Learn about why cougars and coyotes outlived dire wolves and saber-toothed cats; how exactly you can “acquire” a taste; and, whether blowing on hot food really makes it cooler. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Here's Why Cougars and Coyotes Outlived Dire Wolves and Saber-Toothed Cats — https://curiosity.im/31OmI2h How Exactly Do You 'Acquire' a Taste? — https://curiosity.im/2Kq29Ui Additional resources discussed: Why Does Blowing On Your Hot Drink Cool It Down? The Surprising Scientific Answer | Forbes — https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/02/02/why-does-blowing-on-your-hot-drink-cool-it-down-the-surprising-scientific-answer/#4ee29afe130b Does Blowing on Hot Food Really Make It Cooler? | ThoughtCo — https://www.thoughtco.com/blowing-on-hot-food-make-it-cooler-603913 Speed of Sound in Air | Michigan Technological University — http://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/SpeedofSound.html Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about why cougars and coyotes outlived dire wolves and saber-toothed cats; how exactly you can “acquire” a taste; and, whether blowing on hot food really makes it cooler.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Additional resources discussed:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/does-blowing-on-food-make-it-cooler-plus-how-to-acquire-tastes-and-carnivore-adaptation
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why cougars and coyotes outlived dire wolves and saber-toothed cats; and, how exactly you can “acquire” a taste. We’ll also answer a listener question about whether blowing on hot food really makes it cooler.
CODY: And stick around for announcement about our show at the end of today’s episode. Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Here's Why Cougars and Coyotes Outlived Dire Wolves and Saber-Toothed Cats — https://curiosity.im/31OmI2h (Ashley)
Cougars and coyotes have been around since the days of dire wolves and saber-toothed cats. When you think about it, though, there’s a pretty big difference between those two pairs: namely, one is still around, and the other is extinct. And a new study published in Current Biology may reveal the reason why: turns out that when it comes to a predator's diet, it doesn't pay to be a picky eater. To come up with this conclusion, paleontologist Larisa DeSantis and her team turned to a treasure trove of fossil remains known as the La Brea Tar Pits. Today’s it’s located in urban Los Angeles, but For 50,000 years, this was a place where natural asphalt bubbled up from underneath the Earth's surface and trapped unlucky animals for eternity — or, at least, until scientists had a chance to dig them up. More than 3 and a half million fossils have been found there in the century or so we've spent excavating. And the fossils at La Brea are especially important because a lot of them come from during the late Pleistocene extinction event, which is when lots of mammals died off for mostly unknown reasons. Scientists do know the climate was warming at the time, which caused major disruptions to the ecosystem. And studying what happened to carnivores during that time could tell us more about how to help carnivores survive climate change today. For this study, DeSantis and her team collected fossils of coyotes, cougars, dire wolves, and saber-toothed cats that lived at different points over time. Then, they analyzed two things in their teeth: wear patterns and carbon isotopes (which are basically different types of carbon atoms). This analysis showed the researchers that sabertoothed cats kept mostly to the forest, and dire wolves hunted on grassland, so they weren’t competing with each other for food. But their diets were HIGHLY specialized. Saber-toothed cats had evolved to take down large prey, and their big teeth weren’t as effective at taking down smaller prey after their main food source became scarce. The dire wolves acted like modern wolves and ate by taking down prey, along with some scavenging on the side. But smaller cats and dogs were less discerning in their diets. And coyotes used to be a lot more specialized, but they adapted by becoming the more opportunistic hunters they are today. In short, coyotes and cougars were able to survive by getting smaller and becoming true opportunists. As for carnivores on today’s warming planet, Desantis told us that we need to think on an entire-ecosystem level, saying, quote, “We need to worry about the lions as much as we’re worrying about the lion’s prey,” unquote. [ad lib]
How Exactly Do You 'Acquire' a Taste? — https://curiosity.im/2Kq29Ui (from Saturday 8/24) (Cody)
Why is it that we enjoy some foods and beverages that once tasted awful to us? It’s called an acquired taste, sure. But how exactly does that work? Researchers have discovered that the answer is part psychology and part biology.
First, the biology. Studies suggests that babies are born loving sweet flavors, and that children prefer at least twice the concentration of sugar compared to adults. That’s because growing children need the quick calories. Studies that gave taste tests to children and adolescents have found that participants who had stopped growing preferred sweetness about as much as adults did.
Research also shows that children can detect bitter flavors in much lower concentrations than adults. Basically, kids are more sensitive to bitterness. That tolerance changes as you age, so there’s some truth to the idea that you get used to flavors. On top of that, studies have shown that eating bitter foods actually changes your saliva, and that, in turn, changes how you perceive bitter flavors.
