cells potentially migrat,
like where the stem cells are along the hair follicle.
I believe they are at the very sort of base
of the hair follicle where they're sort of going through
(14:07):
the whole hair growth cycle. Right, they have some undifferentiated
cells down there that then can be used to promote
this hair growth and you know, turn into hair cells.
But the in terms of how they would potentially be
say recruited in nearby tissue to help in mound healing,
(14:29):
I don't know, and I couldn't find research on it.
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So someone please write
to me tell me I'm dumb. I'm always welcome that.
But yeah, it's but it's also just not known for
sure if hair follicles are the sort of like magical reason,
the smoking gun of who heals better than others, but
(14:52):
it is. It is a very interesting idea, and it's
also kind of I really want to talk about he
humans sort of making this trade off for why aren't
we all that hairy, right, Like why did we lose
all of our hair? Seems like if these hair follicles
represent better wound healing, which we don't know yet, but
(15:16):
that's a theory. It just adds one more positive attribute
to having fur, right, Like, if you have fur, you
have a lot of hair. There's a lot of benefits.
There's a warmth, there's a protective layer, it's like armor.
There's also things like social signaling. Having different colored hair
(15:36):
can help signal like sexual maturity, it can help signal fitness.
So there's also the social aspect of grooming that is
present in primates that can be really really good for
cooperation within a group of apes. So there's a lot
of benefits to having hair, and yet we only have hair.
We do have hair all over our bodies actually.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Big for yourself, my friend. No, that is fascinating to
me because I always wonder that too. I'm like, it
doesn't really make that much sense you think that having
more body hair would be I mean, we take it
for granted because we wear clothing. We have to wear clothing,
that's our thing to stay warm in certain climates. But yeah,
(16:21):
what benefit do we get? Why are we And also,
I guess another question. I don't know if this is
evolutionary or if this is a social sort of question.
Why is less hair considered beautiful? Has that always been
the case? This might be like a more of an
anthropology question, like are there cultures in the past where
(16:44):
being her suit was considered more beautiful? Like, I mean,
there's been times in our current modern day world where
being hairy as a man, for example, has been good.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But yeah, like Gaston right, like remember right, he's covered
every inch of them is covered in hair, and the
ladies love it, and the men everyone, and the nbas.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
I am what? I am curious? In general, I can't
think of any culture offhand where the it's been considered
a sign of beauty for women to be her suit,
which seems unfair, but I get, and maybe there is
one I just don't know. But I'm wondering why that is.
I'm wondering, like why we are as a society sort
(17:32):
of more and more over time trying to become less hairy,
Like what it is about us? If there's some inherent
biological need or desire to be less hairy, to be
less furry.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
It's interesting. So I would say that the the human
like current human preference for less body hair is cultural,
and it's it's not something that is static throughout time.
Women shaving their underarms really only popped up, I think,
kind of in the nineteen around the nineteen twenties, and
(18:08):
that had to do with fashion changing, because all of
a sudden, women were actually wearing clothing where you could
see your armpits and you could see some leg and
so at that point there was this kind of like
seeing armpit hair or leg hair as kind of a
weirdly like sexual thing, and so shaving was introduced as like, well,
this is good hygiene, right, you want to shave, you
(18:30):
want to be clean, so that it didn't have this
kind of like it may have sanitized a bit this
shift in women's fashion. You see it in also in
like Greek sculpture, where a lot of Greek sculpture would
have male body hair sculpted but no female body hair.
