Learn about why officials in Idaho once dropped beavers from parachutes, how your romantic partner might be influencing your goals (and vice versa), and test your podcast knowledge with this month’s Curiosity Challenge trivia game.
Learn about why officials in Idaho once dropped beavers from parachutes, how your romantic partner might be influencing your goals (and vice versa), and test your podcast knowledge with this month’s Curiosity Challenge trivia game.
Romantic Partners Influence Each Other's Goals by Kelsey Donk
Why Idaho Officials Dropped Beavers from Parachutes by Steffie Drucker
Episodes referenced in Curiosity Challenge Trivia with Melissa:
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-romantic-partners-influence-each-others-relationship-goals
ASHLEY HAMER: Hi. You're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today you'll learn about why officials in Idaho once dropped beavers from parachutes, how your romantic partner might be influencing your goals, and vise versa, and test your podcast knowledge with this month's Curiosity challenge trivia game.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. In a long term romantic relationship it's only natural to adopt each other's preferences. Maybe you get into the same sports they like or maybe they become a big fan of your favorite restaurant.
And according to recent research, the same may be true of your preferences for the relationship itself. In a study of more than 450 romantic couples, researchers found that what one partner wants to achieve in the relationship or wants to avoid, the other partner eventually does too. And that's regardless of gender, age, and length of relationship.
The study specifically looked at approach and avoidance goals in the context of a relationship. Basically approach goals are all about looking for positive outcomes. In a relationship, that could be things like deepening your bond with the other person or having a meaningful interaction every day.
Avoidance goals are the opposite. They're all about avoiding a negative outcome. That's pretty easy to imagine in a romantic relationship. A partner might just avoid disagreements or stay out of situations that could hurt their feelings. As you might imagine, studies have found that approach goals are associated with more relationship satisfaction, and avoidance goals are associated with less.
But almost no one before this study knew how different approach and avoidance goals interacted in romantic relationships. And these researchers found that, yeah, relationship goals are really interconnected. If one person really wants to avoid feeling rejected, the other person in the relationship will also start to avoid rejection.
And if one person wants to have difficult conversations to help the relationship grow, the other person will eventually want to do that too. Researchers figured this out by doing daily check ins with each partner in a couple for two weeks, and then doing the same thing again about a year later.
While couples definitely influence each other's relationship goals, the researchers noticed that there was a delay. One partner's long-term goals first appeared as daily goals for the other partner. They took a long time to become that partner's long-term goals.
Researchers actually think this is a pretty cool adaptive mechanism in our brains to ensure that we aren't swayed by our partner's every shifting desire. Still, if you've been with someone for a while now, think about what you want and don't want out of the relationship. Chances are your partner isn't far behind.
NATALIA REAGAN: It's time for my favorite.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yes. Get ready for this guys. When there's a conflict between animals and humans, wildlife management experts have a lot of tools at their disposal. They can scare the animals away, drive them somewhere new, or, as a last resort, they can put the animal down.
But when beavers bothered one Idaho town in the 1940s, a government official came up with a very different solution, parachutes. Here's how it worked. The year was 1948. Thanks to the post-war economic boom, new homes were sprouting up across the country, including scenic Payette, Lake Idaho.
There was just one problem, a beaver colony had already been living there for centuries, and they were not so welcoming to their new neighbors. They damaged farms and orchards. The human newcomers weren't happy.
So the Idaho Fish and Game Department was tasked with rehoming the rodents. They'd had success relocating beavers throughout the state previously, but in this case, there was a mountain in the way. The Beavers would have to spend long hot days in boxes strapped to a packhorse. The journey posed a threat to both the beavers and their human handlers. There had to be a better way.
Enter Elmo Peter, an employee of the Idaho Fish and Game Department. He knew there was a surplus of parachutes from World War II which had recently ended. That gave him an unusual but brilliant idea. Could they just drop the beavers from planes?
To try out his idea, Peter designed a custom wooden box that he kept the beaver safely contained during the flight, and would open upon touchdown. Peter first tested his design with weights, then with an elderly male beaver fittingly named Geronimo.
Geronimo did so many test flights that he eventually started returning to the crate on his own, albeit reluctantly. With the testing complete, it was go time. Geronimo's reward for being the guinea pig was a first class ticket to the promised land with three lovely young female beavers. In all, 76 beavers were successfully airdropped into their new home. All but one survived the trip.
The project was an economic success too. Airdropping beavers saved tons of man hours, and made good use of the surplus parachutes. Plus, these natural engineers water management work was 10 times more valuable than the cost of their transport.
How about them beavers? Sadly beaver transportation doesn't involve parachutes anymore, but fortunately there's a video of the whole thing online. We're going to put that link in the show notes. You're welcome. I love that story.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes, it's great. It's time, once again, for the Curiosity challenge. Every month I call up a listener and I put them to the test by asking three questions from stories we ran on Curiosity Daily in the previous month.
For this Curiosity challenge I talked to Melissa who's a longtime Curiosity Daily listener, and, actually, sent in last week's question about aluminum cans. The only problem was that our conversation didn't record, my bad.
Curse you, 2020. But she was nice enough to let me quiz her a second time. Ready to test your knowledge? Let's get started. So how long have you been listening to Curiosity Daily?
MELISSA: Probably about a year, something like that. I found it on my Google routines. It was one of the things that I could pick in the mornings and I was like, well, that looks interesting.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, that's awesome, yes. And whereabouts are you in the country?
MELISSA: I live in Lexington, North Carolina.
ASHLEY HAMER: Very cool. OK, so we will do this for a second time. You've already proven yourself. You're already like a Curiosity Daily superstar, but I will give you three new questions and we'll see how you do.
MELISSA: OK.
