A week ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held its 2024 Met Gala — a yearly event to raise money for the Costume Institute. The gala also marks the opening of the Costume Institute's annual show, which this year is called "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion." The idea behind this exhibit is to showcase pieces from the museum's collection that are too delicate to show on mannequins. Instead, the exhibit will feature recreations of the pieces using AI and 3-D techniques, along with sound and smell. But what about textiles that museums choose to display — how is science used to maintain these incredible, often fragile, pieces of the past?
In this episode of Tiny Matters, Sam and Deboki cover the fascinating textile landscape, from plant-based fibers to the evolution of modern synthetic materials and the investigative approaches used to preserve not just these fabrics but also the stories they tell and the cultural significance they hold.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
By the time you're listening to this episode, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art willhave held its 2024 Met Gala,
which is an annual event toraise money for the Costume
Institute.
If you're a follower of the MetGala, like I am, then you've
already spent a lot of timescrolling through images of
people wearing stunning clothesand judging how they fall in
line with the theme of the event.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The gala also marks the opening of the Costume
Institute's annual show, whichthis year is called Sleeping
Beauty's Reawakening Fashion.
The idea behind this exhibit isto showcase pieces from the
museum's collection that are toodelicate to show on mannequins.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Instead, according to the New York Times, the exhibit
will feature recreations of thepieces using AI and 3D
techniques, along with sound andapparently even smell To be
honest, I'm not entirely sure Ican imagine what that entails,
but when I go to museums, myfavorite exhibits are the ones
that feature clothing andtextiles, because I just think
(00:59):
it's really cool to see thecraftsmanship and imagination.
So I'm hoping to get a chanceto see this new show and how
they approach it, and thinkingabout the idea of clothing
that's too fragile to displayhad me wondering a bit more
about the science needed tomaintain my favorite exhibits.
Welcome to today's episode ofTiny Matters.
(01:29):
I'm Deboki Chakravarti and I'mjoined by my co-host, sam Jones.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Today we're answering a question, that of as, where
CSI meets MFA.
So we're using forensic andtraditional techniques to
examine and understand historicartifacts, in my case, textiles.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
That's Camille Brees, the director and chief
conservator at Museum TextileServices, a private textile firm
in Andover, massachusetts, andshe works with a lot of
different types of textiles,which are different objects made
with cloth or woven fabrics.
We've done a few episodes aboutforensics on Tiny Matters,
though.
We're usually talking about howinvestigators use chemistry or
(02:28):
trace DNA to study crimes, butit turns out that understanding
any individual textile is itsown mystery.
To start, think about just howmany different types of things
are made from textiles.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
So on the average month I might get a Civil War
flag, a christening gown, anembroidery made in the 19th
century, or I could getsomething that is cherished by a
family.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
For conservators to figure out the best way to work
with a given piece, they have tobe able to understand how it
was made.
But, like we can see fromCamille's list, that's a lot of
different types of objects thatall have their own histories,
and some of those histories taketime to uncover.
So let's start with the basicsof how textiles are made,
beginning with fibers.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So the key element of that fiber is it needs to be
able to create a structure,create a filament, a yard, a
thread, something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
With a few exceptions , fibers can be put into one of
three categories plant, animalor synthetic.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So take plant fibers, for example.
Sometimes we get the fiber fromthe flower of the plant, so
think of a cotton bowl.
All that fiber is a remnant ofthe flower, the fruiting body.
Then we have the stem of aplant.
Things like rope are often madeof the long fibers found in the
stem of, say, the flax plantwhere linen comes from, and the
(03:50):
job of the stem is to grow longand strong and to hold the
flower out where it can be found.
So the fibers we get from thatare long and strong.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
In addition, camille told us that you can get fibers
from the veins of a leaf, andthen there are animal fibers
like wool or leather, and youcan imagine that if I had those
choices and I was an early humanI would probably start with
something that I got from ananimal.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I would start with a pelt, and that doesn't
necessarily need assembly orsewing, you can just use it as
is, you can lie on it, you canlie under it, you can make
something like a sling to carrythings with.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
And then, last, of all, we have synthetic fibers,
which are made by humans throughchemical processes.
For example, polyester is asynthetic fiber that's usually
made from petroleum.
But fibers are just thebeginning.
You also need to assemble them,which is its own feat of
engineering.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So the first textiles humans made were single element
structure.
You'd take one thread or yarnor cord that you've made by
spinning other cords together toget a fatter cord and you'd
make sort of a net like afishnet.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Camille told us that over time people figured out
ways to make more complicatedstructures, like using two
needles to knit, and anothermajor advance was weaving, where
you have one set of threads inone direction and another set
passing over and under thosethreads to produce a woven
fabric.
This would be considered atwo-element structure.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
In addition to crafting fibers and creating
more complicated structures withthem, people have also been
incredibly inventive in how theypersonalize these textiles by
using dyes or embellishmentslike feathers or embroidery, and
all of that is just to make thetextile.
From there, the textile becomessomething maybe a garment, or a
(05:34):
flag or some other item andpart of what I find so
fascinating about all of this isthat we've basically been
writing our own history intothese objects that we use every
day.
The challenge for conservatorsis to read into the way those
objects are made to see if wecan uncover that history.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Every object is its own journey and we can't always
answer the questions that arebeing asked of us.
I have a dress right now thatis associated with a famous
woman whose husband was aRevolutionary War general, and
so I've been asked to confirm ordisprove whether this dress
could have belonged to thisperson.
So it's not really a questionof whether I can prove it.
(06:14):
It's whether I can eliminate itfrom consideration due to date
or material or technology oranything else like that.
But fortunately, all museumwork is teamwork and my
information is combined withother information, like
historical record or photographsin some cases, and that's all
put together to make a decisionbased on what we believe to be
true.
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
There are a number of techniques that conservators
can use to better understand thepieces they're investigating.
One of those useful things toknow, of course, is what the
fibers are.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Let's take flags.
We get lots of flags.
I can.
Usually many of us can tellwhether a flag is silk or maybe
wool or cotton just by lookingat it, and when we can't, we
will take a tiny fiber sampleand use our microscope and
confirm the fiber content Tolearn more about how
conservators study these objects.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We talked to Susan Heald, a textile conservator at
the Smithsonian's NationalMuseum of the American Indian.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
I love fiber ID.
We have a polarizing lightmicroscope and I usually just
try to take the tiniest amountof fiber, but representative,
and then under the microscopeyou don't get any chemical
information but you can see thefiber morphology, like looking
at the difference between cottonand linen or flax Linen is the
fabric, flax is the fiber.
(07:31):
You can really see that theyhave a very different morphology
.
And synthetic fibers are evenprettier because you get color
interference patterns.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So, after looking through the microscope, the next
step is to understand how thefibers were put together to
create a structure which Camilletold us can come down to
knowledge and experience, andthat can lead to a lot of really
interesting questions andeducated speculation about the
object's history.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
So if something is made of silk, I ask myself what
would silk be good for and wherewould it fail?