(18:50):
That didn't mean women were shaving a lot back in
ancient Greece. It actually was because a lot of sculptors
saw female body hair as an apparently sexual thing, right,
so they wouldn't want to represent it in sculptures. So
I would say, yes, today, our preference for doing a
lot of shaping. Sorry, a lot of what am I
(19:12):
trying to say a lot of landscaping is is more
of a modern preference based on some interesting cultural shifts,
based on fashion changes. So it's a it is. I
wouldn't say, I can't think of any.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
I mean, I'm sure it's not a biological imperative. It's
like men deciding what is beauty on some level. Like
it's funny that all these things they all kind of
come down to men, or not just men, but women
having to do the extra work, right A lot more well.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
There is there is manscaping now. So I personally, I'm
I'm of the brand of feminism where it's like we
got to drag men down to you know, basically even
things out so we gotta make more maandscaping gottah, you know,
make pay win less, just pull you down to our
like crabs in a bucket. Now. But the one, the
(20:13):
one possible benefit to not having hair, both culturally right
like shaving, and in terms of our evolutionary history is parasites,
so ectoparasites, anything that would come and latch on, so
fleas and ticks. It's a much more hostile environment for
(20:35):
them if they don't have body hair, because for the ticks,
they can't really survive unless there's hair around them. They
would dry out too quickly, and for the ticks they
can they of course everyone's probably had some bad experience
with a tick, but you can find it much easier
if you're not covered in hair. And so, of course
(20:57):
we still have ectoparasites. We have demodecks which get into
our eyebrows. It's a tiny horrifying looking thing if you've
ever looked at it in a microscope. You have them
on you right now, and they're not They look like
sort of a monster from Dune. Not not great to
look at. They're mostly harmless, but you know, head lice,
(21:19):
pubic license are both things that we can have so
there is, but is it sc Scabies is something that
can affect the skin even when you don't have hair.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
That's I'm sure that's true. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Bed bugs. Bed bugs also can like it's it often
you like the things that like. Things like bedbugs can
survive because they don't actually live on you. They bite you,
but they live in your bedding, which is super annoying.
So we do still have ectoparasites. But there is a
theory that by losing some of our hair, it made
(21:58):
it harder for parasites to latch onto us. That's another
sort of theory for why maybe grooming like pubic hair
or grooming beard hair may have gone in and out
of fashion. Maybe it followed some sort of like when
cities became more rife with, say, parasites. I'm not exactly sure.
(22:20):
I think that explains everything, both culturally and in terms
of evolution. The theory to me that makes the most
sense as to why human beings lost our hair as
actually thermal regulation, because we moved from more of a
kind of like a jungle habitat to the savannah, and
(22:43):
we had to change our method of living quite a
bit in order to do that, and one was that
if we're living out in the savannah where it's very
hot and we want to be able to eat anything
that can possibly outrun us, we need to be able
(23:03):
to thermoregulate and we need to be able to sweat.
So we potentially made a trade off where we instead
of having been covered in a bunch of hair, we
traded that hair for sweat glands. Because we can't any
organ This is true of any organism. You can't just
put infinity resources into everything, right. It's like when you're
(23:26):
making a character in I don't know, Oblivion or Baldersgate
or any kind of thing where you get the sliders
and you have to put points and stuff. That's basically
evolutionary biology where there's sliders right when you turn the
you know, the endocrine glands up and you have a
lot of sweat glands, you gotta push down the hairiness
(23:47):
slider of it.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah. No, And I think it's been shown that people
who sweat right are tend to be a little bit
healthier overall. Like there is a study that I should
have looked this up before orient but like you know,
that showed the people who had a little bit more
sweat a little bit more freely and quicker. Actually tended
(24:09):
to have better exercise capacity, which makes sense for what
you're saying. Actually, completely my.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Personal experience is that's true. I'm not much. It's interesting.
I'm not much of a sweater when it comes to exercise.
If I'm nervous, like then I start sweating, which is
really useful. But yeah, I like, I basically don't start
to get over the hump, like if I'm hiking or
doing some intensive exercise, until after I find my body
(24:39):
finally catches on that, oh, I have to start sweating now,
and then I'm Actually it's like such a relief when
that happens, because then I feel better and I get
over this sort of like hump of like just not
just it's like I'm going to die, and then realizing
I'm actually fine, I'm nowhere near death.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
I just well, this is where I again, this is
where I again am superhuman because I somehow man should
be both hairy and sweaty. So that's the.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Ideal human form.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I am this.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Yes, it's peak peak human performance sweaty and hairy. But yeah,
so we potentially traded a lot of that hair. The
not just the hair density, because like I said, the
champanzees actually may have a similar number of hair follicles,
but we traded in the hair thickness for more sweat glands.
