Learn about a microwave to revive hamsters; whether humans are still evolving; and why art is more moving in a museum. One of the earliest microwaves wasn’t for food… it was for reanimating frozen hamsters. by Cameron Duke Andjus, R. K., & Lovelock, J. E. (1955). Reanimation of rats from body temperatures between 0 and 1° C by microwave diathermy. The Journal of Physiology, 128(3), 541–546. https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.1955.sp005323 Felton, J. (2021, May 18). YouTuber Discovers The Bizarre Early Use Of Microwave Ovens. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/early-microwaves-hamsters/ Scott, T. (2021). I promise this story about microwaves is interesting. [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tdiKTSdE9Y Are humans still evolving? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Jonathan) Milk episode: https://www.curiositydaily.com/our-ability-to-drink-milk-evolved-way-faster-than-scientists-thought/ An Evolutionary Whodunit: How Did Humans Develop Lactose Tolerance? (2012, December 28). NPR.org. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/27/168144785/an-evolutionary-whodunit-how-did-humans-develop-lactose-tolerance Hoole, J. (2018). These “Sea Nomads” Are The First Known Humans to Have a Genetic Adaptation to Diving. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/indonesian-bajau-genetic-changes-adapt-them-to-aquatic-lifestyle-2 Winter. (2013, January 29). How to Survive a Siberian Winter. Science | AAAS. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/01/how-survive-siberian-winter Hsu, J. (2010, July). Tibetans Underwent Fastest Evolution Seen in Humans. Livescience.com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/6663-tibetans-underwent-fastest-evolution-humans.html TED-Ed. (2020). Is human evolution speeding up or slowing down? - Laurence Hurst [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTeOhj6dxsU SciShow. (2020). 4 Ways Humans Are Still Evolving [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCjAAVk7Uis Art is more moving when you see it in a museum by Cameron Duke Art affects you more powerfully when you view it in a museum. (2015, February 5). Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/02/05/art-affects-you-more-powerfully-when-you-view-it-in-a-museum/ Brieber, D., Nadal, M., & Leder, H. (2015). In the white cube: Museum context enhances the valuation and memory of art. Acta Psychologica, 154, 36–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.11.004 Situated Cognition: Theory & Definition | Study.com. (2021). Study.com. https://study.com/academy/lesson/situated-cognition-theory-definition.html Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about a microwave to revive hamsters; whether humans are still evolving; and why art is more moving in a museum.
One of the earliest microwaves wasn’t for food… it was for reanimating frozen hamsters. by Cameron Duke
Are humans still evolving? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Jonathan)
Art is more moving when you see it in a museum by Cameron Duke
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/hamster-microwave-are-humans-still-evolving-art-is-better-in-a-museum
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how one of the earliest microwaves was for bringing hamsters back to life; and why art is more moving when you see it in a museum. We’ll also answer a listener question about whether humans are still evolving.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If you have a microwave, you probably use it to heat up your food. So it might surprise you to learn that one of the first microwaves wasn’t built for that purpose. Instead, its job was to reanimate frozen hamsters.
It might sound cruel, but scientists in the 1940s were doing this for a very good reason. They wanted to know if there was a practical way to freeze and reanimate living tissue. If this technology were achievable, it would have huge implications for procedures like organ transplants.
The scientists started with hamsters. They would take hamsters, freeze them, and then experiment with ways to bring them back to life. The problem was that all the ways the scientists were heating the hamster-circles were either too slow or too...burned. Needless to say, the original experiments fell short of what the researchers hoped they would achieve.
Enter: James Lovelock, a fascinating British scientist who was instrumental in multiple non-microwave-related discoveries and innovations. It was the early 1950s when Lovelock saw his colleagues struggling and suggested they use a process called diathermy. Diathermy [DYE-uh-THERM-ee] is the process of using an electric current to generate heat. It’d been used as a form of muscle therapy since the 1800s, and was old tech at this point.
Lovelock purchased a small electric generator and plugged it into two devices called magnetrons, which take an electric current and convert it into microwave radiation. Then, he built a small cage just big enough to contain a hamster and hold the magnetrons.
The scientists placed a frozen hamster in the contraption, turned it on, and ta-da! The thing actually worked. One moment, the hamster was frozen nearly solid, the next, it was alive and kicking. More importantly, this contraption repeatedly and reliably revived the animals without causing them any apparent harm.