If you're carrying it on thebattlefield and it's got a big
heavy fringe and it's got allthese painted areas, I can
predict what kind of damage it'sgoing to get on that
battlefield and even what damageis going to occur when it comes
back and it's rolled on itsstaff and it's put in the attic
(08:18):
of the library and found ahundred years later.
So some of that can bepredicted based on technology
and materials, but everything isunique.
You could find, for example,writing that you can't see with
the naked eye but you can catchin a photograph or under a
blacklight, and that writingmight be a name, it might be a
date or it might be a note as towhy something was saved.
(08:39):
And in that way we've been ableto reconnect objects with
stories from the area or fromthe family by sort of matching
the technology and the date ofthe object with details in that
story.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Susan told us about a few projects that she's been
involved in to understand thetechniques used to make
different objects, and sheemphasized that these are very
much collaborations involvingchemists and conservation
scientists who bring a lot oftheir knowledge to the work.
In one project, susan wasworking with a doctoral student
on quill work from the easternwoodlands.
They were especially interestedin the dyes that were used to
(09:15):
create the brightly coloredquills that might then be sewn
into a hide, to create patternsat a moccasin or woven together
into a headdress.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
One of the techniques they used to study the dyes was
liquid chromatography massspectrometry, or LCMS, which
allows scientists to separateout compounds in a sample for
identification.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
And she broke it down into different colors.
What were the plants and whatwere the components of the dyes
that she was finding?
And one of the interestingthings that she found were the
blues that were largely well, aportion of them were from wild
berries like currants and grapes.
She was finding those markersfor those berries, both in the
red and the blue.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
In another study.
Susan was part of a team thatwanted to answer what had become
a murky question Was dog furused for blankets made in the
Pacific Northwest?
These blankets were made by theCoast Salish peoples, who have
a long history of working withvarious animal fibers like wool
from mountain goats, along withplant fibers like hemp.
Oral histories from the CoastSalish also referred to a local
(10:18):
dog whose hair was used in theseweavings, but in the 1980s one
study on these textiles invarious museums couldn't find
any dog hair fibers, which threwthat history into question.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So Susan's team needed a way to extract and
study proteins from smallsamples gathered from the
National Museum of the AmericanIndian and the National Museum
of Natural History.
When they got their samples,they dissolved them to extract
the proteins and then identifiedthem with another type of mass
spectrometry called protein massspectrometry.
With this technique, scientistsbreak up proteins into peptides
(10:50):
to identify them.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We took very small samples and analyzed them and
just basically found that, yes,we did find dog hair in the
earlier pieces, but as you seethe Europeans coming in and
trade goods coming in, the wholesystem was disrupted and maybe
those special dogs were, youknow, got bred into the greater
(11:11):
dog population and more just,more trade materials were
available and so some thingswere just lost.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
The National Museum of the American Indian also
features a number ofcontemporary objects that show
how garment making methods haveevolved over time.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
The majority of collection because it's
archaeological and historicalare natural fibers.
But you know, the more and morecontemporary things we collect,
there's more and more syntheticfibers and plastic materials.
Maybe 10 years ago there was apowwow outfit, powwow regalia.
It was like a 29-piece outfitthat was just elaborately beaded
.
It was collected in the early2000s, I think, but probably
(11:51):
made in the late 80s, early 90s,and we noticed inside the vest
that there was a lot ofdeterioration on the interior
and it said it had been madewith a cotton cloth.
But it didn't really look likea cotton cloth and we looked
really really close under themicroscope to see what we could
find and it looked like it was acomposite material, like
something rubberized that wasfragmenting, but it also did
(12:14):
look like a woven cotton surface.
So we were asking some of ourcolleagues that are bead workers
and makers of powwow regaliaand they're like, yeah, well,
sometimes people have used therubberized flannel that you see
in baby lap pads or mattressprotectors.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Baby lap pads are waterproof cloths that people
use for various baby-relatedneeds, and Susan learned that
lap pads were starting to beused more in the 70s and 80s in
place of traditional tannedhides because they were cheaper
and less labor intensive.
But as they dug into thechemistry of the substitute
material, susan and hercolleagues found that this
(12:53):
particular piece of regalia hadplasticized parts and as people
moved and danced in the powwowregalia, that component was
actually deteriorating.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Susan told us that she's learned that people are
now moving away from thismaterial because it doesn't seem
to have very good longevity.
And actually that brings us toanother very important fact
Textiles don't necessarily lastthat long.
I'm sure we all have someprecious piece of clothing that
got stained or chewed up bymoths or something else, and
obviously that's a hugechallenge for textile
(13:25):
conservators.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
There are a number of potential threats that
conservators have to take intoaccount, some of which are
really hard to avoid like light.
If you see something fading onyour wall, you might think, oh,
I should take that down becauseI don't want it to get damaged.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
But as Camille told us, if you see fading, it's
probably already a bit latePhysical change like fading, is
an indication that your textile,in this case, is already
undergone all sorts of negativeprocesses.
Heat, like sunlight that passesevery day at a similar time,
causes the things that the lightshines on to expand and
(14:04):
contract with heat.
So first of all we have thingsexpanding and contracting which
can over time weaken them.
And then you have all sorts ofthings like free radicals
interacting through the air withyour object and you can stop a
deterioration with somethinglike a UV light filter.
But that doesn't stop theheating and cooling, it just
takes away the UV portion of thevisible light spectrum.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
In addition to light, you also have to worry about
humidity and heat, because theycan catalyze some of these
negative reactions and alsopotentially lead to issues like
mildew.
And then, of course, there arepests.
Some of the common crittersthey deal with are moths,
beetles and silverfish, butsometimes they come across some
more unique ones.
Camille told us about a torn-upcoat that a museum had brought
(14:51):
to her.
The museum suspected a touristwas responsible, but Camille
wasn't so sure.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I said do you have any rodents on this little
island in the Atlantic Ocean?
And they said no, absolutely.
There are no mice and no rats.
There was just the one muskratthat swam out to the island once
that was caught, and I pointedout how all of the damage in
this coat was in these littlesemicircular shapes and that
this had in fact been nibbled,been perhaps taken for a nest.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
So you've got light temperature insects and
sometimes even rogue muskrats toworry about.
Those are a lot of conditionsto manage and there are plenty
more that conservators have totake into account when working
with pieces.
So, as Susan told us, there's alot of research and planning
before they even start.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And one of the first things I do is to research the
background, to know where itcame from, who made it, what's
the cultural context, what's theimportance of this item in
within the community.
And as I'm putting all thattogether and researching, maybe
online or within our collectionsdatabase, I'm also starting to
assess the condition.
So, taking all that intoconsideration and sometimes
(16:01):
doing analysis, like fiber ID,to figure out what are the
fibers in this textile and how,how have they been procured?
