September 17, 2024 • 44 mins
The Ig Nobel Prizes once more honor ten studies that make us laugh, but then make us think. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe continue their annual tradition of discussing some of their favorites from this year’s winners.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And it is that time again. Sometimes we don't get
around to these till November, but this year we're hitting
them fresh off of the shelf. The winners were just
announced last Thursday evening. I believe it is time wants
more to discuss some of the winners for this year's
Ignobel Prizes. Now, if you're not familiar with these, if
you haven't been listening to the show that long, or
(00:38):
maybe you just need a reminder. The ig Nobels are
a series of awards given out once a year by
a scientific humor journal named the Annals of Improbable Research,
edited for many years now by Mark Abrahams, and their
stated purpose is to quote honor achievements that first make
people laugh and then make them think. We always have
(00:59):
a great time with these. You can learn more about
them at Improbable dot com. They have a big one
pager there where you can go through all of the
winners throughout the years. There's a lot of amusing stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
In there that's right, and they feature works that are
funny for different reasons. Sometimes the papers that get selected
for prizes are things that are supposed to be funny,
like they are intentionally satirical. One that often comes to
mind is a paper we covered on the raiology of cats,
meaning the study of how cats flow our cats a
(01:33):
liquid or a solid. But more often these are just
real scientific experiments that are straightforward science in one way
or another, published in real scientific journals that happen to
have some weirdly funny either methodology, the format of the
experiment is funny, or the finding of the experiment is funny.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean it varies greatly. It depends on what
the subject matter is, the methodology, and yet your point,
sometimes it is something that was intended to be more
overtly satirical. And then also the other thing that's worth
driving home here, and this will become very apparent as
we get into some of the winners we're discussing and
from this year, is that sometimes these are fairly recent
(02:14):
studies that have recently made it through even the mainstream
news cycle because they are kind of giggle inducing. But
other times they dig deeper and they get stuff that's
decades old. So you know, it's not necessary, it's not
as timely as some awards shows might be. But the
results are always interesting, you know, sometimes they really pull
out a deep cut. Now, in the past, we've been
(02:37):
covering these for many years. In the past, we've tried
to cover all of the winners, or a vast majority
of the winners. I don't think we're doing that this year.
I think we're probably just going to cover some of
the winners, some of the ones that jump out to
us the most, that would be the most fun for
us to chat about. But again, if you want to
read the fullest of awards from this year and check
out all of the research that got highlighted this year's awards, here,
(03:00):
you can go to the Journal's web website. Again, that
is improbable dot com.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Robert, you all right, if I kick things off with
this year's Physiology Prize.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yes, give the people what they want.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Trivia question, how many different holes in your body can
you breathe through?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Take your time think about it.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I had to think, and I was like, I'm pretty
sure the answer is three. Right, I got mouth, nostril, nostril,
any other serious ones, And I think that's it now.
Of course, these three orifices do not represent fundamentally different
ways of breathing. They're just different doorways to the exact
same hallway, right. They're all different openings that lead to
(03:43):
the same exchange machinery. In the lungs, of course, the
cells in our bodies need oxygen for cellular respiration. Oxygen
is used to break down the energy containing molecules that
we get from food to generate a tendency in triphosphate
or ATP, which powers our bodies at the cellular level.
This respiration process in the cells, of course, requires a
(04:06):
constant supply of incoming oxygen, and it generates carbon dioxide
as a primary waste product, which is also exchanged through
the lungs purged when we breathe out. So, yes, these
three holes are the normal three ways you get oxygen
into the lungs and carbon dioxide out. But here's a
perhaps tougher trivia question. Can any of our body cells
(04:29):
get their oxygen from anywhere other than the lungs. The
surprising answer to this one is yes. Now, the proportion
of our cells that can do this is relatively small.
Most of our cells rely on oxygen delivered through the
blood stream from the lungs to perform cellular respiration. So
(04:51):
don't start thinking you don't need your lungs. But it's
true that some cells in our bodies acquire oxygen by
passive diffusion from the surrounding air. Unsurprisingly, these tend to
be cells on the outsides of our bodies, so the
very outermost layer of our skin, cells in the top
quarter of a millimeter or so, or maybe a little
(05:13):
bit deeper. Also, the cells on the outside front of
our eyeballs, according to what I was reading, gets some
amount of oxygen from the surrounding air. This would be
cells in the tissue known as the cornea. And it's
especially important here for the cornea not to be completely vascularized,
(05:34):
not to be supplied with blood vessels, because we have
to see through the lens of our eyes covering the
pupil in order to get the light in onto the retina.
You can imagine it might be a little distracting if
the lenses of your eyes were full of blood vessels.
To supply all those cells with freshly oxygenated blood.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well, this seems like a refreshingly mature subject area for
the ignobells to have focused on here something about our
cornea is breathing. Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That's not what this prize is about. So this year's
Physiology prize was awarded to and I apologize if I
pronounced anybody's name wrong, but two a list of authors
including Riyo Okabe, Toyo, Toyofumi, f Chin Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoonoyama,
yo Hey Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson,
(06:27):
Gokul khanan Aji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Daate, and Takanori takebe four
discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus.
All right, there it is now. This paper was published
in the Journal MED in May or June of twenty
twenty one. I've seen different citations on that. In the
(06:50):
spring of twenty twenty one, whenever that issue was and
I was reading several supplementary sources to get some background
and explanation on their findings. And so these sources include
a commentary piece also published in the Journal MED, sort
of explaining the background and significance of this main research paper.
The commentary piece was by a Yale gastroentrology fellow named
(07:15):
Caleb Kelly. This was published along with the paper and
the same issue, I believe, And then also I was
reading a New York Times article reporting on the findings
and including some interviews. This was by Elizabeth Preston from
May twenty twenty one. So I think this paper is
a bullseye in terms of the Ignobel's goal of making
people laugh and then making them think, yes, it is
(07:38):
about breathing through your butt, but it sent me down
a lot of interesting trails and it may turn out
to have quite real medical significance. So the procedure that
they're going to be describing in this paper is being
called EVA or EVA, which stands for interial ventilation via anus.
(07:59):
Shout out to all the people named EVA or AVA.
If this becomes a part of the common medical parlance,
you're just gonna have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It, yea. It might have to bust out full Evelyn
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah. So Caleb Kelly in the commentary piece makes an
interesting observation about this, which is that, yes, it's funny
to think about breathing via the anus. But Kelly writes,
quote initial perception of AVA is likely to parallel that
of fecal microbiota transplant for recurrency deficial infection, which not
(08:30):
long ago was deemed untenable for quote practical and esthetic reasons,
but now has less stigma as data supporting effectiveness are overwhelming.
So this is talking about another medical discovery in recent
decades that was once considered much more weird and shocking
the use of fecal microbiota transplants literally transplanting poop from
(08:55):
one person's digestive system into another and carrying along with
it all of the microbiota that live on it, transplanting
that into the digestive system of somebody who has maybe
an antibiotic resistant infection by the Bacterium seed officile. This
was once considered a fairly crazy treatment idea, but now
(09:18):
it is widely used and is considered generally very effective.
So could ventilation via the anus one day have a similar.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Arc Yeah, I mean it's possible, because yeah, I remember
when the idea of fecal transplants was more of this
kind of like fringy. Oh my goodness, imagine imagine if
this became standard, and now it pretty much has. You know,
it's not that crazy of an idea, So I don't
know it's possible. I mean, the thing is if it
ultimately works and it helps save lives, that you know,
(09:47):
that's going to make all the difference.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
So the New York Times article and this included some
quotes from one of the lead authors of the study,
doctor Takanori Takebe of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University,
who apparently got the idea to work on this after
experiencing his father fighting lung disease. And of course part
of the problem is, you know, when a patient's lungs
(10:10):
are failing, a hospital will usually try to use a
mechanical ventilator to help keep the patient alive and keep
their tissues oxygenated. But there are cases where this solution
either isn't available or isn't appropriate. One example they cite
is the horrible event that there was a there was
a mass shortage of mechanical ventilators during the early COVID
(10:32):
nineteen pandemic. So of course mechanical ventilators are a finite resource,
but also there are other complications. This is a point
made by Kelly in that commentary piece. Kelly writes, quote,
even if mechanical ventilation is available. In severe disease, gas
exchange may be impaired to the degree that oxygenation is inadequate.