ASHLEY HAMER: You ready?
MELISSA: I'm ready.
ASHLEY HAMER: Great, OK. Scientists using cutting edge imaging technology recently discovered that sperm swim completely differently than we thought. How do they swim? A, corkscrew motion, B, an inchworm motion, or C, a lopsided sideways motion.
MELISSA: I remember this story, but I cannot remember the answer. So I'm going to guess, corkscrew.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right, it's corkscrew, yeah. We compared it to an otter, which will kind of, like, spin around in the water. Nice. OK, number two. To prepare for emergencies, astronauts recently tested out sailing technology from the 1700s on the International Space Station. What technology did they test? A, an anchor, B, an astrolabe, or C, a sextant.
MELISSA: A sextant, but I think it would be very interesting to see how an anchor would work in space.
ASHLEY HAMER: I know, right? Cool. Number three, scientists recently discovered that this hard material designed for cutting soft material doubles because of imperfections in the material itself. What hard material is it? A, sewing scissors, B, a razor, or C, a cheese knife.
MELISSA: Well, I remember this story was about a razor. But didn't it affect all three?
ASHLEY HAMER: That's right, yes. Razor was the right answer, but I did use all three of those examples in the story. Wow, that's a great memory. Perfect, yes, you got all three yet again. Thank you so much for redoing this and for proving that you really give us a good lesson. So awesome, thanks.
MELISSA: Welcome. I always have the random questions, and it's nice to have somebody who answers random questions.
ASHLEY HAMER: Totally. Yeah, random questions are the best thing in the world, absolutely. The undefeated champion, amazing. How did you do? If you'd like to play next month or if you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, shoot us an email at podcast@curiosity.com or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
NATALIA REAGAN: OK, before we recap what we learned today, here's a sneak peek at what you'll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Next week, you'll learn about how social isolation could breed conspiracy theorists. What it would be like to ride through a wormhole, how pumpkins became Halloween's go-to decoration, why you didn't have to be Scandinavian to be a Viking, and more. OK, so now let's recap what we learned today.
NATALIA REAGAN: Well, we learned that we can actually change and adapt our goals to be more in sync or in line with our romantic partners. But it might take more time than you think. And this could be good because you don't necessarily want to become everything that your partner is, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: It kind of shows that the growing pains of a new relationship don't last forever, I think. If one person has one kind of relationship style and the other person has a different one, it's good to know that eventually you'll sort of sync up and start to want the same things, which is cool.
NATALIA REAGAN: Right? I do wonder, though, too about age. Because I feel like the older you get, the more sort of ingrained in your patterns and your routine you get. And I wonder if it makes it a little harder for people to sort of adapt and sort of compromise over time.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, I think that makes sense. This study said that age didn't matter, but who knows, let's see what ages they used.
NATALIA REAGAN: If they only go up to 35, I'm going to throw something.
ASHLEY HAMER: I know. OK, well, now I have to look.
NATALIA REAGAN: We did it from 18 to 25-year-old, so there were some older people in it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Mean age was 33.6, but that doesn't mean anything. Let me see. They actually did like a whole lot. They did an entire experiment on the age part. Oh, the age range was 18 to 82, good on them.
NATALIA REAGAN: How big was the sample size? Does it say how many?
ASHLEY HAMER: 463 couples.
NATALIA REAGAN: That's a good amount of couples.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, nice. I like it when I double check something and it's like, no, no, we did our homework.
NATALIA REAGAN: That was good. So, yeah, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe people can-- maybe you need to be open to love.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
NATALIA REAGAN: I say this so I can take my own advice.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's fair. And we also learned that when humans moved into a town already inhabited by beavers, they had to get creative to relocate them. Why they had to relocate them in the first place? Couldn't they just move somewhere where there weren't beavers?
NATALIA REAGAN: That's what I was thinking.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. It's like, I think the humans are the villains in this story, but whatever. When they needed to relocate these beavers, a Fish and Game worker used extra parachutes from World War II to parachute these beavers into their new abode.
NATALIA REAGAN: Man, this was a damn good story, Ashley. No, but I have the same thought. Humans, come on now, can you just like move a little bit over a few miles and let the beavers-- I mean, I just see this like a Smurf village of beavers bustling town, dams everywhere.
ASHLEY HAMER: They have their daily routines, they go on their little walks, and they have their little dinners. And I don't know what beavers do every day, but I assume--
NATALIA REAGAN: They play Yahtzee. They play lots of Yahtzee, Shuffleboard. I mean, yeah, I just see the little town, the general store, I see them just, you know--
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. They whittle, they definitely whittle.
NATALIA REAGAN: They whittle so much wood. They would, they would whittle wood. But, yeah, I mean, come on, humans, can we just not displace things. Rude, I say.
ASHLEY HAMER: True. Yeah, in case people were curious, the one beaver that didn't survive, they parachuted in boxes. And the boxes were designed so that once they landed, they would spring open and then the beaver could go its own way. But this beaver somehow got the box open while it was in flight, and actually climbed on top of the box. And it was only like 100 feet from the ground, but it ended up jumping off anyway.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, no. I thought you were going to say got stuck in the box. I'm like, why didn't it chew itself out?
ASHLEY HAMER: Right, right.
NATALIA REAGAN: Poor buddy. Oh, man. Well, he took one for the team. But, poor, poor beaver.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Died doing what he loves, I assume. If he was a skydiving buff.
NATALIA REAGAN: That was Kevin, he was our skydiving beaver. Today's stories were written by Steffi Drucker and Kelsey Donk. And edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the Managing Editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting and editing by Natalia Reagan. And our producer is Cody Gough.
NATALIA REAGAN: Have a great weekend. Don't forget the parachuting beavers. And join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.
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