Maybe it's a synthetic, a nylonfiber, or maybe it's something
like a cellulose acetate, and Iwouldn't want to use any acetone
solvent around that becauseit's going to dissolve if
there's, you know, stain removal.
And a lot of things wesometimes look for is pesticide
(16:21):
contamination, because a lot ofespecially natural history
collections and collections likeours that have fur and feathers
and wool, a lot of those itemshave been treated with
pesticides like arsenic,especially with furs, which is,
of course, toxic.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So, after taking in all of these details and ideas
about how the piece is meant tobe exhibited, susan will write a
proposal detailing how she'splanning to work with the object
.
That proposal then goes to acurator for approval, as well as
a supervisory conservator andpossibly a community member who
might be an expert in makingregalia and once they begin
(16:59):
working with the item.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Susan and her team maintain careful documentation.
They take pictures before theydo any interventions, keep track
of their process and then takepictures at the end of any
changes that have happened.
But sometimes things don't goaccording to plan and
conservators have to respondquickly to find a solution.
Susan told us one story aboutwhen her team was washing a
(17:20):
white sail with a large redemblem in its center that had
been tested for dye fastness orhow well the color resists
fading or running.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
And we were washing out some staining and everything
was going well.
And I had surfactant in thewater and it's going well, and
we decided toinsing it withdeionized water, which is ion
starved and very reactive.
And all of a sudden, once thesurfactant was gone, that red
started to just bleed, like thecolor just lifted out and was
going into the water.
(17:50):
And I got really freaked outbecause well, water is such a
powerful solvent but deionizedwater is so much more powerful
and aggressive.
So we turned off the deionizedwater, we switched to the tap
water, the municipal tap water.
We continued rinsing, the dyebleed lessened, but then we had
to come in with blotter paperand absorb you know, try to
absorb all the colorant from thedyed element in the center.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
It took a lot of people working very quickly, but
eventually it turned out okay.
And this is one of those caseswhere the issue was very obvious
.
But there are other, moremysterious challenges that can
come from surprising sourceslike museum exhibit cases.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Well, you go to a museum and you see all these
exhibit cases and we tend toconstruct the exhibit cases
really tightly, so there's notvery much air exchange.
You don't want any dust to getin, you definitely don't want
any moths or pests to get inthat could eat your collections.
But at the same time, if youhave these really, really
tightly built cases, you canhave off-gassing components on
(18:47):
the interior.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Off-gassing is when materials release chemicals, for
example.
It's why new cars smell the waythey do.
They're releasing differentcompounds from all the different
parts used to make the car, butthat smell goes away because
you're opening car doors andallowing air to flow in and out.
Museum cases are built to dothe exact opposite of that, and
that became a problem with aparticular set of cases, because
(19:12):
they relied on a structuraladhesive that's strong enough to
glue metal to glass and, as theglue was off-gassing, one of
the compounds it released begancausing issues.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
It's reacting with the objects themselves and it's
causing crystals to form on theobject surfaces.
And it's really interestingbecause it's on a lot of variety
of object surfaces it's onceramics, it's on feathers, it's
on stone, it's on some textilesbut not others.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
While they still don't know exactly what's going
on.
Susan is part of a team that'susing a number of techniques to
study these crystals so they canfigure out how and why they're
forming and how to deal withthem.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Like any other field, textile conservation is always
evolving.
One of the important advanceshas been that, thanks to modern
techniques, scientists andconservators can take smaller
samples from their objects andsometimes even turn to
non-destructive tests.
Modern techniques, scientistsand conservators can take
smaller samples from theirobjects and sometimes even turn
to non-destructive tests thatallow them to learn without
causing any damage to theoriginal item.
For example, susan told us thatthey can use x-ray fluorescence
(20:12):
analysis to look for heavymetal pesticides that might
affect how safely they can workwith the piece.
There's also larger shifts inhow museums and conservators
approach working with thesecollections.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
I think a lot of museums are doing more
collaborative work withcommunities, indigenous
communities, you know, anycommunities of origin, and I
think that's becoming moreimportant.
But back 30 years ago it wasn'tso common.
I remember, you know, givingsome presentations in the
mid-90s or late 90s and havingpeople you know tell me that
wasn't you know, that wasn'tappropriate.
(20:45):
I think times are changing andI think this is all being
considered a lot more seriously,working in partnership.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Camille also pointed out that there's more
conversation and considerationabout the types of clothing that
are being collected and howthat impacts our understanding
of history More often now we'reunderstanding that the people
who we've collected artifactsfrom are only a certain
percentage of the population.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Your institution might have a whole bunch of
Gilded Age gowns, but nothingthat belonged to, say, the
serving class that enabled thosepeople to live their lush life,
and so what I enjoy is creatinga costume exhibit where there
is diversity in not only thetype of garments that we show
but the type of people that ownthose garments.
(21:30):
We might make a mannequin thathas more than one tone to
indicate that you've had adiverse population, or include a
piece of clothing that belongedto somebody that was
differently abled in some way.
Just as humans come in anendless variety of the skills
and shapes and special qualities, we are very much invested
right now in creating dressdisplays that are extremely
(21:52):
diverse in how we represent thehuman form and human history,
and that's a really big changefrom the last, say, 20 years.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And it matters that we evolve how we work with these
textiles, because how wepreserve our history shapes the
way we understand it.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Preserving human culture is so key in our
understanding, not just who weare now, but who we have been
and then who we can be in thefuture.
And so, because textiles, theygo everywhere we go, we
communicate with them, we relyon them and we use them as
symbols.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
To me, they are just the most intimate artifact of
all you see on a lot of thesegarments and textiles that have
been actively used and loved.
They have signs that show howthey were worn and how they were
used.
Sometimes you can tell if aperson was right-handed by the
soil and the cuffs.
So I think they can serve aswitnesses to history.
They serve as teachers for allof us.
(22:43):
I mean, they have so much totell us about the individual and
about the community and aboutthe artist who made these with
such care.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
It's tiny show and tell time, sure is.
Today I am bringing you a storythat I read in Science Magazine
and I thought it was reallyfascinating, plus a little bit
gross and a little bit alarmingPerfect, so it's really got
everything for you, okay.
So around seven years ago,there were a group of
researchers.
They were in the Bodongo ForestReserve in Uganda.
There were a group ofresearchers, they were in the
(23:23):
Badongo Forest Reserve in Ugandaand they saw these chimpanzees
scooping dry bat feces, alsoknown as guano, from under a
hollow tree and eating it.
This was a first.
They had never seen this and Idon't know if you know this, but
bat feces, it's actually quiterich in nutrients, but it's also
rich in a lot of viruses.
I think we all, over the courseof the last few years, have
(23:43):
learned that bats are carriersfor many viruses, but this is a
very interesting potential linkthat we didn't necessarily
consider for a lot of viruses inthe past, from bat to
chimpanzee, or, you know,monkeys, apes to humans.