(10:54):
So in some cases you may be able to actually
use a mechanical ventilator to pump into the lungs, but
you still will not be able to get enough oxygen in.
And so Kelly says quote, faced with this situation, extra
corporeal membrane oxygenation is a technology that can temporarily replace
the functions of the heart and lungs, providing forward flow
(11:15):
of blood and gas exchange using an external apparatus. And
if you've never seen this, this is like a type
of machine that essentially does the job of the heart
and lungs outside of the body. They hook up an
artery in a vein to this machine and it pumps
the blood through, oxygenates it, and then returns it to
the body. But Kelly goes on to say, quote yet,
extra corporeal membrane oxygenation has inherent risks, requires significant outlay
(11:40):
of human labor and financial resources, and therefore availability is limited.
So the question is what if the EVA the ventilation
through the anus approach could help increase the range of
options available when a patient has failing lungs. So the
Times article gets into the question of how did this
(12:01):
idea come about? Doctor Takeba had Apparently he had previously
experimented with using stem cells to try to grow new
auxiliary organs like tiny lungs, but branching out of this,
he instead got the idea of using body organs that
we already have organs other than the lungs to provide
(12:21):
oxygen to our blood. Now, the inspiration for this, I
thought was very interesting. It was a bit of inspiration
from the animal kingdom. Takeba cited the example of a
fish called a loach. So a loach is any fish
from a family of freshwater fishes also known as the
kobitidy or cobitidoids. They're often fairly elongated, and some species
(12:46):
kind of look a little bit like snakes or eels
because they're kind of long, but they're fish. Like most fish,
Loaches primarily breathe with their gills, so they use the
gills these, you know, these sort of thin booklike surfaces,
to extract dissolved oxygen from the water around them. But
they have a backup method for getting extra oxygen if
(13:08):
they need it. Loaches can stick their heads up out
of the water and take a bite out of the atmosphere.
So they don't have lungs. They can't normally breathe through
their mouths like we can. Instead, a loach uses its
mouth to take in and swallow a mass of air.
Swallow the air into its digestive system, and that bubble
(13:31):
of air goes down into the digestive tract and then
the walls of the fishes intestines absorb extra oxygen from
the air that the fish eat.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Oh wow, they really are eating air.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah. I loved this fact and I didn't know about
this before. So the article sites of biologists talking about
these fish. The biologist is Jonathan Mark Wilson, who is
on faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and
Wilson says like, sometimes a loach will be trapped in
(14:04):
some kind of situation where the oxygen in the water
around it is not sufficient the oxygen that it will
normally get from its gills. So one example of this
would be if it is stuck in a pond or
even a puddle with low amounts of oxygen due to overcrowding.
There might be a lot of animals or other fish
in the water, and they're extracting a lot of the oxygen,
(14:25):
so it can't get enough with its gills. It has
this air eating method to get extra oxygen from the environment.
So that's a fish obviously fairly different biology than mammals
like us. But Ta Keba and colleagues wondered could a
mammals intestines do the same thing get oxygen from air
or even pure oxygen gas inserted into the digestive system.
(14:51):
So initial experiments showed that when mice were deprived of oxygen,
if you stuck an oxygen pump up the anus, it
did actually work. But in order for it to work well,
in order for it to work optimally, the researchers had
to sort of inflict little abrasions on the mucous membrane
(15:11):
of the intestinal wall, so when the wall was thinned,
the oxygen was absorbed better. Obviously, that's not ideal. Having
to scrape the inside of your colon or your intestines
to help you absorb anally supplied air is not the best.
So they came up with the second idea. Instead of
supplying O two in its gas form, what about a
(15:34):
liquid enema containing oxygen.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Oh my goodness, you're for science fiction fans out there.
This would of course be the same technology that the
deep divers are supposed to be using in James Cameron's
The Abyss.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Except that this would be in the other end of
the suit. Obviously, that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So the researchers here experimented with I don't know if
they name the chemical in the ABYSS, I don't recall,
but what they're working with here is a type of
perfluorochemical which exists in liquid form but is able to
absorb and carry gases, especially oxygen. Specifically, the chemical that
they used in this experiment was called perfluorodecyln or PFD,
(16:17):
which Kelly explains in his commentary. He says, it's a
it's a hydrocarbon where you strip the hydrogen atoms out,
you swap them with fluorine, which allows this fluid to
buckle in a bunch of oxygen, carry a lot of
oxygen along with it, and it is such a remarkable
(16:37):
oxygen delivery device. Here's here's more. The ABYSS style image
that experiments in the nineteen sixties showed that you could
take unconscious anesthetized mice and you could dunk them under
I was going to say underwater. It's not water under.
Submerge them in this fluid for hours and they would
breathe the liquid and they would survive. Apparently. It has
(17:00):
also been explored in various experiments as a potential platform
for artificial blood. We've talked about ideas about artificial blood
and episodes in the past. It is a long sought
type of prosthesis or medical device that has always been
somewhat elusive, and I think it for various reasons. There
(17:21):
were questions about whether it should continue to be pursued
as an artificial blood platform, but at least the idea
was there, and so the idea in this experiment was
try this stuff per fluorodecylin jacked full of oxygen, put
it up the anis into the colon to get extra
oxygen into the blood. And the experiment found, yes, it
(17:44):
did work. It worked with both mice and pigs that
were in a hypoxic state, meaning they were deprived of oxygen.
They were supplied with oxygen packed per flora chemicals in
this solution via the anis, and it signified bagantly improved
their levels of blood oxygen. There were also behavioral markers,
(18:05):
like the mice that had been inactive due to low
oxygen got up and started walking around again. However, there
are some important limitations to consider. One is time. So
Kelly in his commentary piece writes, quote, promising results are
also reported using a porcine model, meaning a pig model,
(18:25):
in which mean improvement in oxygenation after EVA innima persists
for eighteen point seven minutes. Thus, in current form, this
therapy requires repeated cycling of fluid, and the potential of
EVA is in short term treatment of hypoxia, so that
means it only lasts a short while, and in order
(18:46):
to keep getting continued effects and keep oxygenating the body
and the blood via the anus, you would have to
keep cycling in new fluid. Another thing to consider is
that breathing fulfills two extramely important jobs at the same time.
It brings in oxygen that your cells need, and it
also purges carbon dioxide that your cells have to get
(19:09):
rid of. And these early results showed more promise with
providing oxygen than with purging CO two. You have to
do both, and so Kelly writes, quote, EVA appears to
be more efficient at oxygen delivery than carbon dioxide removal,
and one can quibble that ventilation is an overstatement. Yet
the liquid used in EVA has capacity to carry carbon dioxide,
(19:33):
and the experiments presented test its effectiveness in hypoxia rather
than hypercarbiam models. So that's the thing. I guess left
yet to explore whether it could be effective at removing
carbon dioxide as well. Okay, there are other important complications
to consider, and Kelly mentions these. I didn't initially think
of them, but this is a good kind of practice
(19:56):
for thinking about medical problems. You solve one problem, maybe
create another. So the surface epithelium of the colon is
adapted to have low exposure to oxygen. That's just its
natural state. There's not usually a lot of oxygen getting
in there, and it's unclear if there would be any
negative consequences from exposing it to lots of unexpected oxygen. Also,
(20:23):
the gut is not just an organ, it is a world.
It's an inhabited world, and the inhabitants of that world
have great influence over us over our health. So would
anything happen to the microbial populations of the distal gut
if they were suddenly exposed to aerobic conditions instead of
(20:46):
their natural and aerobic conditions.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
That's interesting. I mean, just spitballing here, but I mean
you could potentially have a situation where following this kind
of treatment, you would have to have something like fecal
transplant in order to repopulate the gut it. Indeed, if
this procedure did theoretically like mess with the microbiome to
some degree.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Right, Yeah, so that's a good thing to raise. Kelly says.
The authors did investigate this somewhat. They looked at they
tried to see if there were markers of toxic blooms
of gut microbiota by looking for a bacterial indotoxin called
a lipopolysaccharide in the blood of these animals, and they
(21:30):
did not observe any increases at least in these cases.