(25:30):
This is a theory. We we can't necessarily prove this,
but that to me is one of the more convincing ideas,
because there's other theories about like, well, we lost hair
on our faces so that we could use social signaling
like looking at people blushing or something, so we could
tell if someone's like happy with us or angry. And
I think that may have been a side benefit, right,
(25:51):
and it may have influenced say like facial hair patterns,
but I just don't think that would have been enough
to have us lose all of our hair. I think
the thermal regulation it makes a lot of sense in
terms of our evolutionary history from where we moved basically
from these essentially like seeing like the difference between humans
(26:13):
and a lot of primates is where we ended up
moving to the savannah and away from these these more
sort of like forest regions, although there are mandrils and
baboons that also do.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
This, but it is really it makes more sense on
like a more basic level of what it does for
your survival chances. Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
It's such a It's like, it's such a dramatic change
that it seems to me something dramatic like being able
to thermo regulate in an environment that is very hot
and hostile to something that cannot run effectively in the heat.
That makes a lot of sense to me. And so
we potentially lost our hair because of that, And so
(26:57):
it's interesting because also that the thermoregulation idea and losing
our hair may have actually resulted in our skin being
a bit thicker. Our skin is actually thicker than a
lot of primates, and one of the potential reasons for
that is without hair, now we don't have that armor,
so we kind of have to make up for it
(27:19):
by having thicker skin. And then ironically, another theory is
that with this thicker skin, that actually makes wound healing harder,
so you can There's just so many odd trade offs
that happen with evolution, and these theories really show how
tricky it is, because you know, what do weigh better
the ability to heal or to not be injured in
(27:41):
the first place, And how do you kind of weigh
both of those things and have them come into balance
for an organism to be successful.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Yeah that I have to say. I'm surprised to learn
that our skin might be thicker than that of other primates.
But yeah, wondering like, have.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
You ever tried to insult a chimpanzee?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
They really roll with it. Yeah, give them credit. I mean,
not great at roasting though, they don't seem to get it,
but they do take a joke.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Well huh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I I personally
don't want to insult a gorilla. I don't want to
see what happens. They're generally nice.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
But did you weigh in on the one hundred men
versus you know, one gorilla thing? Have you? I'm assuming
you've covered this at Nauvoom.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I mean, do the men like, do they have is
this a is it one man at a time? Do
they have weapons? Are they wearing the armor?
Speaker 2 (28:43):
No, it's one hundred naked men. Okay, wine, well groom
didn't clothed gorilla, all right, I have details.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
One hundred naked men. I mean, okay, so obviously I
think the men went in this situation. I think that
it's gonna be. It's the it's gonna be sort of
like the It's sort of like bees versus murder hornets,
where the bees surround the murder hornets and wiggle until
the murder hornets die and some bees may be lost
(29:15):
in the process. This is how I imagine one hundred
naked men versus a gorilla. They dog pile the gorilla.
Of course, some of them are going to valiantly lose
their lives in the great gorilla battle. I'm also wondering, though,
It's just like, but why gorilla is generally very nice, right,
I mean, they're actually quite chill.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
That is really, that is really the question is why
are you thinking about this? Leave these poor gorillas alone,
them alone, relatively non violent primates, and let them do
the thing. I think exactly. I'm assuming it's a they're
being attacked. They're the ones being attacked, and they're defending themselves.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
In this scenario, the men are the gorilla. The gorilla
glas being attacked. Yeah, I would assume that too.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
I don't think the girl is starting the melee against
the hundred.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
I don't yeah, I don't think. Yeah. I think gorillas
are too focused on leaf and termite to do that.
You know, they just want to hang out and do
leaf and termite, and men are going like writing on
Twitter or whatever, going like I think I could beat
a gorilla.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Guess what.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
The girl is not even thinking about you, man, girl
is not even thinking about you.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That's so sad. It's true. We're humans are the only
species that would take the time to yeh about this.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah, no, no, there they're out. They're living their best
life while we're seething online. So keep that in mind.
We're going to take a quick break and when we
get back, we're going to talk about a tiny deadpool.
This is really interesting to me because when I was
reading this, this report on this new review of the studies, like,
(31:01):
I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite
little freaks of nature, which is the spiny mouse, which
is such a strange Anneal, have you ever heard of
this cave?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I have not heard of the spiny mouse. No, so.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
We have talked about this on the show before, but
it bears repeating if you haven't heard that episode. It also,
I think is just so relevant because it's such an
interesting connection to everything we've been talking about, the wound healing,
the loose skin, the presence of hair. So there is
this it's a genus, so there's multiple species within it.
(31:39):
It's these adorable little mice called spiny mice. They're more
closely related to durbils than to the house mouse, but
they look very much like mice.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
I'm looking at a picture of them now, very cute.