So then these researchers werelike, okay, like is this just
like a really weird occurrencethat we saw, or is this
(24:05):
something that's actuallyhappening more often?
And so what they did was theyput cameras in the tree where
the chimps were actuallyscooping up this guano and
eating it, and they found thatthere were chimps coming and
eating guano at least 92 timeson 71 different days, and then
they found like monkeys wereeating it.
They found that black and whitecolobus monkeys I think that's
(24:30):
how you say it also ate guanoover 60 times, and then they
also even saw like antelopeseating it, which I thought was
really interesting, and so whatthey decided to do then was to
actually analyze the guano, andthey did find that, in addition
to having pathogens right likeit was actually really rich in a
lot of essential dietaryminerals sodium, potassium,
magnesium, phosphorus.
So typically chimps and theseother animals are getting it
(24:50):
from the raffia palm, but from2006 to 2012, tobacco farmers in
the area ended up having to usea lot of that palm because
apparently there was a big surgein demand for tobacco, and so
they actually they made thisstring from the palm's leaves to
tie up tobacco leaves fordrying.
Those palm leaves were nolonger available when the palm
disappeared chimps, monkeys,antelopes they had to look for
(25:13):
other sources of these nutrients, and so eating things like clay
and bat dung seems to be whatthey turn to.
So this is a partially resultof deforestation.
Yeah, we don't want our veryclose relatives eating bat poop,
because it's just going to makeit more likely that you have
some sort of zoonotic diseasethat reaches us.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Wow, so this was like a completely new behavior.
Do they know for sure that it'sbecause of this, this palm that
, like, got deforested?
Or how do we know that we justlike weren't missing it before?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It's hard to say 100% right.
Like it's hard to show causeand effect here for the palm
being gone and them eating backguano.
These are monkeys that, orrather these are like chimps and
like other apes that have beenstudied for a long time, and no
one's seen this before, so it'seither, it seems, highly likely,
either we just completelymissed it or this is something
(26:08):
that is just— wasn't reallyhappening before, at least not
to this degree, and now they'rereally seeing it.
It was interesting, though inthe story an outside researcher
who was commenting says that youknow, in the future a team
should actually analyze not justthe Baquano but the chimps'
feces as well to really confirmthat they are ingesting these
viruses that are passing throughtheir gut and are really
(26:29):
hanging out long enough toinfect them, because I mean it
would be great if they wereingesting this guano but they
weren't actually really beinginfected.
Maybe the viruses are not asactive at that point.
Whatever it may be.
So, like this is not, I don'twant to be an alarmist with this
.
I do think it is importantthing to keep tabs on and to
(26:50):
know is happening, but it istrue that a lot more needs to be
done to really actually showthat this could be as dangerous
as they're saying it couldpotentially be, if that makes
sense.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, for sure that's super interesting and also, yes
, gross, like you promised Formy tiny show and tell.
I also have an interestinganimal observation, and this is
an article from the New YorkTimes about menopause in whales.
And so the thing to know firstabout menopause is that, as far
(27:23):
as we know, it's pretty rare inanimals.
So in most species, the femaleof the species will make eggs
through to the end of theirlives.
It seems logical from anevolutionary standpoint you want
to make more of the offspring.
Obviously, we are a specieswhere that is not the case, and
chimps also.
There's menopause.
But there are five species ofwhales who go through menopause.
For example, apparently femalekiller whales can breed up to
(27:45):
around the age of 40, but theycan survive into their 90s.
So this is overall fascinatingbecause, like it leads to this
fundamental question of like,why Like?
Why menopause?
Why does it happen?
Is there some kind ofevolutionary advantage to it?
And so this article is about arecent study on why menopause
might potentially help a speciesoverall.
(28:05):
And so the scientists on thisstudy, they use pre-existing
data on these five species, aswell as some related species
that don't go through menopause,to kind of do some comparison,
and one thing they found is likeso in general, whales have this
pattern where the bigger theyare, the longer they live, but
in the species that can gothrough menopause, female whales
actually lived an average of 40years past their predicted
(28:28):
lifespan.
So, to the researchers, whatthat actually suggested is that
menopause is not the result ofmutations that are like reducing
how long they could reproduce,like it's not like they could
live that long, and then you'rekind of backing away on how long
they can reproduce, like it'snot like they could live that
long, and then you're kind ofbacking away on how long they
can reproduce.
It's really actually years thatare added on past when
reproduction would stop.
(28:49):
So like somehow the menopauseis actually like correlating to
like living longer, and then, ifthis is the case, again this is
still like a lot of kind ofconjecture.
There is a question of like whythis would be potentially
advantageous, and so one of theideas is that maybe this means
that you could have olderfemales in the population who
are not competing with theiroffspring in giving birth, but
(29:10):
they can still be helpful.
So like in these whale speciesin particular, like this
corresponds to observations ofolder female whales who lead
pods on journeys and stuff.
And so the scientists involvedspeculated that this like might
be a feature, like menopause,might be a feature that evolves
in species where females tend tostay in the group for a long
time.
(29:30):
But again, we still know solittle about the evolution of
menopause.
But I just thought it wasinteresting.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
No, that's so fascinating.
We're learning more and moreabout how other species, in
particular other mammals, arejust so similar to us.
So, there's this part of methat's like.
I feel like there's dozens ofother mammals out there that
this happens to and we justdon't know yet.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah for sure, because I think you're totally
right, and it's also stillfascinating to me that it is so
hard to find species that gothrough menopause, like it is
still weirdly so rare, and Iguess like there's something
about that that maybe makessense.
Like I said, like it feels likethere is a logic to this idea of
like, if you can just keepreproducing until you die, like
why wouldn't you do that from anevolutionary standpoint?
(30:11):
I mean, it sounds like bleakwhen I say it out loud like that
, but like from an evolutionstandpoint seems to make sense.
The thing that's interesting tome about this and also like
where it becomes complicatedbecause you never know how
strongly you can take theseresults is like, then, how this
kind of corresponds to the waythese animals, including us,
structure societies, becausethat's like part of the
implication here is like maybethis is about these female
(30:32):
whales stick around longer inthe population, and like they're
able to kind of take on acertain role.
And so, yeah, I'm not alwayscomfortable fully being like yes
, this is why the society isthis way, but it is like an
interesting facet, thisintersection of biology and like
just how we live.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Tiny
Matters, a production of theAmerican Chemical Society.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
This week's script was written by me and was edited
by Michael David and by SamJones, who is also our executive
producer.
It was fact-checked by MichelleBoucher.
The Tiny Matters theme andepisode sound design are by
Michael Simonelli and the Chartsand Leisure team.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Thanks so much to Camille Breeze and Susan Heald
for joining us.
Remember you can send us yourscience stories, science
factoids.