But Kelly writes, quote, it must be remembered, however, that
the models of acute hypoxia in the study do not
fully reflect the complex multisystem insults experienced by critically ill
patients that add infection, inflammation, and hypoperfusion. So it's saying,
(21:53):
you know, if we ever actually were to move to
human trials here. Often a person who's in a state
where they need supplemental oxiden might have a lot of
different things going wrong in their body all at the
same time that could make them especially vulnerable to maybe
changes in oxygenation of gut tissues that are not normally oxygenated,
(22:13):
or changing the microbial environment and possibly causing a flare
up of some kind of you know, toxic bacteria you
don't want.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
That's a great point as well.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, so in the end they're sort of saying about
these these counter considerations like this, you know, this is
not what the colon was meant to do. The distal
gut is not It can apparently breathe a little bit,
you can get some oxygen in there, that'll help out,
but that's not what it was you know, designed by
evolution to do. And so we don't really know what
(22:43):
the consequences would be of repurposing it in this way,
especially for prolonged periods.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Now, this should not hold James Cameron back though. If
there's a sci fi application here, explore it. I mean,
that is what science fiction is for, that's.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Right, So, yes, I fully support all kinds of storytelling
with sci fi butt breathing astronauts. I don't know how
that would it would ultimately cause them to like evolve
in different directions where they like have different ways of language,
where they maybe end up speaking through their butts. I
don't know. But anyway, despite all these counter considerations, this
(23:18):
is a very fascinating and exciting early result. And you know,
some of the scientists quoted they said, like, obviously, we're
not at the human trial stage yet, we don't know
that this would be good for humans. But if it
did turn out to be a real way of additionally
supplementing oxygen, this could be a life saving thing in
many conditions. So we're not at the human trials yet,
(23:41):
but the fact that it worked in mammals like mice
and pigs is very promising and it may one day
become a way of getting extra oxygen to people who
badly need it.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Excellent. Yeah, I mean again, coming back to your point
about fecal transplants, they could very well be a situation
where people giggle today, but they giggle less and less
as the years go by. When if we realize that
this is an actual treatment that can be utilized to
save lives.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
That's right, Especially I see quoted in the media. Kelly
was talking about this point that like, don't let the
weirdness of this make you dismiss the idea, he told
The Times quote it really should be the data rather
than our visceral reactions to the concept that guide us.
Well said, so we'll see if this ever goes anywhere,
and if it does, maybe one day you will you
(24:26):
will benefit from from breathing through the butt.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
All right, Well, that was the Physiology Prize, and I
want to talk a little bit about the Biology Prize
from this year. This one is also a lot of
fun and it made me, you know, made me laugh,
but then also did true to the mission statement, make
me think a little bit more about about in this
case about dairy about the milking of because this particular
(25:02):
study that they honored this was in the Journal of
Dairy Science, and this one was from nineteen forty one,
so this is definitely an older study and we have
to sort of keep reminding ourselves of that this is
not like the cutting edge of research, but it is
historically interesting in like the research journey that dairy scientists
have been on.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Maybe the methods they employ are not the same ones
that would be used today.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Well, yes, one method in particular, which is really spelled
out in the initial write up on the prize. The
Biology Prize went to Fortace Elli and William E. Peterson
for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that's
standing on the back of a cow to explore how
and when cows spew their milk beautiful the paper was,
(25:49):
of course, was not titled that though the paper was
factors involved in the ejection of milk. Now, I think
you know everything you need to know really to know
why this is funny. And they apparently played it up
during the ceremony. They brought out a person in like
a big inflatable cow costume, and somebody brought out a
house cat got to set on top of the cow,
(26:11):
and I think they to somebody, look, I can you
can see from the image here or that I shared Joe,
that there is indeed a paper bag in one gentleman's belt.
I imagine that paper bag is about to be inflated
and then popped behind the cat. This was in fact
part of the methodology that was explored in this nineteen
forty one study.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
I wonder if the cat behaved itself during the ceremony I.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Mean, I would doubt it would. I would be doubtful
if this cat behaved, and I'm doubtful that any cats
that they attempted to use during the experiment behaved. But
you know, this one's so, this one's obvious why this
one is funny, And I've I've long found the topic
and I guess the trope of animals upon animal to
be rather amusing. This is long entertained us. There's a
(26:59):
motif of a monkey riding a horse that has a
very long history in East Asia, where you know, on
top of just checking off all the general boxes for
cute and whimsical, it is also associated with austerity. It
has to do with similarities between the sounds of the
words for monkey and for high official, so it's based
in the world of Chinese homonyms. So the general idea
(27:21):
is that, you know, it captures a sense of rapid
advancement in one's work. But again, the basic concept has
vast cross cultural appeal. There's something strange and fascinating about
say a goat standing on the back of another animal,
which sometimes they you know, you can observe this happening,
or or monkeys jumping on the backs of any like
large or befores that sort of thing. And so when
(27:44):
I saw that one of the honored studies this year
revolved around around frightening a cat sitting atop of a cow,
I was instantly all in. Plus, it's ultimately a study
regarding animal lactation, which makes it even more perplexing at
first pass, Like, what could this post we have to
do with milking a cow? Why are you scaring a
cat on top of the cow?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
I've got to know.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, all right, So a little background. This was again
a nineteen forty one dairy science paper, so it's kind
of a kind of a deep cut. Lead author Fortis
Eli was a professor and chairman of the Department of
Dairy Science at Ohio State University from nineteen forty seven
through sixty three, among other various jobs throughout his career.
So you know, this was a serious dairy science paper
(28:29):
of the time period. This was not a fluke. There's
nothing fringe about this. Basically, the stated reason for the
study is that cows and dairy herds will habitually let
down or hold up their milk, and that the physiological
factors involved were poorly understood at the time. Now I
had to look up the terminology here. According to the
(28:50):
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, lactation is
the continuous secretion and storage of milk in the utter,
But milk ejection or let is a short term reflex
effect that can be inhibited by pain or fear, but
can be stimulated by proper care and animal husbandry. Still,
(29:11):
at least ten percent of secreted milk, they point out,
will be retained in the utter as residual milk. So
the study is all about better understanding what's going going
on here again in nineteen forty one, because as is obvious,
a humans relationship with the domesticated cow tends to center
around milk. How do we get the milk out of
(29:31):
the cow? What are the best conditions to get the
milk out of the cow? And of course this equation
changes throughout the history of our relationship with cattle because
as things get more industrialized things, you know, there's a
huge effort to streamline things, industrialize things. But then this
(29:52):
can bring in various complications that end up hurting your
ability to actually get milk out of the animal, you know,
for various reasons. So we'll get into here, but One
of the big ones, of course, is are you making
the animal stressed out? Are you making animal afraid? Because
this inevitably ends up impacting the production and quality of
their milk. And I know that for any of you
(30:14):
four h kids out there, this is like a big
This is as obvious as it gets. This is an
overstatement of the obvious. But I think a lot of
us forget this. You know, we end up having this
kind of like video game idea of milking the cow,
where it's like, oh, here's cow, here's the milking process,
and it just equals milk.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
It's basically it's like a soda fountain, you know, it
just distributes the milk. But no, like a cow is
an animal, and the and its milk production and yield
is going to be influenced by things like how it
feels about its environment.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah. So in this nineteen forty one paper they cite
a nerve stimulant study where a nerve stimulant was administered
to cattle, to dairy cows to see how this would
affect of their milk production. There's another study they side
that involves them milking of cats. It has nothing to
do with their use of a cat, But it is
interesting that cats come up a couple of times in
(31:06):
the article. There's another study that looks at lactating rats
and another that involves whales and dolphins. And this paper
and its initial experiments get pretty into the weeds on
the physiological details of what's going on with a cow's milking.
But to get into the meat of the study, at
least as far as the igno bells are concerned, this
comes to a section on the effect of fright on
(31:29):
the ejection of milk.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
The specific use of the word fright there makes me
think we're dealing with something a little a little more
acute than stress.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, so what basically they were like, Well, for the
purposes of this study that involves several different things. For instance,
they denervated the left half of the utters, so remove
nerves in order to be able to compare the different
sides during this experiment. So you know, there's a lot
going on here that just the vocation of the cat
(32:00):
doesn't capture. But it did definitely in its early stages
involve quote. The following frightening at first consisted in placing
a cat on the cow's back and exploding paper bags
every ten seconds for two minutes later, the cat was
dispensed with as unnecessary.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh maybe that just mean they took it home, took it,
they didn't terminate the cat.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I think that I did not read that into it
at all. I mean one can. I can only imagine
they realized there were vast difficulties in getting a cat
to work with them for this study, because I guess
the idea here is you you scare the cat to
scare the cow, and or you scare both of them
at the same time, and the cat's fright will compound
(32:50):
the fright experienced by the cow. But then I guess
you're having to replace a cat that you've just terrified
every ten seconds for two minutes. And maybe that means
you've got to have multiple cats on hand, and cats
don't get along. So I just can't imagine how this
would work. It feels just very Sussian in its absurdity.