They almost look like the kangaroo, rat or something. They
have a little longer nose than I expected, small nutsing spines,
the spine, the aspect.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Of this they have. It's more. They should be called
bristle mice, but I guess nobody put me in charge
of naming things. They should. But you know, they you know,
all right, But they have guard hairs that are coarser
and a little bit sturdier. So their guard hairs make
them less appealing of a prey versus maybe a little
(32:26):
rodent who has soft hairs. It's just like it hasn't
reached the level of say like a porcupine or a hedgehog,
where those those hairs have become really hard in stuff
such that they really hurt and they can really pokey good.
These ones, the bristles are unpleasant for predator and kind
of pokey like if you've ever like with a hair
(32:47):
brush or you know, something like or a piece of wheat,
you know, like or grass or something, and you kind
of sticks on your hand. You're like, ah, it's not
a great feeling, but it's not like hurry.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
So that's.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
If I'm really hungry, I'm eating a hairbrush. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
So.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So spiny mice are found in African deserts. They are
these amazingly cute little guys. And then it just turns
into this like horror show, which is that they have
this cool trick if they do get caught, which is
just letting their skin fall off, so they will wiggle around,
(33:31):
and the strength of which their skin clings to the
underlying structure is much weaker than other rodents and much
much weaker than like most other animals. So if you know,
if you're like kind of holding the skin of this
mouth and it's like wiggling it around, that skin just
pops right off at a certain point. Yeah, and it's
(33:55):
this is not this is not a mistake. This is
a feature, not a bug, because this is essentially giving
them a chance to escape. So the predator gets like
a fistful of hair and skin and it's like, Okay,
I have something, and the mouse gets away. And so
(34:15):
the question though, is now that it has this huge,
gaping wound on its body, because it's skin just popped off,
what does it do right. It seems like this would
be a terrible strategy because now you're wounded, you risk infections.
It's really nasty. Within a single day, that wound has
(34:37):
already clotted, scabbed over, and the surface area has been reduced.
Using that we talked about, that wound contraction method of
just sort of the wound cinching shut, it has already
contracted by over half of the surface area that was
exposed is now reduced by half. That's the first day
(34:59):
of healing. In three days, new skin has already grown
over the wound, including follicle regeneration, and even parts of
their bodies that normally mammals in general can't heal very well,
like ear cartilage, which doesn't heal very well. That's one
(35:19):
of the reason we can do piercings right and keep
that hole in our ear. Those their ears can actually
completely regrow, which is wild.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
This is fascinating, especially because so it sounds like these
spiny mice live in the desert and that's you're losing
your skin along with the infection you're mentioning also just
the risk of dehydration. Yes, your skin helps you maintain
that hydration to lose that. I mean, it seems like
(35:50):
such a counterintuitive skill set for an animal living out
there to have. That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, I mean it's something where yes, they could still die,
but they will definitely die if they're caught by a
predator and eaten. And so it's it's this trade off
where their chance of survival seems to increase by having
this like disconnectable skin, and then they compensate for all
(36:19):
these risks by having this incredible healing process unlike anything
we really see in other mammals. So and yeah, so
like essentially, in order to help protect them from that
massive dehydration, they're sensing that moonshet as quickly as possible,
reducing the surface area that's exposed to evaporation, exposed to bacteria.
(36:43):
Uh and then yeah, immediately kind of like putting like
they're sinching it. They're using the Okay, I'm gonna get
this re epithelialization. Did they do that? You get it? Great?
Kay pronunciation? So uh, yeah, they they regenerate that really
quickly and amazingly though. Not only are they fast, they
(37:03):
don't generate a lot of scar tissues, so they actually
have this kind of loose collagen matrix that matches the
other tissues. So you'd think like they would just kind
of you know, I compared them to Deadpool. They're actually
way better than Deadpool because of it. Instead of Ryan
Reynolds basically having sort of like this patchwork face where
(37:24):
he's still handsome but he looks kind of sunburned, but
he's supposed to look really grotesque, they the.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Most beautiful man in the world.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah, it's yeah, they didn't, you know. It's sort of
one of those things.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
All yeah, look at.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Me, I'm unlovable. I'm Ryan Reynolds with a bad subburn. Yeah,
come on, guy. Anyways, but yeah, these mice, actually they're
more I should say, they're more like Wolverine. Right, he's
got the regeneration, right, I'm getting that. Please, I don't
want to be attacked.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
I will sidetrack this whole episode and to extended detail
on the Wolverine weaponex lore. But yes, you are right.