You love science news you cameacross and just cannot stop
thinking about and maybe you'llhear it read aloud on an
upcoming Tiny Show and Tell Usbonus episode.
Email tinymatters at acsorg.
You can find me on social atSam J Science and you can find
(31:35):
me at Okidoki Boki.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
See you next time.
By the time you're listening to this episode, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art willhave held its 2024 Met Gala,
which is an annual event toraise money for the Costume
Institute.
If you're a follower of the MetGala, like I am, then you've
already spent a lot of timescrolling through images of
people wearing stunning clothesand judging how they fall in
line with the theme of the event.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The gala also marks the opening of the Costume
Institute's annual show, whichthis year is called Sleeping
Beauty's Reawakening Fashion.
The idea behind this exhibit isto showcase pieces from the
museum's collection that are toodelicate to show on mannequins.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Instead, according to the New York Times, the exhibit
will feature recreations of thepieces using AI and 3D
techniques, along with sound andapparently even smell To be
honest, I'm not entirely sure Ican imagine what that entails,
but when I go to museums, myfavorite exhibits are the ones
that feature clothing andtextiles, because I just think
(00:59):
it's really cool to see thecraftsmanship and imagination.
So I'm hoping to get a chanceto see this new show and how
they approach it, and thinkingabout the idea of clothing
that's too fragile to displayhad me wondering a bit more
about the science needed tomaintain my favorite exhibits.
Welcome to today's episode ofTiny Matters.
(01:29):
I'm Deboki Chakravarti and I'mjoined by my co-host, sam Jones.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Today we're answering a question, that of as, where
CSI meets MFA.
So we're using forensic andtraditional techniques to
examine and understand historicartifacts, in my case, textiles.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
That's Camille Brees, the director and chief
conservator at Museum TextileServices, a private textile firm
in Andover, massachusetts, andshe works with a lot of
different types of textiles,which are different objects made
with cloth or woven fabrics.
We've done a few episodes aboutforensics on Tiny Matters,
though.
We're usually talking about howinvestigators use chemistry or
(02:28):
trace DNA to study crimes, butit turns out that understanding
any individual textile is itsown mystery.
To start, think about just howmany different types of things
are made from textiles.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
So on the average month I might get a Civil War
flag, a christening gown, anembroidery made in the 19th
century, or I could getsomething that is cherished by a
family.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
For conservators to figure out the best way to work
with a given piece, they have tobe able to understand how it
was made.
But, like we can see fromCamille's list, that's a lot of
different types of objects thatall have their own histories,
and some of those histories taketime to uncover.
So let's start with the basicsof how textiles are made,
beginning with fibers.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So the key element of that fiber is it needs to be
able to create a structure,create a filament, a yard, a
thread, something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
With a few exceptions , fibers can be put into one of
three categories plant, animalor synthetic.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So take plant fibers, for example.
Sometimes we get the fiber fromthe flower of the plant, so
think of a cotton bowl.
All that fiber is a remnant ofthe flower, the fruiting body.
Then we have the stem of aplant.
Things like rope are often madeof the long fibers found in the
stem of, say, the flax plantwhere linen comes from, and the
(03:50):
job of the stem is to grow longand strong and to hold the
flower out where it can be found.
So the fibers we get from thatare long and strong.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
In addition, camille told us that you can get fibers
from the veins of a leaf, andthen there are animal fibers
like wool or leather, and youcan imagine that if I had those
choices and I was an early humanI would probably start with
something that I got from ananimal.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I would start with a pelt, and that doesn't
necessarily need assembly orsewing, you can just use it as
is, you can lie on it, you canlie under it, you can make
something like a sling to carrythings with.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
And then, last, of all, we have synthetic fibers,
which are made by humans throughchemical processes.
For example, polyester is asynthetic fiber that's usually
made from petroleum.
But fibers are just thebeginning.
You also need to assemble them,which is its own feat of
engineering.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So the first textiles humans made were single element
structure.
You'd take one thread or yarnor cord that you've made by
spinning other cords together toget a fatter cord and you'd
make sort of a net like afishnet.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Camille told us that over time people figured out
ways to make more complicatedstructures, like using two
needles to knit, and anothermajor advance was weaving, where
you have one set of threads inone direction and another set
passing over and under thosethreads to produce a woven
fabric.
This would be considered atwo-element structure.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
In addition to crafting fibers and creating
more complicated structures withthem, people have also been
incredibly inventive in how theypersonalize these textiles by
using dyes or embellishmentslike feathers or embroidery, and
all of that is just to make thetextile.
From there, the textile becomessomething maybe a garment, or a
(05:34):
flag or some other item andpart of what I find so
fascinating about all of this isthat we've basically been
writing our own history intothese objects that we use every
day.
The challenge for conservatorsis to read into the way those
objects are made to see if wecan uncover that history.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Every object is its own journey and we can't always
answer the questions that arebeing asked of us.
I have a dress right now thatis associated with a famous
woman whose husband was aRevolutionary War general, and
so I've been asked to confirm ordisprove whether this dress
could have belonged to thisperson.
So it's not really a questionof whether I can prove it.
(06:14):
It's whether I can eliminate itfrom consideration due to date
or material or technology oranything else like that.
But fortunately, all museumwork is teamwork and my
information is combined withother information, like
historical record or photographsin some cases, and that's all
put together to make a decisionbased on what we believe to be
true.
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
There are a number of techniques that conservators
can use to better understand thepieces they're investigating.
One of those useful things toknow, of course, is what the
fibers are.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Let's take flags.
We get lots of flags.
I can.
Usually many of us can tellwhether a flag is silk or maybe
wool or cotton just by lookingat it, and when we can't, we
will take a tiny fiber sampleand use our microscope and
confirm the fiber content Tolearn more about how
conservators study these objects.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We talked to Susan Heald, a textile conservator at
the Smithsonian's NationalMuseum of the American Indian.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
I love fiber ID.
We have a polarizing lightmicroscope and I usually just
try to take the tiniest amountof fiber, but representative,
and then under the microscopeyou don't get any chemical
information but you can see thefiber morphology, like looking
at the difference between cottonand linen or flax Linen is the
fabric, flax is the fiber.
(07:31):
You can really see that theyhave a very different morphology
.
And synthetic fibers are evenprettier because you get color
interference patterns.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So, after looking through the microscope, the next
step is to understand how thefibers were put together to
create a structure which Camilletold us can come down to
knowledge and experience, andthat can lead to a lot of really
interesting questions andeducated speculation about the
object's history.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
So if something is made of silk, I ask myself what
would silk be good for and wherewould it fail?
If you're carrying it on thebattlefield and it's got a big
heavy fringe and it's got allthese painted areas, I can
predict what kind of damage it'sgoing to get on that
battlefield and even what damageis going to occur when it comes
back and it's rolled on itsstaff and it's put in the attic
(08:18):
of the library and found ahundred years later.