But I think the big take home here is that
(33:12):
they quickly realized, no, the exploding paper bag is sufficient,
Like we are scaring the cow regularly with the exploding
paper bag. The cat is just an unnecessary complication.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Wait, is there explanation anywhere why the cat was ever
included in the first place. Other I mean, I know,
like it just seems like, oh, that's even more to
deal with.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
No, they don't really get into it. I think it's
just implied that this was perhaps that perhaps they thought
it was necessary to actually have that fright stimuli, but
then they quickly realized that this was enough. There's another
bit where they refer back to it and they say
sight and sound stimuli. Exploding bags seems to have a
(33:55):
much more pronounced effect as measured by the rate of
milk ejection.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Okay, I'm imagining an experiment today where they test what
happens when you wake people up with a vampire standing
at the foot of your bed. But it's not good
enough to just have the vampire. You've also got to
put a lizard on their arm.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Yeah, it's that sort of thing. Yeah. So again, this
was a fairly involved experiment or series of experiments. They
also injected some of the cows with adrenaline and other
substances to test things out. Now, one of the things
again about a study like this is that it's not current.
It stands more as a part of the history of
(34:31):
research into the topic, rather than some new advancement or
some glimpse into the future. But it seems to be
agreed upon that stressed or fearful cows produce the hormone
adrenaline and this counteracts the activity of oxytocin. It inhibits
the milk let down. I mean. And again this probably
comes back to something that is really long realized in
(34:54):
animal husbandry, and that is that you need to take
care of your farm animals and you don't want your
dairy cows to be afraid or nervous. You need to
nurture a proper relationship with them. But again, I you
know what, you get the feeling that with the industrialization
of the farm, a lot of these things then have
to be relearned or you have to then go back
(35:16):
and realize, oh, this is why we always did it
this way, and if we are going to try and
mechanize this to varying degrees, we need to hold on
to these lessons from the past. Now, there have been
(35:37):
plenty more recent studies on callactation. Again, you know, dairy
remains a huge industry and there are always studies into
ways how to do it, you know, ways to do
it more efficiently, more humanely, and so forth. For instance,
there was a nineteen ninety nine study by Jay Russian
who they found that fears certain only plays a role
(36:01):
in milk production, and they found that the fear can
can certainly revolve around humans in the cow's vicinity, and
it can also you can have a situation where fear
of individual handlers can impact milk yield. So you know,
it's like cows often, I guess they can often feel
hard to read, at least for those of us who
(36:21):
are not involved in their care. And you can think, well,
they don't know what's going on, they don't know one
human from the next, But that doesn't seem to be
the case, and they can have certain associations with different humans.
And furthermore, they can they can have various fears and
anxieties around various containment systems, milking machines and so forth. Yeah,
(36:44):
I was looking at a write up for the University
of Minnesota Extension from twenty twenty three, or at least
that was like the update date on it by Marcia Indris,
and this author points out that the comfort of a
dairy cow is of course very important to milk yield,
to milk quality, and much more. They need proper handling
and environment in order to deliver to their fullest, and
(37:07):
the author points out that above all, this is of
course just the right thing to do. And I really
appreciate this point that we domesticated cows for this purpose.
We took something wild and we made it into what
it is so that it could produce milk for us.
Not it's young, but another species that just likes that
milk and grows to depend them on that milk, And
(37:28):
so we should treat them right, like it's we kind
of they didn't really have much of a say in
this bargain, but this bargain was made, and we kind
of need to keep our end up. But then the
author here also stresses that a comfortable cow is a
cash cow and that I like this one was a
little more perplexing, but I think it also seems solid
that today's cows are like high performance athletes, which makes
(37:51):
them more sensitive to negative aspects of their environment or management.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Well, I like that. So it's like, hey, we should
treat cows right because it's the right thing to do,
but also if you don't care, you better do it,
or they're not going.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
To give you the milk.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
You need.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
This also seems to be a certain commentary on the
way we treat high performance athletes like dairy cattle, like
like animals that we want a particular product out of which,
so maybe they're getting a little additional commentary in there. Yeah,
but yeah, this means factoring in quality human care, quiet
(38:28):
and peaceful environments. Proper resting space, head lunch space is
apparently very important. You know, it basically breaks down do
they have room to move their heads around soft stall
surfaces and again sensitive positive human handling. And again I'm
sure that those of you out there that grew up
around cattle and have more experience with cattle and other
(38:50):
farm animals, you're just nodding your head to this because
this is a no brainer. But again, I think it's
easy to forget these realities. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
Well, a lot of people don't know anything about farms.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we go to great pains at
times to distance ourselves from the realities of the farms,
both the positive and the negatives, or the perceived negatives
and sometimes the outright negatives. Certainly when you get into
some practices. Now, this reminded me of something that I
had heard about, and I had to look it up because
I think a lot of this came from a splendid
table article or audio piece that I heard on NPR
(39:24):
back I think in twenty fourteen, so I had to
look it up again, and basically revolves around water buffalo milking.
So basically you may have heard this through in various
works over the years, but the water buffalos seem to
be an even more pronounced example of everything we've been
discussing here, so highly susceptible to fall offs due to
(39:45):
minor changes in their milking routine, like even apparently the
presence of strangers they're not used to. I've read elsewhere
that yeah, that in some traditions of milking water buffalo
there's like one designated person for the water b in question,
Like you don't just mix it up, not anybody can
do it. So it's almost like it needs to be
(40:06):
an even more special relationship between the human and the
animal in this situation. And I was looking at a
paper here by Mikou at all. This is water buffalo
responsiveness during milking Implications for production outputs, reproduction fitness, and
Animal Welfare from twenty twenty two published in the journal
(40:27):
Animals and this study backed up a lot of these
same principles, talking about how well there have been attempts
to do things like give them oxytocin injections to keep
them calm, but then this can introduce animal welfare concerns
and it can disrupt ovarian cycles. So they ultimately recommend that, Okay,
(40:48):
you can select for calmer water buffaloes. But at the
end of the day, I mean, it seems like you
are dealing with a more sensitive species and a species
that is a little harder or maybe a lot hard
to industrialize, and so that is often held back efforts
or and or proposals to try and establish water buffalo
(41:10):
milk production more say in the United States. So I
don't know. Again, this is an example of where at
the top of it, I just found it funny that
serious researchers would place the cat on a cow back
and then slowly begin to inflate a brown paper bag
for science. But it, you know, it forced me to
sort of you know, realize, relearn, and you know, and
(41:33):
learn for the first time some of these realities around
the relationship between the dairy cow and dairy farmer.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I'm wondering, is the cat looking at them while they're
doing it, while they're like twisting off the end of
the bag and getting ready, are they making eye contact?
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Like? I can't help but imagine that whoever's idea was
to use the cat had not really been around cats
that much and just assumed that this was possible. Because
if you've been around cats, if you have a cat,
you know that they don't cooperate with the slightest little thing.
And the idea that you're going to get them to
cooperate in a scientific experiment like this, no, it just
(42:13):
it was doomed to failure. And in this case, you know, certainly,
if not doomed to failure, they at least quickly realized
this is a totally unnecessary part of the experiment. We
can streamline this experiment and remove this wild variable from it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Good thinking. These are professionals.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, but I kind of want to look out for
this in future studies, you know, cases where they were like, actually,
we realized that this was a bad idea. We streamline experience.
We did not need a cat involved. We did not
need to have I don't know, some sort of a
you know Rube Goldberg machine spinning across the room. You
know you can simplify. It doesn't need to be It
(42:50):
doesn't need to be any more complex than it needs
to be.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Cut out the middle man.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, all right, we're gonna go ahead and uh close
out this episode, but we'll be back with another episode
on third in which we will look at a few
more of the winners from this year's Ignobel prizes. So
tune in on Thursday and see which ones we picked out.