They both share a similar, if not the exact same
regenerator properties.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Right, all right, it's only a short period of time
where they do look kind of gnarly because like their
skin just pops off in big chunks, which is, you know,
a little bit of a nightmare. But yeah, So they
are able to regenerate hair, follicles, epidermis, dermis, sweat glands,
fat cells, nerves, muscles, cartilage, and they even have some
(38:36):
evidence that they can regenerate parts of spinal nerves that
are really difficult for say, other mammals to regenerate. Right, Like,
when we have a spinal energy, it does not regenerate
very well.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
No, this is fascinating to me, and I have the
sinking fear that you're going to follow this up by
saying that we have almost driven it to extinction and
will never be able to stay to learn about how
we as humans could benefit from this.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
No, we're actually studying, like this is one of the
rare cases where we are studying it and it's not
it's it doesn't seem to be a near extinction.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
It's fantastic because this is amazing. I'm just thinking about
all the potential benefits from it. You're exactly right, Like
just in terms of burn patients, in terms of patients
with neurologic damage, nerve damage. To find as many ways
possible as we can to learn to regenerate those things
which are very difficult, as many options and as angles
we can find is fascinating. What's also fascinating to me
(39:37):
is when I did google it once you started talking
about it and spiny mouse comes up, the first question
it offers to answer for you is why do spiny
mice ment straight? I don't know why that is of
all the things that we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I mean, as as far as I know, they probably
amin straight in this for the same reason every.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Every y mammal, unsuccessful pregnancy results into crosis, the shedding
of the functional layer of the uterus, the endometrium. So
I don't don't know why for the spike be bouse.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Fastening. There must but that must be that some that
feels like it's too deep of a cut for like
random people to be doing. There's got to be some
like research intern who's like, wait, why is this dying
thing menstruating all the time. I'm trying to study it.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
A lot, just view.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Yeah that's wild. So yeah, I mean it's it's it's
really amazing. It's healing ability is really amazing. So a
couple of things are really interesting about this Uh. It
also demonstrates a better cardiac healing than other mouse species,
which again is very interesting. And so there's a few
things going on with this mouse. I mean, let me
(40:53):
preface it by saying, I don't know, and I don't
think anyone knows exactly what's going going on with the
spiny mouse. It's mostly this sort of conjecture because they're
working on research and hopefully at some point we will
know more about them. But one of the things with
(41:15):
the spiny mice is that when you look at their skin, right,
they have really loose skin. So, like we talked about
in the first part of the show, where you got
loose skin, it's easier to kind of synch that up
like a draw string bag and do a wound contraction.
But they also have a really high density of hair follicles,
(41:36):
and they have really thick hair follicles. So they've got
like everything going on that we've talked about earlier in
terms of animals that have faster wound healing, right, loose skin,
a lot of hair, and thick hair. But that obviously
doesn't necessarily explain everything, right, because if they have faster
cardiac healing. It's hard for me to imagine by what
(41:59):
process their skin would help in that, right, Like I
suppose there could be some weird migration of stem cells
from the skin to cardiac tissue, but I don't. I
have never heard of anything like that.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
It's probably a separate mechanism, but how it's related is interesting.
What there are cells that line, you know, your cardiac
the cardiac lining. I mean, I guess when you talk
about cardiac healing, I mean, what does that mean. Are
they like injuring the heart or are they doing what
humans do, which is like they plug up the arteries
and then see if they can re epitheliize that or
(42:36):
if there can be like new vasculature that forms, because
what could I've done really just hand waving here, But
you know, I'm wondering if what they're showing is that
there is a growth of vasculature to feed blood vessels
to the rest of the heart if one is injured,
for example, because that could make sense. That could be
(42:58):
like stem cell active, causing more or hyper vascularization of
the tissue of the heart. So that's fascinating. I mean,
I would love to know about what they're actually doing
in regards to these studies, how they're studying this. I mean,
because it sounds like we could learn not only the
(43:18):
skin stuff, not only the wound healing, not only nerve damage,
but we could also learn how to heal scarred cardiac
tissue potentially from these animals.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, I believe it does have something to do with
the revascularization around the heart. I think it might also
have some ability to tolerate, say like heart attacks, and
to heal the heart tissue after like an schema schemic event.