So some of that can bepredicted based on technology
and materials, but everything isunique.
You could find, for example,writing that you can't see with
the naked eye but you can catchin a photograph or under a
blacklight, and that writingmight be a name, it might be a
date or it might be a note as towhy something was saved.
(08:39):
And in that way we've been ableto reconnect objects with
stories from the area or fromthe family by sort of matching
the technology and the date ofthe object with details in that
story.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Susan told us about a few projects that she's been
involved in to understand thetechniques used to make
different objects, and sheemphasized that these are very
much collaborations involvingchemists and conservation
scientists who bring a lot oftheir knowledge to the work.
In one project, susan wasworking with a doctoral student
on quill work from the easternwoodlands.
They were especially interestedin the dyes that were used to
(09:15):
create the brightly coloredquills that might then be sewn
into a hide, to create patternsat a moccasin or woven together
into a headdress.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
One of the techniques they used to study the dyes was
liquid chromatography massspectrometry, or LCMS, which
allows scientists to separateout compounds in a sample for
identification.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
And she broke it down into different colors.
What were the plants and whatwere the components of the dyes
that she was finding?
And one of the interestingthings that she found were the
blues that were largely well, aportion of them were from wild
berries like currants and grapes.
She was finding those markersfor those berries, both in the
red and the blue.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
In another study.
Susan was part of a team thatwanted to answer what had become
a murky question Was dog furused for blankets made in the
Pacific Northwest?
These blankets were made by theCoast Salish peoples, who have
a long history of working withvarious animal fibers like wool
from mountain goats, along withplant fibers like hemp.
Oral histories from the CoastSalish also referred to a local
(10:18):
dog whose hair was used in theseweavings, but in the 1980s one
study on these textiles invarious museums couldn't find
any dog hair fibers, which threwthat history into question.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So Susan's team needed a way to extract and
study proteins from smallsamples gathered from the
National Museum of the AmericanIndian and the National Museum
of Natural History.
When they got their samples,they dissolved them to extract
the proteins and then identifiedthem with another type of mass
spectrometry called protein massspectrometry.
With this technique, scientistsbreak up proteins into peptides
(10:50):
to identify them.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We took very small samples and analyzed them and
just basically found that, yes,we did find dog hair in the
earlier pieces, but as you seethe Europeans coming in and
trade goods coming in, the wholesystem was disrupted and maybe
those special dogs were, youknow, got bred into the greater
(11:11):
dog population and more just,more trade materials were
available and so some thingswere just lost.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
The National Museum of the American Indian also
features a number ofcontemporary objects that show
how garment making methods haveevolved over time.
Speaker 4 (11:27):
The majority of collection because it's
archaeological and historicalare natural fibers.
But you know, the more and morecontemporary things we collect,
there's more and more syntheticfibers and plastic materials.
Maybe 10 years ago there was apowwow outfit, powwow regalia.
It was like a 29-piece outfitthat was just elaborately beaded
.
It was collected in the early2000s, I think, but probably
(11:51):
made in the late 80s, early 90s,and we noticed inside the vest
that there was a lot ofdeterioration on the interior
and it said it had been madewith a cotton cloth.
But it didn't really look likea cotton cloth and we looked
really really close under themicroscope to see what we could
find and it looked like it was acomposite material, like
something rubberized that wasfragmenting, but it also did
(12:14):
look like a woven cotton surface.
So we were asking some of ourcolleagues that are bead workers
and makers of powwow regaliaand they're like, yeah, well,
sometimes people have used therubberized flannel that you see
in baby lap pads or mattressprotectors.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Baby lap pads are waterproof cloths that people
use for various baby-relatedneeds, and Susan learned that
lap pads were starting to beused more in the 70s and 80s in
place of traditional tannedhides because they were cheaper
and less labor intensive.
But as they dug into thechemistry of the substitute
material, susan and hercolleagues found that this
(12:53):
particular piece of regalia hadplasticized parts and as people
moved and danced in the powwowregalia, that component was
actually deteriorating.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Susan told us that she's learned that people are
now moving away from thismaterial because it doesn't seem
to have very good longevity.
And actually that brings us toanother very important fact
Textiles don't necessarily lastthat long.
I'm sure we all have someprecious piece of clothing that
got stained or chewed up bymoths or something else, and
obviously that's a hugechallenge for textile
(13:25):
conservators.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
There are a number of potential threats that
conservators have to take intoaccount, some of which are
really hard to avoid like light.
If you see something fading onyour wall, you might think, oh,
I should take that down becauseI don't want it to get damaged.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
But as Camille told us, if you see fading, it's
probably already a bit latePhysical change like fading, is
an indication that your textile,in this case, is already
undergone all sorts of negativeprocesses.
Heat, like sunlight that passesevery day at a similar time,
causes the things that the lightshines on to expand and
(14:04):
contract with heat.
So first of all we have thingsexpanding and contracting which
can over time weaken them.
And then you have all sorts ofthings like free radicals
interacting through the air withyour object and you can stop a
deterioration with somethinglike a UV light filter.
But that doesn't stop theheating and cooling, it just
takes away the UV portion of thevisible light spectrum.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
In addition to light, you also have to worry about
humidity and heat, because theycan catalyze some of these
negative reactions and alsopotentially lead to issues like
mildew.
And then, of course, there arepests.
Some of the common crittersthey deal with are moths,
beetles and silverfish, butsometimes they come across some
more unique ones.
Camille told us about a torn-upcoat that a museum had brought
(14:51):
to her.
The museum suspected a touristwas responsible, but Camille
wasn't so sure.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
I said do you have any rodents on this little
island in the Atlantic Ocean?
And they said no, absolutely.
There are no mice and no rats.
There was just the one muskratthat swam out to the island once
that was caught, and I pointedout how all of the damage in
this coat was in these littlesemicircular shapes and that
this had in fact been nibbled,been perhaps taken for a nest.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
So you've got light temperature insects and
sometimes even rogue muskrats toworry about.
Those are a lot of conditionsto manage and there are plenty
more that conservators have totake into account when working
with pieces.
So, as Susan told us, there's alot of research and planning
before they even start.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And one of the first things I do is to research the
background, to know where itcame from, who made it, what's
the cultural context, what's theimportance of this item in
within the community.
And as I'm putting all thattogether and researching, maybe
online or within our collectionsdatabase, I'm also starting to
assess the condition.
So, taking all that intoconsideration and sometimes
(16:01):
doing analysis, like fiber ID,to figure out what are the
fibers in this textile and how,how have they been procured?
Maybe it's a synthetic, a nylonfiber, or maybe it's something
like a cellulose acetate, and Iwouldn't want to use any acetone
solvent around that becauseit's going to dissolve if
there's, you know, stain removal.