We'll talk, we'll talk about it. In the meantime, We'll
just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
(43:15):
primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
And it is that time again. Sometimes we don't get
around to these till November, but this year we're hitting
them fresh off of the shelf. The winners were just
announced last Thursday evening. I believe it is time wants
more to discuss some of the winners for this year's
Ignobel Prizes. Now, if you're not familiar with these, if
you haven't been listening to the show that long, or
(00:38):
maybe you just need a reminder. The ig Nobels are
a series of awards given out once a year by
a scientific humor journal named the Annals of Improbable Research,
edited for many years now by Mark Abrahams, and their
stated purpose is to quote honor achievements that first make
people laugh and then make them think. We always have
(00:59):
a great time with these. You can learn more about
them at Improbable dot com. They have a big one
pager there where you can go through all of the
winners throughout the years. There's a lot of amusing stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
In there that's right, and they feature works that are
funny for different reasons. Sometimes the papers that get selected
for prizes are things that are supposed to be funny,
like they are intentionally satirical. One that often comes to
mind is a paper we covered on the raiology of cats,
meaning the study of how cats flow our cats a
(01:33):
liquid or a solid. But more often these are just
real scientific experiments that are straightforward science in one way
or another, published in real scientific journals that happen to
have some weirdly funny either methodology, the format of the
experiment is funny, or the finding of the experiment is funny.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah, I mean it varies greatly. It depends on what
the subject matter is, the methodology, and yet your point,
sometimes it is something that was intended to be more
overtly satirical. And then also the other thing that's worth
driving home here, and this will become very apparent as
we get into some of the winners we're discussing and
from this year, is that sometimes these are fairly recent
(02:14):
studies that have recently made it through even the mainstream
news cycle because they are kind of giggle inducing. But
other times they dig deeper and they get stuff that's
decades old. So you know, it's not necessary, it's not
as timely as some awards shows might be. But the
results are always interesting, you know, sometimes they really pull
out a deep cut. Now, in the past, we've been
(02:37):
covering these for many years. In the past, we've tried
to cover all of the winners, or a vast majority
of the winners. I don't think we're doing that this year.
I think we're probably just going to cover some of
the winners, some of the ones that jump out to
us the most, that would be the most fun for
us to chat about. But again, if you want to
read the fullest of awards from this year and check
out all of the research that got highlighted this year's awards, here,
(03:00):
you can go to the Journal's web website. Again, that
is improbable dot com.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Robert, you all right, if I kick things off with
this year's Physiology Prize.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Yes, give the people what they want.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Trivia question, how many different holes in your body can
you breathe through?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Take your time think about it.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I had to think, and I was like, I'm pretty
sure the answer is three. Right, I got mouth, nostril, nostril,
any other serious ones, And I think that's it now.
Of course, these three orifices do not represent fundamentally different
ways of breathing. They're just different doorways to the exact
same hallway, right. They're all different openings that lead to
(03:43):
the same exchange machinery. In the lungs, of course, the
cells in our bodies need oxygen for cellular respiration. Oxygen
is used to break down the energy containing molecules that
we get from food to generate a tendency in triphosphate
or ATP, which powers our bodies at the cellular level.
This respiration process in the cells, of course, requires a
(04:06):
constant supply of incoming oxygen, and it generates carbon dioxide
as a primary waste product, which is also exchanged through
the lungs purged when we breathe out. So, yes, these
three holes are the normal three ways you get oxygen
into the lungs and carbon dioxide out. But here's a
perhaps tougher trivia question. Can any of our body cells
(04:29):
get their oxygen from anywhere other than the lungs. The
surprising answer to this one is yes. Now, the proportion
of our cells that can do this is relatively small.
Most of our cells rely on oxygen delivered through the
blood stream from the lungs to perform cellular respiration. So
(04:51):
don't start thinking you don't need your lungs. But it's
true that some cells in our bodies acquire oxygen by
passive diffusion from the surrounding air. Unsurprisingly, these tend to
be cells on the outsides of our bodies, so the
very outermost layer of our skin, cells in the top
quarter of a millimeter or so, or maybe a little
(05:13):
bit deeper. Also, the cells on the outside front of
our eyeballs, according to what I was reading, gets some
amount of oxygen from the surrounding air. This would be
cells in the tissue known as the cornea. And it's
especially important here for the cornea not to be completely vascularized,
(05:34):
not to be supplied with blood vessels, because we have
to see through the lens of our eyes covering the
pupil in order to get the light in onto the retina.
You can imagine it might be a little distracting if
the lenses of your eyes were full of blood vessels.
To supply all those cells with freshly oxygenated blood.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well, this seems like a refreshingly mature subject area for
the ignobells to have focused on here something about our
cornea is breathing. Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
That's not what this prize is about. So this year's
Physiology prize was awarded to and I apologize if I
pronounced anybody's name wrong, but two a list of authors
including Riyo Okabe, Toyo, Toyofumi, f Chin Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoonoyama,
yo Hey Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson,
(06:27):
Gokul khanan Aji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Daate, and Takanori takebe four
discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus.
All right, there it is now. This paper was published
in the Journal MED in May or June of twenty
twenty one. I've seen different citations on that. In the
(06:50):
spring of twenty twenty one, whenever that issue was and
I was reading several supplementary sources to get some background
and explanation on their findings. And so these sources include
a commentary piece also published in the Journal MED, sort
of explaining the background and significance of this main research paper.
The commentary piece was by a Yale gastroentrology fellow named
(07:15):
Caleb Kelly. This was published along with the paper and
the same issue, I believe, And then also I was
reading a New York Times article reporting on the findings
and including some interviews. This was by Elizabeth Preston from
May twenty twenty one. So I think this paper is
a bullseye in terms of the Ignobel's goal of making
people laugh and then making them think, yes, it is
(07:38):
about breathing through your butt, but it sent me down
a lot of interesting trails and it may turn out
to have quite real medical significance. So the procedure that
they're going to be describing in this paper is being
called EVA or EVA, which stands for interial ventilation via anus.
(07:59):
Shout out to all the people named EVA or AVA.
If this becomes a part of the common medical parlance,
you're just gonna have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
It, yea. It might have to bust out full Evelyn
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah. So Caleb Kelly in the commentary piece makes an
interesting observation about this, which is that, yes, it's funny
to think about breathing via the anus. But Kelly writes,
quote initial perception of AVA is likely to parallel that
of fecal microbiota transplant for recurrency deficial infection, which not
(08:30):
long ago was deemed untenable for quote practical and esthetic reasons,
but now has less stigma as data supporting effectiveness are overwhelming.
So this is talking about another medical discovery in recent
decades that was once considered much more weird and shocking
the use of fecal microbiota transplants literally transplanting poop from
(08:55):
one person's digestive system into another and carrying along with
it all of the microbiota that live on it, transplanting
that into the digestive system of somebody who has maybe
an antibiotic resistant infection by the Bacterium seed officile. This
was once considered a fairly crazy treatment idea, but now
(09:18):
it is widely used and is considered generally very effective.
So could ventilation via the anus one day have a similar.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Arc Yeah, I mean it's possible, because yeah, I remember
when the idea of fecal transplants was more of this
kind of like fringy. Oh my goodness, imagine imagine if
this became standard, and now it pretty much has. You know,
it's not that crazy of an idea, So I don't
know it's possible. I mean, the thing is if it
ultimately works and it helps save lives, that you know,
(09:47):
that's going to make all the difference.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
So the New York Times article and this included some
quotes from one of the lead authors of the study,
doctor Takanori Takebe of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University,
who apparently got the idea to work on this after
experiencing his father fighting lung disease. And of course part
of the problem is, you know, when a patient's lungs
(10:10):
are failing, a hospital will usually try to use a
mechanical ventilator to help keep the patient alive and keep
their tissues oxygenated. But there are cases where this solution
either isn't available or isn't appropriate. One example they cite
is the horrible event that there was a there was
a mass shortage of mechanical ventilators during the early COVID
(10:32):
nineteen pandemic. So of course mechanical ventilators are a finite resource,
but also there are other complications. This is a point
made by Kelly in that commentary piece. Kelly writes, quote,
even if mechanical ventilation is available. In severe disease, gas
exchange may be impaired to the degree that oxygenation is inadequate.
(10:54):
So in some cases you may be able to actually
use a mechanical ventilator to pump into the lungs, but
you still will not be able to get enough oxygen in.