I hope I'm saying that.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Yeah right, yeah event, Yeah, blood flow.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Right exactly, So damaged heart tissue as well as potentially
healing more of the blood vessels. It might be sort
of both things. They can't regenerate the tissue in the
same way that they can regenerate their skin tissue. It's
not like you can they can just like completely damage
to the heart and then regrow the heart like they
can with their skin. So it's there's definitely some separate
(44:15):
process going on. Another interesting aspect to the mices, when
they look at one thing they do understand a little
better is their their ear healing is they can see
that they form again, really hoping I nail the pronunciation
of this. I think it's called a blastema, which is
like this this cluster of undifferentiated cells like stem cells
(44:40):
that form sort of this glob, and then from that
glob it can start like you know, sit like these
little undifferentiated cells move on out and start rebuilding whatever
tissue is needed in that area. And so you see
similar actually similar structures in say salamander limbs, where salamanders
can rea grow entire limbs, and so they also have
(45:03):
a similar like it's just a blob of undifferentiated cells
them forms in the area and then basically sends out
like different units like Okay, you go over here and
then you figure out like hey, I need to be
this kind of tissue cell and then develops into it
and then it can regrow entire limbs that way.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
You know. I've heard about that with lizards that they're
in going back to Marvel Lore doctor Connor's and the
lizard and how he regrows his arm but becomes a monster,
But I haven't heard about it much with mammals. I mean,
in warm blooded creatures. Are there other mammals that can
(45:47):
have the same sort of regenerative growth.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
I mean, most mammals can to some extent have regenerative growth,
but we can't do entire limbs. Don't know of any
mammal that can regrow an entire limb, uh it has
we we can partially regrow things though, right like, so
with this spiny mice them regrowing entire skin structures is
(46:13):
pretty similar. That's maybe they're may be the most similar
when you can compare mammals to salamanders, to lizards, but
even like people, right like, if you it depends on
like we can regrow structures to some extent, it just
really the point at which you can chop an arm
off for a human being to regrow is basically just
(46:35):
the very tippy tippy tips of our fingers, right like,
we can regrow a little bit of our fingertips, but
any any further down where we can't. We can't handle that.
Whereas uh, salamanders essentially just have a much higher higher
tolerance for having their limb regrowth start at like being
able to have that limb bud essentially reform and then
(46:59):
start developed being a new limb, which we cannot and
other mammals cannot.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Do what a bummer.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
I know, it would be great. I I wanna, I
wanna have that ability. But I'd like it to be
where you not only grow like a new limb, but
like maybe an extra one. So every time you get hurt,
like you get like a little hand that comes out
of like that injury. That would be so cool.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
You have to buy a new wardrobe like all the
time though.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah, but then imagine all the snacks you could hold
in all the little hands that you have. Now fair,
I think about this a lot. Yeah, yeah, So yeah,
we got we got weird mice that are growing their skin,
which could be uh if we player cards right which
(47:51):
right now we don't seem to be, but it could
be if we research them more, they may help us
understand our own uh slow heat healing process and maybe
how we can improve healing both boo boos and heart booboos.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Yeah cardio.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
Sorry, the scientific term is cardiac booboo.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah yeah, I mean, don't embarrass me in front of
my doctor friends. That is what we call it. I know,
I think that is That's fascinating. Again. One thing I
love about coming on the show is just being introduced
to these these animals that have all the the in
(48:32):
vivo studies we could want right there, Yeah, to learn
more about ourselves, Like, I think it's a great way. Two,
it's a great way to build the science is to
to learn about these animals, you know, of course in
an ethical way, and you know too, to learn a
little bit more about their healing process and how different
(48:54):
things can be. It's just nothing else. It opens up
our minds to the possibilities of what we could be
doing with humans. I think that's really fun. It's really
fun because if you get so as doctors, we get
so like at some point locked into what we can
do and what we do know and what happens currently
with the human body. It requires people thinking outside of
the box like this, to be like, Okay, what is
(49:17):
this animal doing that's different, and then someone to take
that information and to eventually work multiple steps, obviously to
the point where how can this benefit us? Which I
know makes me sound like a monster. I do love animals,