And a lot of things wesometimes look for is pesticide
(16:21):
contamination, because a lot ofespecially natural history
collections and collections likeours that have fur and feathers
and wool, a lot of those itemshave been treated with
pesticides like arsenic,especially with furs, which is,
of course, toxic.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So, after taking in all of these details and ideas
about how the piece is meant tobe exhibited, susan will write a
proposal detailing how she'splanning to work with the object
.
That proposal then goes to acurator for approval, as well as
a supervisory conservator andpossibly a community member who
might be an expert in makingregalia and once they begin
(16:59):
working with the item.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Susan and her team maintain careful documentation.
They take pictures before theydo any interventions, keep track
of their process and then takepictures at the end of any
changes that have happened.
But sometimes things don't goaccording to plan and
conservators have to respondquickly to find a solution.
Susan told us one story aboutwhen her team was washing a
(17:20):
white sail with a large redemblem in its center that had
been tested for dye fastness orhow well the color resists
fading or running.
Speaker 4 (17:29):
And we were washing out some staining and everything
was going well.
And I had surfactant in thewater and it's going well, and
we decided toinsing it withdeionized water, which is ion
starved and very reactive.
And all of a sudden, once thesurfactant was gone, that red
started to just bleed, like thecolor just lifted out and was
going into the water.
(17:50):
And I got really freaked outbecause well, water is such a
powerful solvent but deionizedwater is so much more powerful
and aggressive.
So we turned off the deionizedwater, we switched to the tap
water, the municipal tap water.
We continued rinsing, the dyebleed lessened, but then we had
to come in with blotter paperand absorb you know, try to
absorb all the colorant from thedyed element in the center.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
It took a lot of people working very quickly, but
eventually it turned out okay.
And this is one of those caseswhere the issue was very obvious
.
But there are other, moremysterious challenges that can
come from surprising sourceslike museum exhibit cases.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Well, you go to a museum and you see all these
exhibit cases and we tend toconstruct the exhibit cases
really tightly, so there's notvery much air exchange.
You don't want any dust to getin, you definitely don't want
any moths or pests to get inthat could eat your collections.
But at the same time, if youhave these really, really
tightly built cases, you canhave off-gassing components on
(18:47):
the interior.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Off-gassing is when materials release chemicals, for
example.
It's why new cars smell the waythey do.
They're releasing differentcompounds from all the different
parts used to make the car, butthat smell goes away because
you're opening car doors andallowing air to flow in and out.
Museum cases are built to dothe exact opposite of that, and
that became a problem with aparticular set of cases, because
(19:12):
they relied on a structuraladhesive that's strong enough to
glue metal to glass and, as theglue was off-gassing, one of
the compounds it released begancausing issues.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
It's reacting with the objects themselves and it's
causing crystals to form on theobject surfaces.
And it's really interestingbecause it's on a lot of variety
of object surfaces it's onceramics, it's on feathers, it's
on stone, it's on some textilesbut not others.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
While they still don't know exactly what's going
on.
Susan is part of a team that'susing a number of techniques to
study these crystals so they canfigure out how and why they're
forming and how to deal withthem.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Like any other field, textile conservation is always
evolving.
One of the important advanceshas been that, thanks to modern
techniques, scientists andconservators can take smaller
samples from their objects andsometimes even turn to
non-destructive tests.
Modern techniques, scientistsand conservators can take
smaller samples from theirobjects and sometimes even turn
to non-destructive tests thatallow them to learn without
causing any damage to theoriginal item.
For example, susan told us thatthey can use x-ray fluorescence
(20:12):
analysis to look for heavymetal pesticides that might
affect how safely they can workwith the piece.
There's also larger shifts inhow museums and conservators
approach working with thesecollections.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
I think a lot of museums are doing more
collaborative work withcommunities, indigenous
communities, you know, anycommunities of origin, and I
think that's becoming moreimportant.
But back 30 years ago it wasn'tso common.
I remember, you know, givingsome presentations in the
mid-90s or late 90s and havingpeople you know tell me that
wasn't you know, that wasn'tappropriate.
(20:45):
I think times are changing andI think this is all being
considered a lot more seriously,working in partnership.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Camille also pointed out that there's more
conversation and considerationabout the types of clothing that
are being collected and howthat impacts our understanding
of history More often now we'reunderstanding that the people
who we've collected artifactsfrom are only a certain
percentage of the population.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Your institution might have a whole bunch of
Gilded Age gowns, but nothingthat belonged to, say, the
serving class that enabled thosepeople to live their lush life,
and so what I enjoy is creatinga costume exhibit where there
is diversity in not only thetype of garments that we show
but the type of people that ownthose garments.
(21:30):
We might make a mannequin thathas more than one tone to
indicate that you've had adiverse population, or include a
piece of clothing that belongedto somebody that was
differently abled in some way.
Just as humans come in anendless variety of the skills
and shapes and special qualities, we are very much invested
right now in creating dressdisplays that are extremely
(21:52):
diverse in how we represent thehuman form and human history,
and that's a really big changefrom the last, say, 20 years.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
And it matters that we evolve how we work with these
textiles, because how wepreserve our history shapes the
way we understand it.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Preserving human culture is so key in our
understanding, not just who weare now, but who we have been
and then who we can be in thefuture.
And so, because textiles, theygo everywhere we go, we
communicate with them, we relyon them and we use them as
symbols.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
To me, they are just the most intimate artifact of
all you see on a lot of thesegarments and textiles that have
been actively used and loved.
They have signs that show howthey were worn and how they were
used.
Sometimes you can tell if aperson was right-handed by the
soil and the cuffs.
So I think they can serve aswitnesses to history.
They serve as teachers for allof us.
(22:43):
I mean, they have so much totell us about the individual and
about the community and aboutthe artist who made these with
such care.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
It's tiny show and tell time, sure is.
Today I am bringing you a storythat I read in Science Magazine
and I thought it was reallyfascinating, plus a little bit
gross and a little bit alarmingPerfect, so it's really got
everything for you, okay.
So around seven years ago,there were a group of
researchers.
They were in the Bodongo ForestReserve in Uganda.
There were a group ofresearchers, they were in the
(23:23):
Badongo Forest Reserve in Ugandaand they saw these chimpanzees
scooping dry bat feces, alsoknown as guano, from under a
hollow tree and eating it.
This was a first.
They had never seen this and Idon't know if you know this, but
bat feces, it's actually quiterich in nutrients, but it's also
rich in a lot of viruses.
I think we all, over the courseof the last few years, have
(23:43):
learned that bats are carriersfor many viruses, but this is a
very interesting potential linkthat we didn't necessarily
consider for a lot of viruses inthe past, from bat to
chimpanzee, or, you know,monkeys, apes to humans.
So then these researchers werelike, okay, like is this just
like a really weird occurrencethat we saw, or is this
(24:05):
something that's actuallyhappening more often?