And so Kelly says quote, faced with this situation, extra
corporeal membrane oxygenation is a technology that can temporarily replace
the functions of the heart and lungs, providing forward flow
(11:15):
of blood and gas exchange using an external apparatus. And
if you've never seen this, this is like a type
of machine that essentially does the job of the heart
and lungs outside of the body. They hook up an
artery in a vein to this machine and it pumps
the blood through, oxygenates it, and then returns it to
the body. But Kelly goes on to say, quote yet,
extra corporeal membrane oxygenation has inherent risks, requires significant outlay
(11:40):
of human labor and financial resources, and therefore availability is limited.
So the question is what if the EVA the ventilation
through the anus approach could help increase the range of
options available when a patient has failing lungs. So the
Times article gets into the question of how did this
(12:01):
idea come about? Doctor Takeba had Apparently he had previously
experimented with using stem cells to try to grow new
auxiliary organs like tiny lungs, but branching out of this,
he instead got the idea of using body organs that
we already have organs other than the lungs to provide
(12:21):
oxygen to our blood. Now, the inspiration for this, I
thought was very interesting. It was a bit of inspiration
from the animal kingdom. Takeba cited the example of a
fish called a loach. So a loach is any fish
from a family of freshwater fishes also known as the
kobitidy or cobitidoids. They're often fairly elongated, and some species
(12:46):
kind of look a little bit like snakes or eels
because they're kind of long, but they're fish. Like most fish,
Loaches primarily breathe with their gills, so they use the
gills these, you know, these sort of thin booklike surfaces,
to extract dissolved oxygen from the water around them. But
they have a backup method for getting extra oxygen if
(13:08):
they need it. Loaches can stick their heads up out
of the water and take a bite out of the atmosphere.
So they don't have lungs. They can't normally breathe through
their mouths like we can. Instead, a loach uses its
mouth to take in and swallow a mass of air.
Swallow the air into its digestive system, and that bubble
(13:31):
of air goes down into the digestive tract and then
the walls of the fishes intestines absorb extra oxygen from
the air that the fish eat.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Oh wow, they really are eating air.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah. I loved this fact and I didn't know about
this before. So the article sites of biologists talking about
these fish. The biologist is Jonathan Mark Wilson, who is
on faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and
Wilson says like, sometimes a loach will be trapped in
(14:04):
some kind of situation where the oxygen in the water
around it is not sufficient the oxygen that it will
normally get from its gills. So one example of this
would be if it is stuck in a pond or
even a puddle with low amounts of oxygen due to overcrowding.
There might be a lot of animals or other fish
in the water, and they're extracting a lot of the oxygen,
(14:25):
so it can't get enough with its gills. It has
this air eating method to get extra oxygen from the environment.
So that's a fish obviously fairly different biology than mammals
like us. But Ta Keba and colleagues wondered could a
mammals intestines do the same thing get oxygen from air
or even pure oxygen gas inserted into the digestive system.
(14:51):
So initial experiments showed that when mice were deprived of oxygen,
if you stuck an oxygen pump up the anus, it
did actually work. But in order for it to work well,
in order for it to work optimally, the researchers had
to sort of inflict little abrasions on the mucous membrane
(15:11):
of the intestinal wall, so when the wall was thinned,
the oxygen was absorbed better. Obviously, that's not ideal. Having
to scrape the inside of your colon or your intestines
to help you absorb anally supplied air is not the best.
So they came up with the second idea. Instead of
supplying O two in its gas form, what about a
(15:34):
liquid enema containing oxygen.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Oh my goodness, you're for science fiction fans out there.
This would of course be the same technology that the
deep divers are supposed to be using in James Cameron's
The Abyss.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Except that this would be in the other end of
the suit. Obviously, that's right.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So the researchers here experimented with I don't know if
they name the chemical in the ABYSS, I don't recall,
but what they're working with here is a type of
perfluorochemical which exists in liquid form but is able to
absorb and carry gases, especially oxygen. Specifically, the chemical that
they used in this experiment was called perfluorodecyln or PFD,
(16:17):
which Kelly explains in his commentary. He says, it's a
it's a hydrocarbon where you strip the hydrogen atoms out,
you swap them with fluorine, which allows this fluid to
buckle in a bunch of oxygen, carry a lot of
oxygen along with it, and it is such a remarkable
(16:37):
oxygen delivery device. Here's here's more. The ABYSS style image
that experiments in the nineteen sixties showed that you could
take unconscious anesthetized mice and you could dunk them under
I was going to say underwater. It's not water under.
Submerge them in this fluid for hours and they would
breathe the liquid and they would survive. Apparently. It has
(17:00):
also been explored in various experiments as a potential platform
for artificial blood. We've talked about ideas about artificial blood
and episodes in the past. It is a long sought
type of prosthesis or medical device that has always been
somewhat elusive, and I think it for various reasons. There
(17:21):
were questions about whether it should continue to be pursued
as an artificial blood platform, but at least the idea
was there, and so the idea in this experiment was
try this stuff per fluorodecylin jacked full of oxygen, put
it up the anis into the colon to get extra
oxygen into the blood. And the experiment found, yes, it
(17:44):
did work. It worked with both mice and pigs that
were in a hypoxic state, meaning they were deprived of oxygen.
They were supplied with oxygen packed per flora chemicals in
this solution via the anis, and it signified bagantly improved
their levels of blood oxygen. There were also behavioral markers,
(18:05):
like the mice that had been inactive due to low
oxygen got up and started walking around again. However, there
are some important limitations to consider. One is time. So
Kelly in his commentary piece writes, quote, promising results are
also reported using a porcine model, meaning a pig model,
(18:25):
in which mean improvement in oxygenation after EVA innima persists
for eighteen point seven minutes. Thus, in current form, this
therapy requires repeated cycling of fluid, and the potential of
EVA is in short term treatment of hypoxia, so that
means it only lasts a short while, and in order
(18:46):
to keep getting continued effects and keep oxygenating the body
and the blood via the anus, you would have to
keep cycling in new fluid. Another thing to consider is
that breathing fulfills two extramely important jobs at the same time.
It brings in oxygen that your cells need, and it
also purges carbon dioxide that your cells have to get
(19:09):
rid of. And these early results showed more promise with
providing oxygen than with purging CO two. You have to
do both, and so Kelly writes, quote, EVA appears to
be more efficient at oxygen delivery than carbon dioxide removal,
and one can quibble that ventilation is an overstatement. Yet
the liquid used in EVA has capacity to carry carbon dioxide,
(19:33):
and the experiments presented test its effectiveness in hypoxia rather
than hypercarbiam models. So that's the thing. I guess left
yet to explore whether it could be effective at removing
carbon dioxide as well. Okay, there are other important complications
to consider, and Kelly mentions these. I didn't initially think
of them, but this is a good kind of practice
(19:56):
for thinking about medical problems. You solve one problem, maybe
create another. So the surface epithelium of the colon is
adapted to have low exposure to oxygen. That's just its
natural state. There's not usually a lot of oxygen getting
in there, and it's unclear if there would be any
negative consequences from exposing it to lots of unexpected oxygen. Also,
(20:23):
the gut is not just an organ, it is a world.
It's an inhabited world, and the inhabitants of that world
have great influence over us over our health. So would
anything happen to the microbial populations of the distal gut
if they were suddenly exposed to aerobic conditions instead of
(20:46):
their natural and aerobic conditions.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
That's interesting. I mean, just spitballing here, but I mean
you could potentially have a situation where following this kind
of treatment, you would have to have something like fecal
transplant in order to repopulate the gut it. Indeed, if
this procedure did theoretically like mess with the microbiome to
some degree.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Right, Yeah, so that's a good thing to raise. Kelly says.
The authors did investigate this somewhat. They looked at they
tried to see if there were markers of toxic blooms
of gut microbiota by looking for a bacterial indotoxin called
a lipopolysaccharide in the blood of these animals, and they
(21:30):
did not observe any increases at least in these cases.