even if they can't help us. But I think it's
really exciting. It's really exciting to another great reason why
(49:38):
we need to be doing research.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Because I mean, I'm not an I'm not a vegetarian,
So the idea that I would make draw the line
at doing animal research as long as it's you know,
done humanely, right that it's you know, I don't need
to eat meat, but I think help people with survive
(50:02):
heart attacks and stuff is very important. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, it's really exciting. It's really fun to yeah, to
see that and to be like this, to keep thinking
of new possibilities. A lot of that the animals are fantastic.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah, absolutely, and I mean hopefully also gives us more
incentive to Like you said, even though the spiny mouse,
there could be some species that are in trouble. I
don't actually know if there are any that are endangered,
but certainly a lot of species are not endangered. But
I think it just when we keep our natural ecosystems functioning,
(50:38):
and there's just like an incredible library of genetic knowledge
that is completely irreplaceable, right. Like we've talked about this
before actually when I had you on, Like we talked
about the gas rooting frog, this frog that has this
amazing ability not to kill its own offspring that it
has in its stomach and somehow its stomach acid doesn't
burn through its own offspring. And just the fact that
(51:02):
that went extinct and we don't have that incredible sort
of like you imagine if these spiny mice went extinct,
right like this, this incredible ability that this animal has,
So yeah, it's a I think it's it is something
that really it's a good way to be humbled too,
that like, look, humans are great, we're very very smart,
(51:23):
but we can't just regrow a huge chunks of our
skin in like three days. We can't lose like sixty
percent of our skin and then regrow it and be okay.
So yeah, just respecting these little guys.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
I mean, and we talked about this last time too.
It is one of those things where I could easily
see some politician saying, can you believe that we're spending
a million dollars to keep a mouse alive in this environment?
In you were like, yeah, there's a really good reason
for that. There's a really good reason. It may not
(51:59):
be obvious right away, but research is always good, you know,
learning good research is always good for us. So whether
or not it's obvious initially right away or not, it is.
I'm sure whoever started looking at the desert mouse, I'm sorry,
not the spiny mouse didn't know at first all the
(52:20):
potential benefits of what it can do or what it
can be, and they just start studying it because they're interested.
And now we know it can do these remarkable things.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
So yeah, grant writers, just just include in your grant
somewhere that this might help the libido of aging white
men in Congress and you know that's there. You go,
funding that's it.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
All right.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Before we go, we got to play a little game
called Guests, Who's Squawk and the Men the Mystery Animal
Sound Game. Every week I play a mystery animal sound
in you the guests, and you the listener, try to
guess who is making this sound. It could be any
animal in the world. Last week's Mister Animals sound hint
was this found in eastern North America. You might find
this little guy boogie wogging, and who can blame him
(53:11):
with a call like this? Okay, here we go. Oh yeah, god,
I love this guy. Okay, Oh it's so cute. Favorite
bird call the bird? Okay, Oh I dang, this is
(53:35):
a first. I've never accidentally given a hint. I didn't
mean to, but yes it is a bird.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Hint to new hint because I can't keep my mouth shut.
But yeah, this ahe is so cute. COVID, you got
any guesses for this adorable little sound?
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Is that this week's or last week?
Speaker 1 (53:55):
So that you're playing that's last week's that I'm flu fun.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
It's okay. It's a bird and as like a little squeak,
and I think blue jays are squeaky. Is it a
blue jay?
Speaker 1 (54:07):
No?
Speaker 2 (54:09):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (54:11):
It is the American woodcock. So congratulations to Chad F.
Max and Laura W. Who guessed correctly. American woodcocks. Uh
kind of you gotta google it. They're so cute they
they make. In addition to that adorable little pink sound,
(54:32):
they have these cute little bodies and they have long
beaks that are way too big for their tininess. But
another thing that they do that is just so adorable
is they like to rock back and forth on the ground.
And if you've seen like a gift of a weird
little bird doing what looks like the boogie woogie, that's
an American woodcock because they and one of the theories
(54:55):
for why they do this is that they're trying to
coax earthworms up out of the ground, essentially by mimicking
the vibrations of rain on the ground, which for worms
would be bad news because when it rains, they come
out of the ground because they can drown if they
stay in the soil. And so wow, one of the
(55:16):
one of the theories, like, there are a few theories
about why they do this, and this is one of them.