On top of becoming less sensitive to bitter flavors, your sense of taste in general starts to break down as you age. According to Steven Parnes, an ear-nose-and-throat doctor, women experience taste loss in their 50s, and men in their 60s.
Okay, so that’s the biology. Psychologically, the more you’re exposed to something, the less you react to it. When scientists feed participants a squirt of lemon juice over and over, they salivate less and less.
The same thing happens when you try the same food in the same context again and again. But get this: changing the environment can cancel out your existing habituation to the food. This is a handy tip for anyone who has a bad association with a food. Just try it again at a different location and see if you have an easier time enjoying it. Did you hate your first IPA? Well the next time you try one, don’t do it in a loud bar on a bad first date. Maybe give it a shot when you’re out with friends!
Of course, no one should feel like they have to enjoy a particular food or drink. But maybe give it another try; otherwise, you’ll never know what you’re missing out on.
LISTENER QUESTION
ASHLEY: We got a listener question from Ashley (no relation), who asks, “Does blowing on a hot liquid cool it? Or cool it faster than just letting it sit?” That’s a great question, Ashley!
The answer is pretty simple: yes, blowing on a hot liquid does help to cool it down. But how is pretty interesting, and also brings up a bizarre physics question I’ve wondered about before. So, the temperature of a liquid is determined by how fast the individual molecules within it are moving. That’s why cream poured into cold-brew coffee takes longer to disperse than when it’s poured into hot coffee — the hot coffee molecules are moving faster, and imparting that extra energy to the molecules of cream so that they match the temperature of the surrounding molecules a bit more quickly. But just like a footrace will have faster runners and slower runners, not all of the molecules in a hot liquid are moving at the same speed — some are faster and some are slower. The fastest ones are hot enough to enter a new phase of matter and turn into gas that escapes the liquid and lowers its temperature, something you experience as steam. When you blow on a hot liquid, two things happen. Your relatively cooler breath replaces the hottest molecules hanging out above the liquid, which creates a relatively larger energy difference between the air and the liquid and helps the liquid cool more quickly — kind of like putting it in a refrigerator if that refrigerator was the 98 degrees of your body. But those super-energetic molecules in the steam also prevent other molecules from doing their own phase changing and escaping, so when you blow on the steam, you clear out space for other hot molecules to leave and take their extra energy with them.
That brings me to the weird physics question that popped into my head: if fast-moving molecules are hotter, why does blowing air feel cool? Turns out that “fast” is all relative: molecules move at least 10 times faster than you can blow, so the extra speed you’re adding is miniscule compared to the other effects I just described. Thanks for your question, Ashley!
https://www.thoughtco.com/blowing-on-hot-food-make-it-cooler-603913
http://pages.mtu.edu/~suits/SpeedofSound.html
Sunday shutdown announcement (mention listener questions are moving to another day)
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, we have an announcement about this show! Ashley and I are about to start working on some MAJOR, VERY exciting projects that we are super stoked about. I don’t know how many details we can give away, but [ad lib].
ASHLEY: Now, having said that, next weekend is Labor Day weekend here in the U.S., which is kind of the unofficial sign that summer is over. And now that August is almost over (how is it August already?), we’re kicking things into high gear.
CODY: And by that, we mean that we need TIME to dedicate to developing these new projects I mentioned, to make them sound — and LOOK — great. So starting in September, we’re going to be releasing Curiosity Daily Monday through Friday, FIVE days a week. You might hear special weekend episodes once in a while, but today will be the last regularly scheduled Sunday episode we plan on releasing in the near future. Now, it might sound like we’re giving you less, but the whole point of this is to give you more! It’s the calm before the storm. [ad lib about a marathon]
ASHLEY: Oh, and our listener questions are not going away — they’re just moving! So starting in September, tune in every FRIDAY to hear us answer your great questions, and keep them coming in to podcast-at-curiosity-dot-com.
CODY: That’s right! Listener questions every Friday, and everything else will stay the same. We know Curiosity Daily is probably a big part of your daily routine, so trust us when we say we did not come to this decision lightly. Believe me. It’ll be worth it in the long run. Just keep an eye on Curiosity! [ad lib]
ASHLEY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today!
CODY: Today we learned that cougars and coyotes got smaller and adapted to their environments to survive climate change.
ASHLEY: And that you really can “acquire” a taste, for both biological and psychological reasons
CODY: And that blowing on a hot food or liquid actually does cool it down
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes! I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!