It was a huge breakthrough for the field of cryobiology, but the technology never scaled up to the size of human organs. As it turns out, this technique only works on small animals like rodents — not because you can’t heat larger animals, but because it takes too long to freeze them in the first place.
Today, the technology lives on in our kitchens, where it does a great job at reheating leftovers and frozen burritos. That’s a long way from its origins in rodent necromancy.
We got a listener question from Jonathan, who writes, “My friends and I have a rolling debate, Are Humans still evolving? What was different about us 20,000 years ago? What will be different about humans in 20,000 years from now? Help us get smarter in just a few minutes!!!!” I’ll do my best, Jonathan!
The thing about evolution is that it’s really hard to see it happening in the moment. Individuals don’t evolve — evolution only happens over many generations. That said, humans absolutely have evolved in the last 20,000 years and will most likely continue evolving over the next 20,000 years, if we make it that far.
One of the most famous examples of recent human evolution is our ability to drink milk into adulthood. We covered this last October, but in short: most mammals stop producing the enzyme they need to digest milk after they’re weaned. A recent study found that sometime around 3,000 years ago, the genetic switch that turns off that enzyme broke in a group of Bronze-Age farmers in Europe. This genetic mutation spread throughout the population in just a few thousand years, which is a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Those farmers were drinking milk from their animals long before they could comfortably digest it, and that probably helped that mutation spread quickly throughout the population — the ability to digest milk was a survival advantage in a place where Vitamin D from sunlight was hard to come by.
Similar things have happened in specific populations all over the world. The Bajau, a group of free-diving nomads in Southwest Asia, have evolved genes for higher oxygen capacity, which helps them take longer dives. Populations in chilly Siberia have evolved genes that help them adapt to the cold. And mountain-dwelling Tibetans evolved genes to better survive in a low-oxygen environment — and scientists say they did it in less than 3,000 years.
But we are definitely changing human evolution. Natural selection selects for the genes that help us survive to reproduce — but modern medicine helps to keep us alive when our genes might not. But natural selection is just one part of evolution. Every new generation comes with variations and mutations in their DNA, and because those changes don’t make or break our survival anymore, something weird might be happening: modern medicine might be leading to more genetic diversity. Still, in evolutionary terms, modern medicine is brand new. Only time will tell how we’ll evolve in the next 20,000 years.
Thanks for your question, Jonathan! If you have a question, send a voice recording or an email to curiosity at discovery dot com, or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
Thanks to the internet, you can peruse the art collection at the Louvre, or the Met, or the Art Institute of Chicago without leaving your house. But will you appreciate it as much? New research suggests you won’t.
Recently, a group of researchers from the University of Vienna invited 137 psychology students to view and rate 27 works of art on display at Vienna’s MUSA [MOOZ-ah] museum. The researchers divided the students into three groups. Group 1 looked at the artwork online, and then one week later did the same exercise by actually visiting the museum. Group two did the same thing, but in reverse; they went to the museum first and attended the virtual exhibit second. The third group didn’t go to the museum at all. Instead, they just did two virtual visits one week apart.
After viewing the art, the students gave each piece a rating on five metrics, including how much they liked it and how it made them feel. In general, students rated the art they saw in the museum as more moving, interesting, and likeable than the art they saw on the computer screen. Interestingly, the group that saw the art in the museum first rated art in the virtual exhibit even lower than the students who experienced the art on a screen first.
What’s really surprising, though, is how well they remembered it. A memory test after the first art viewing showed that the students remembered the art pieces they saw in the museum better than the ones they saw on the screen. They also had a better memory of the other pieces nearby, almost as if they were naturally using the museum space as a memory device.
This research solves a long-standing debate between an art theory called “formalism” and modern psychology research. Formalism says that art appreciation comes down solely to the piece itself. But a theory in psychology research called “situated cognition” begs to differ. That theory basically says that environment is very important when it comes to how we learn and remember.
This study put a point in the situated cognition column. And that shouldn’t be too surprising. Museums are purposeful buildings designed to display art. They give art context and space — things a virtual exhibit can’t do. And that context matters.
So while viewing art virtually can be an enjoyable experience, if you can, go to the museum to let the art really move you.
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about that time the US tried to adopt the metric system, but was stopped by pirates;
A bunch of things we just learned about the interior of Mars;
Why people usually misremember where they were on a certain date;
How black holes can show us multiple versions of the same thing;
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s writers were Cameron Duke and Ashley Hamer, who’s also our managing editor.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend! [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Then, join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!