But Kelly writes, quote, it must be remembered, however, that
the models of acute hypoxia in the study do not
fully reflect the complex multisystem insults experienced by critically ill
patients that add infection, inflammation, and hypoperfusion. So it's saying,
(21:53):
you know, if we ever actually were to move to
human trials here. Often a person who's in a state
where they need supplemental oxiden might have a lot of
different things going wrong in their body all at the
same time that could make them especially vulnerable to maybe
changes in oxygenation of gut tissues that are not normally oxygenated,
(22:13):
or changing the microbial environment and possibly causing a flare
up of some kind of you know, toxic bacteria you
don't want.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
That's a great point as well.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, so in the end they're sort of saying about
these these counter considerations like this, you know, this is
not what the colon was meant to do. The distal
gut is not It can apparently breathe a little bit,
you can get some oxygen in there, that'll help out,
but that's not what it was you know, designed by
evolution to do. And so we don't really know what
(22:43):
the consequences would be of repurposing it in this way,
especially for prolonged periods.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Now, this should not hold James Cameron back though. If
there's a sci fi application here, explore it. I mean,
that is what science fiction is for, that's.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Right, So, yes, I fully support all kinds of storytelling
with sci fi butt breathing astronauts. I don't know how
that would it would ultimately cause them to like evolve
in different directions where they like have different ways of language,
where they maybe end up speaking through their butts. I
don't know. But anyway, despite all these counter considerations, this
(23:18):
is a very fascinating and exciting early result. And you know,
some of the scientists quoted they said, like, obviously, we're
not at the human trial stage yet, we don't know
that this would be good for humans. But if it
did turn out to be a real way of additionally
supplementing oxygen, this could be a life saving thing in
many conditions. So we're not at the human trials yet,
(23:41):
but the fact that it worked in mammals like mice
and pigs is very promising and it may one day
become a way of getting extra oxygen to people who
badly need it.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Excellent. Yeah, I mean again, coming back to your point
about fecal transplants, they could very well be a situation
where people giggle today, but they giggle less and less
as the years go by. When if we realize that
this is an actual treatment that can be utilized to
save lives.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
That's right, Especially I see quoted in the media. Kelly
was talking about this point that like, don't let the
weirdness of this make you dismiss the idea, he told
The Times quote it really should be the data rather
than our visceral reactions to the concept that guide us.
Well said, so we'll see if this ever goes anywhere,
and if it does, maybe one day you will you
(24:26):
will benefit from from breathing through the butt.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
All right, Well, that was the Physiology Prize, and I
want to talk a little bit about the Biology Prize
from this year. This one is also a lot of
fun and it made me, you know, made me laugh,
but then also did true to the mission statement, make
me think a little bit more about about in this
case about dairy about the milking of because this particular
(25:02):
study that they honored this was in the Journal of
Dairy Science, and this one was from nineteen forty one,
so this is definitely an older study and we have
to sort of keep reminding ourselves of that this is
not like the cutting edge of research, but it is
historically interesting in like the research journey that dairy scientists
have been on.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Maybe the methods they employ are not the same ones
that would be used today.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Well, yes, one method in particular, which is really spelled
out in the initial write up on the prize. The
Biology Prize went to Fortace Elli and William E. Peterson
for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that's
standing on the back of a cow to explore how
and when cows spew their milk beautiful the paper was,
(25:49):
of course, was not titled that though the paper was
factors involved in the ejection of milk. Now, I think
you know everything you need to know really to know
why this is funny. And they apparently played it up
during the ceremony. They brought out a person in like
a big inflatable cow costume, and somebody brought out a
house cat got to set on top of the cow,
(26:11):
and I think they to somebody, look, I can you
can see from the image here or that I shared Joe,
that there is indeed a paper bag in one gentleman's belt.
I imagine that paper bag is about to be inflated
and then popped behind the cat. This was in fact
part of the methodology that was explored in this nineteen
forty one study.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
I wonder if the cat behaved itself during the ceremony I.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Mean, I would doubt it would. I would be doubtful
if this cat behaved, and I'm doubtful that any cats
that they attempted to use during the experiment behaved. But
you know, this one's so, this one's obvious why this
one is funny, And I've I've long found the topic
and I guess the trope of animals upon animal to
be rather amusing. This is long entertained us. There's a
(26:59):
motif of a monkey riding a horse that has a
very long history in East Asia, where you know, on
top of just checking off all the general boxes for
cute and whimsical, it is also associated with austerity. It
has to do with similarities between the sounds of the
words for monkey and for high official, so it's based
in the world of Chinese homonyms. So the general idea
(27:21):
is that, you know, it captures a sense of rapid
advancement in one's work. But again, the basic concept has
vast cross cultural appeal. There's something strange and fascinating about
say a goat standing on the back of another animal,
which sometimes they you know, you can observe this happening,
or or monkeys jumping on the backs of any like
large or befores that sort of thing. And so when
(27:44):
I saw that one of the honored studies this year
revolved around around frightening a cat sitting atop of a cow,
I was instantly all in. Plus, it's ultimately a study
regarding animal lactation, which makes it even more perplexing at
first pass, Like, what could this post we have to
do with milking a cow? Why are you scaring a
cat on top of the cow?
Speaker 3 (28:06):
I've got to know.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, all right, So a little background. This was again
a nineteen forty one dairy science paper, so it's kind
of a kind of a deep cut. Lead author Fortis
Eli was a professor and chairman of the Department of
Dairy Science at Ohio State University from nineteen forty seven
through sixty three, among other various jobs throughout his career.
So you know, this was a serious dairy science paper
(28:29):
of the time period. This was not a fluke. There's
nothing fringe about this. Basically, the stated reason for the
study is that cows and dairy herds will habitually let
down or hold up their milk, and that the physiological
factors involved were poorly understood at the time. Now I
had to look up the terminology here. According to the
(28:50):
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, lactation is
the continuous secretion and storage of milk in the utter,
But milk ejection or let is a short term reflex
effect that can be inhibited by pain or fear, but
can be stimulated by proper care and animal husbandry. Still,
(29:11):
at least ten percent of secreted milk, they point out,
will be retained in the utter as residual milk. So
the study is all about better understanding what's going going
on here again in nineteen forty one, because as is obvious,
a humans relationship with the domesticated cow tends to center
around milk. How do we get the milk out of
(29:31):
the cow? What are the best conditions to get the
milk out of the cow? And of course this equation
changes throughout the history of our relationship with cattle because
as things get more industrialized things, you know, there's a
huge effort to streamline things, industrialize things. But then this
(29:52):
can bring in various complications that end up hurting your
ability to actually get milk out of the animal, you know,
for various reasons. So we'll get into here, but One
of the big ones, of course, is are you making
the animal stressed out? Are you making animal afraid? Because
this inevitably ends up impacting the production and quality of
their milk. And I know that for any of you
(30:14):
four h kids out there, this is like a big
This is as obvious as it gets. This is an
overstatement of the obvious. But I think a lot of
us forget this. You know, we end up having this
kind of like video game idea of milking the cow,
where it's like, oh, here's cow, here's the milking process,
and it just equals milk.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
It's basically it's like a soda fountain, you know, it
just distributes the milk. But no, like a cow is
an animal, and the and its milk production and yield
is going to be influenced by things like how it
feels about its environment.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah. So in this nineteen forty one paper they cite
a nerve stimulant study where a nerve stimulant was administered
to cattle, to dairy cows to see how this would
affect of their milk production. There's another study they side
that involves them milking of cats. It has nothing to
do with their use of a cat, But it is
interesting that cats come up a couple of times in
(31:06):
the article. There's another study that looks at lactating rats
and another that involves whales and dolphins. And this paper
and its initial experiments get pretty into the weeds on
the physiological details of what's going on with a cow's milking.
But to get into the meat of the study, at
least as far as the igno bells are concerned, this
comes to a section on the effect of fright on
(31:29):
the ejection of milk.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
The specific use of the word fright there makes me
think we're dealing with something a little a little more
acute than stress.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, so what basically they were like, Well, for the
purposes of this study that involves several different things. For instance,
they denervated the left half of the utters, so remove
nerves in order to be able to compare the different
sides during this experiment. So you know, there's a lot
going on here that just the vocation of the cat
(32:00):
doesn't capture. But it did definitely in its early stages
involve quote. The following frightening at first consisted in placing
a cat on the cow's back and exploding paper bags
every ten seconds for two minutes later, the cat was
dispensed with as unnecessary.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh maybe that just mean they took it home, took it,
they didn't terminate the cat.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I think that I did not read that into it
at all. I mean one can. I can only imagine
they realized there were vast difficulties in getting a cat
to work with them for this study, because I guess
the idea here is you you scare the cat to
scare the cow, and or you scare both of them
at the same time, and the cat's fright will compound
(32:50):
the fright experienced by the cow. But then I guess
you're having to replace a cat that you've just terrified
every ten seconds for two minutes. And maybe that means
you've got to have multiple cats on hand, and cats
don't get along. So I just can't imagine how this
would work. It feels just very Sussian in its absurdity.