And so what they did was theyput cameras in the tree where
the chimps were actuallyscooping up this guano and
eating it, and they found thatthere were chimps coming and
eating guano at least 92 timeson 71 different days, and then
they found like monkeys wereeating it.
They found that black and whitecolobus monkeys I think that's
(24:30):
how you say it also ate guanoover 60 times, and then they
also even saw like antelopeseating it, which I thought was
really interesting, and so whatthey decided to do then was to
actually analyze the guano, andthey did find that, in addition
to having pathogens right likeit was actually really rich in a
lot of essential dietaryminerals sodium, potassium,
magnesium, phosphorus.
So typically chimps and theseother animals are getting it
(24:50):
from the raffia palm, but from2006 to 2012, tobacco farmers in
the area ended up having to usea lot of that palm because
apparently there was a big surgein demand for tobacco, and so
they actually they made thisstring from the palm's leaves to
tie up tobacco leaves fordrying.
Those palm leaves were nolonger available when the palm
disappeared chimps, monkeys,antelopes they had to look for
(25:13):
other sources of these nutrients, and so eating things like clay
and bat dung seems to be whatthey turn to.
So this is a partially resultof deforestation.
Yeah, we don't want our veryclose relatives eating bat poop,
because it's just going to makeit more likely that you have
some sort of zoonotic diseasethat reaches us.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Wow, so this was like a completely new behavior.
Do they know for sure that it'sbecause of this, this palm that
, like, got deforested?
Or how do we know that we justlike weren't missing it before?
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It's hard to say 100% right.
Like it's hard to show causeand effect here for the palm
being gone and them eating backguano.
These are monkeys that, orrather these are like chimps and
like other apes that have beenstudied for a long time, and no
one's seen this before, so it'seither, it seems, highly likely,
either we just completelymissed it or this is something
(26:08):
that is just— wasn't reallyhappening before, at least not
to this degree, and now they'rereally seeing it.
It was interesting, though inthe story an outside researcher
who was commenting says that youknow, in the future a team
should actually analyze not justthe Baquano but the chimps'
feces as well to really confirmthat they are ingesting these
viruses that are passing throughtheir gut and are really
(26:29):
hanging out long enough toinfect them, because I mean it
would be great if they wereingesting this guano but they
weren't actually really beinginfected.
Maybe the viruses are not asactive at that point.
Whatever it may be.
So, like this is not, I don'twant to be an alarmist with this
.
I do think it is importantthing to keep tabs on and to
(26:50):
know is happening, but it istrue that a lot more needs to be
done to really actually showthat this could be as dangerous
as they're saying it couldpotentially be, if that makes
sense.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
Yeah, for sure that's super interesting and also, yes
, gross, like you promised Formy tiny show and tell.
I also have an interestinganimal observation, and this is
an article from the New YorkTimes about menopause in whales.
And so the thing to know firstabout menopause is that, as far
(27:23):
as we know, it's pretty rare inanimals.
So in most species, the femaleof the species will make eggs
through to the end of theirlives.
It seems logical from anevolutionary standpoint you want
to make more of the offspring.
Obviously, we are a specieswhere that is not the case, and
chimps also.
There's menopause.
But there are five species ofwhales who go through menopause.
For example, apparently femalekiller whales can breed up to
(27:45):
around the age of 40, but theycan survive into their 90s.
So this is overall fascinatingbecause, like it leads to this
fundamental question of like,why Like?
Why menopause?
Why does it happen?
Is there some kind ofevolutionary advantage to it?
And so this article is about arecent study on why menopause
might potentially help a speciesoverall.
(28:05):
And so the scientists on thisstudy, they use pre-existing
data on these five species, aswell as some related species
that don't go through menopause,to kind of do some comparison,
and one thing they found is likeso in general, whales have this
pattern where the bigger theyare, the longer they live, but
in the species that can gothrough menopause, female whales
actually lived an average of 40years past their predicted
(28:28):
lifespan.
So, to the researchers, whatthat actually suggested is that
menopause is not the result ofmutations that are like reducing
how long they could reproduce,like it's not like they could
live that long, and then you'rekind of backing away on how long
they can reproduce, like it'snot like they could live that
long, and then you're kind ofbacking away on how long they
can reproduce.
It's really actually years thatare added on past when
reproduction would stop.
(28:49):
So like somehow the menopauseis actually like correlating to
like living longer, and then, ifthis is the case, again this is
still like a lot of kind ofconjecture.
There is a question of like whythis would be potentially
advantageous, and so one of theideas is that maybe this means
that you could have olderfemales in the population who
are not competing with theiroffspring in giving birth, but
(29:10):
they can still be helpful.
So like in these whale speciesin particular, like this
corresponds to observations ofolder female whales who lead
pods on journeys and stuff.
And so the scientists involvedspeculated that this like might
be a feature, like menopause,might be a feature that evolves
in species where females tend tostay in the group for a long
time.
(29:30):
But again, we still know solittle about the evolution of
menopause.
But I just thought it wasinteresting.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
No, that's so fascinating.
We're learning more and moreabout how other species, in
particular other mammals, arejust so similar to us.
So, there's this part of methat's like.
I feel like there's dozens ofother mammals out there that
this happens to and we justdon't know yet.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah for sure, because I think you're totally
right, and it's also stillfascinating to me that it is so
hard to find species that gothrough menopause, like it is
still weirdly so rare, and Iguess like there's something
about that that maybe makessense.
Like I said, like it feels likethere is a logic to this idea of
like, if you can just keepreproducing until you die, like
why wouldn't you do that from anevolutionary standpoint?
(30:11):
I mean, it sounds like bleakwhen I say it out loud like that
, but like from an evolutionstandpoint seems to make sense.
The thing that's interesting tome about this and also like
where it becomes complicatedbecause you never know how
strongly you can take theseresults is like, then, how this
kind of corresponds to the waythese animals, including us,
structure societies, becausethat's like part of the
implication here is like maybethis is about these female
(30:32):
whales stick around longer inthe population, and like they're
able to kind of take on acertain role.
And so, yeah, I'm not alwayscomfortable fully being like yes
, this is why the society isthis way, but it is like an
interesting facet, thisintersection of biology and like
just how we live.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Tiny
Matters, a production of theAmerican Chemical Society.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
This week's script was written by me and was edited
by Michael David and by SamJones, who is also our executive
producer.
It was fact-checked by MichelleBoucher.
The Tiny Matters theme andepisode sound design are by
Michael Simonelli and the Chartsand Leisure team.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Thanks so much to Camille Breeze and Susan Heald
for joining us.
Remember you can send us yourscience stories, science
factoids.
You love science news you cameacross and just cannot stop
thinking about and maybe you'llhear it read aloud on an
upcoming Tiny Show and Tell Usbonus episode.
Email tinymatters at acsorg.
You can find me on social atSam J Science and you can find
(31:35):
me at Okidoki Boki.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
See you next time.
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