And my favorite one is that they're doing this to
try to coax worms up out of the ground with
their little boogie woggeeing dance. It's adorable. They're so cute, very.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Poly trees of them.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
It's like very like exactly if you walk with if
you walk with rhythm, you will attract the worm.
Speaker 2 (55:38):
Yeah, exactly. All right, let me let me let me
hear the wine for next week. I think I'm gonna
get this.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, ah yeah, all right. So the
hint for this week's the ceria sound is this. This
fierce little carnivore is like a wolf that you can
fit in your pocket. All right. Can you hear that.
Speaker 2 (56:05):
Very high pitched sound.
Speaker 1 (56:10):
You do not need to adjust your headphones. It is
that thing that sounds like something is wrong.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
With the audio, guess, and it's wolf like.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
I'll just repeat the hint. It is that this fierce
little carnivore is like a wolf that you can fit
in your pocket.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
Okay, here one more time.
Speaker 1 (56:36):
They hear it in a sentence, the sentences.
Speaker 2 (56:42):
And then wolf. Okay, do you know what I think?
That's a trick question. I think it's a wolf spider
and somehow making the squeaky sound, which I don't know
spiders can make a sound. That's between that and my
pony reference. I think I have out of myself as
someone doesn't know much about any animals.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
That's an amazing guest. There are spiders who can make sounds,
so that is not a bad guess.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
At all, but it's not correct.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Fine, I can't tell you. Okay, no spoilers because you
got to wait until next week when I answer who
is making that sound? And if you out there think
you know who that is, you can write to me
at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. That's right,
you can compete directly head to head with an actual
(57:33):
medical doctor. Tell your friends Kevin, thank you so much
for joining me today.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
Oh, thank you so much for having me. I always
learned so much when I come on the show. It's
so much fun. I really have in the recent months
to year has really been trying to learn as much
as I can about stuff because I feel like it
keeps me young when I do. I'm trying to like
reignite my love of education and learning, and this show
is such a great way to do that. So I
(58:03):
really appreciate that. Thanks for having me on and thanks
for doing the show.
Speaker 1 (58:07):
Yeah. Absolutely. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (58:10):
I am on a podcast called The House of Pod.
It is a humor adjacent, fun little medical podcast. You'll
hear lots of people come on the show, from Peter
Hotez and other world renowned infectious disease doctors and specialist
physicians of all kinds, to musicians like Portugal de man
(58:32):
or comedians like mos Er Browny or amazing podcast host
Slash and well behavior offficionados like Katie Golden, who's going
to be on as we speak, is on this week's episode.
By the time you hear this, it will be last week's.
So go back and.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
Listen to that's right, cross politics, cross pollination people.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
That's right. So you'll if you like this show, we're
sort of in a similar vein but more human y,
and I promise I know more about human bodies than
to animals. So but you're gonna like it. It's a
similar vibe. It's like, you know, let's wear animals too.
So if you like animals.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Exactly, as long as you stick to human doctoring and
you don't do pony doctoring, then you should be fine.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
But I.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
I highly recommend the podcast. I actually, when I have
to fly, like say, I'm visiting my family back in
the US, that's one of my go to things to
load up on my phone so I can just listen
and learn stuff about medicine. But it's not intimidating because.
Speaker 2 (59:35):
You know, I'm not not intimidating.
Speaker 1 (59:37):
Yeah, you're not intimidating. I know what were until, right,
So if you're if you're interested in medical topics and
you're curious about stuff and you want to learn in
a fun, friendly way, highly recommend that podcast.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (59:53):
Thank you guys for listening to the show. If you
leave writing a review, I read every single one. Appreciate
all the reviews. Thank to the Space Classics for their
super awesome song. Ex Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the iHeartRadio, app Apple podcasts are you guess what?
Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Where?
Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Have you listen to your favorite shows? I'm not your mother.
I can't tell you what to do. But don't go
out there and try to get bit by a radioactive
spiny mouse. You're just probably gonna get real sick, mostly
from the radiation and maybe a little bit from the
mouse bite. So don't do that. We can all be.
We can't all be Peter Parker. Some of us just
(01:00:31):
get mad mouse tumors. So don't do that, all right, everybody,
see you next Wednesday.
Creature Feature News
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Katie Goldin
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