But I think the big take home here is that
(33:12):
they quickly realized, no, the exploding paper bag is sufficient,
Like we are scaring the cow regularly with the exploding
paper bag. The cat is just an unnecessary complication.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Wait, is there explanation anywhere why the cat was ever
included in the first place. Other I mean, I know,
like it just seems like, oh, that's even more to
deal with.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
No, they don't really get into it. I think it's
just implied that this was perhaps that perhaps they thought
it was necessary to actually have that fright stimuli, but
then they quickly realized that this was enough. There's another
bit where they refer back to it and they say
sight and sound stimuli. Exploding bags seems to have a
(33:55):
much more pronounced effect as measured by the rate of
milk ejection.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Okay, I'm imagining an experiment today where they test what
happens when you wake people up with a vampire standing
at the foot of your bed. But it's not good
enough to just have the vampire. You've also got to
put a lizard on their arm.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Yeah, it's that sort of thing. Yeah. So again, this
was a fairly involved experiment or series of experiments. They
also injected some of the cows with adrenaline and other
substances to test things out. Now, one of the things
again about a study like this is that it's not current.
It stands more as a part of the history of
(34:31):
research into the topic, rather than some new advancement or
some glimpse into the future. But it seems to be
agreed upon that stressed or fearful cows produce the hormone
adrenaline and this counteracts the activity of oxytocin. It inhibits
the milk let down. I mean. And again this probably
comes back to something that is really long realized in
(34:54):
animal husbandry, and that is that you need to take
care of your farm animals and you don't want your
dairy cows to be afraid or nervous. You need to
nurture a proper relationship with them. But again, I you
know what, you get the feeling that with the industrialization
of the farm, a lot of these things then have
to be relearned or you have to then go back
(35:16):
and realize, oh, this is why we always did it
this way, and if we are going to try and
mechanize this to varying degrees, we need to hold on
to these lessons from the past. Now, there have been
(35:37):
plenty more recent studies on callactation. Again, you know, dairy
remains a huge industry and there are always studies into
ways how to do it, you know, ways to do
it more efficiently, more humanely, and so forth. For instance,
there was a nineteen ninety nine study by Jay Russian
who they found that fears certain only plays a role
(36:01):
in milk production, and they found that the fear can
can certainly revolve around humans in the cow's vicinity, and
it can also you can have a situation where fear
of individual handlers can impact milk yield. So you know,
it's like cows often, I guess they can often feel
hard to read, at least for those of us who
(36:21):
are not involved in their care. And you can think, well,
they don't know what's going on, they don't know one
human from the next, But that doesn't seem to be
the case, and they can have certain associations with different humans.
And furthermore, they can they can have various fears and
anxieties around various containment systems, milking machines and so forth. Yeah,
(36:44):
I was looking at a write up for the University
of Minnesota Extension from twenty twenty three, or at least
that was like the update date on it by Marcia Indris,
and this author points out that the comfort of a
dairy cow is of course very important to milk yield,
to milk quality, and much more. They need proper handling
and environment in order to deliver to their fullest, and
(37:07):
the author points out that above all, this is of
course just the right thing to do. And I really
appreciate this point that we domesticated cows for this purpose.
We took something wild and we made it into what
it is so that it could produce milk for us.
Not it's young, but another species that just likes that
milk and grows to depend them on that milk, And
(37:28):
so we should treat them right, like it's we kind
of they didn't really have much of a say in
this bargain, but this bargain was made, and we kind
of need to keep our end up. But then the
author here also stresses that a comfortable cow is a
cash cow and that I like this one was a
little more perplexing, but I think it also seems solid
that today's cows are like high performance athletes, which makes
(37:51):
them more sensitive to negative aspects of their environment or management.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Well, I like that. So it's like, hey, we should
treat cows right because it's the right thing to do,
but also if you don't care, you better do it,
or they're not going.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
To give you the milk.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
You need.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
This also seems to be a certain commentary on the
way we treat high performance athletes like dairy cattle, like
like animals that we want a particular product out of which,
so maybe they're getting a little additional commentary in there. Yeah,
but yeah, this means factoring in quality human care, quiet
(38:28):
and peaceful environments. Proper resting space, head lunch space is
apparently very important. You know, it basically breaks down do
they have room to move their heads around soft stall
surfaces and again sensitive positive human handling. And again I'm
sure that those of you out there that grew up
around cattle and have more experience with cattle and other
(38:50):
farm animals, you're just nodding your head to this because
this is a no brainer. But again, I think it's
easy to forget these realities. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
Well, a lot of people don't know anything about farms.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we go to great pains at
times to distance ourselves from the realities of the farms,
both the positive and the negatives, or the perceived negatives
and sometimes the outright negatives. Certainly when you get into
some practices. Now, this reminded me of something that I
had heard about, and I had to look it up because
I think a lot of this came from a splendid
table article or audio piece that I heard on NPR
(39:24):
back I think in twenty fourteen, so I had to
look it up again, and basically revolves around water buffalo milking.
So basically you may have heard this through in various
works over the years, but the water buffalos seem to
be an even more pronounced example of everything we've been
discussing here, so highly susceptible to fall offs due to
(39:45):
minor changes in their milking routine, like even apparently the
presence of strangers they're not used to. I've read elsewhere
that yeah, that in some traditions of milking water buffalo
there's like one designated person for the water b in question,
Like you don't just mix it up, not anybody can
do it. So it's almost like it needs to be
(40:06):
an even more special relationship between the human and the
animal in this situation. And I was looking at a
paper here by Mikou at all. This is water buffalo
responsiveness during milking Implications for production outputs, reproduction fitness, and
Animal Welfare from twenty twenty two published in the journal
(40:27):
Animals and this study backed up a lot of these
same principles, talking about how well there have been attempts
to do things like give them oxytocin injections to keep
them calm, but then this can introduce animal welfare concerns
and it can disrupt ovarian cycles. So they ultimately recommend that, Okay,
(40:48):
you can select for calmer water buffaloes. But at the
end of the day, I mean, it seems like you
are dealing with a more sensitive species and a species
that is a little harder or maybe a lot hard
to industrialize, and so that is often held back efforts
or and or proposals to try and establish water buffalo
(41:10):
milk production more say in the United States. So I
don't know. Again, this is an example of where at
the top of it, I just found it funny that
serious researchers would place the cat on a cow back
and then slowly begin to inflate a brown paper bag
for science. But it, you know, it forced me to
sort of you know, realize, relearn, and you know, and
(41:33):
learn for the first time some of these realities around
the relationship between the dairy cow and dairy farmer.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
I'm wondering, is the cat looking at them while they're
doing it, while they're like twisting off the end of
the bag and getting ready, are they making eye contact?
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Like? I can't help but imagine that whoever's idea was
to use the cat had not really been around cats
that much and just assumed that this was possible. Because
if you've been around cats, if you have a cat,
you know that they don't cooperate with the slightest little thing.
And the idea that you're going to get them to
cooperate in a scientific experiment like this, no, it just
(42:13):
it was doomed to failure. And in this case, you know, certainly,
if not doomed to failure, they at least quickly realized
this is a totally unnecessary part of the experiment. We
can streamline this experiment and remove this wild variable from it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Good thinking. These are professionals.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, but I kind of want to look out for
this in future studies, you know, cases where they were like, actually,
we realized that this was a bad idea. We streamline experience.
We did not need a cat involved. We did not
need to have I don't know, some sort of a
you know Rube Goldberg machine spinning across the room. You
know you can simplify. It doesn't need to be It
(42:50):
doesn't need to be any more complex than it needs
to be.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Cut out the middle man.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Yeah, all right, we're gonna go ahead and uh close
out this episode, but we'll be back with another episode
on third in which we will look at a few
more of the winners from this year's Ignobel prizes. So
tune in on Thursday and see which ones we picked out.
We'll talk, we'll talk about it. In the meantime, We'll
just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
(43:15):
primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
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