Learn how mammals breathe through their butts; how babies remember their birth language; and your reflection in a spoon. Mammals can breathe through their butts, and this could help humans with respiratory failure by Grant Currin Breathing Through the Rectum Saves Oxygen-Starved Mice and Pigs. (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/science/rectum-breathing-oxygen.html Okabe, R., Chen-Yoshikawa, T. F., Yoneyama, Y., Yokoyama, Y., Tanaka, S., Yoshizawa, A., Thompson, W. L., Kannan, G., Kobayashi, E., Date, H., & Takebe, T. (2021). Mammalian enteral ventilation ameliorates respiratory failure. Med. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medj.2021.04.004 Even If They Don’t Use It, Babies Remember Their Birth Language by Ashley Hamer Adoptees advantaged by birth language memory. (2017). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170118082828.htm Early development of abstract language knowledge: evidence from perception–production transfer of birth-language memory | Royal Society Open Science. (2017). Royal Society Open Science. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.160660 Why is your reflection upside down in a spoon? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Bella in Austin, Texas) Matthews, R. (2019). Why is your reflection upside-down in a spoon? BBC Science Focus Magazine; BBC Science Focus Magazine. https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/why-is-your-reflection-upside-down-in-a-spoon/ Physics Tutorial: Reflection and Image Formation for Convex Mirrors. (2021). Physicsclassroom.com. https://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/refln/Lesson-4/Reflection-and-Image-Formation-for-Convex-Mirrors Q & A: Why is your reflection upside down in a spoon? | Department of Physics | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (2021). Illinois.edu. https://van.physics.illinois.edu/QA/listing.php?id=1985&t=why-is-your-reflection-upside-down-in-a-spoon It's AumSum Time. (2017). Concave Mirror - Why is your reflection upside down on a spoon? | #aumsum #kids #science [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6n0FAZ_6N8 Why mirrors flip horizontally but not vertically (Curiosity Daily listener question): https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/bad-news-about-your-wearable-sleep-tracker Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn how mammals breathe through their butts; how babies remember their birth language; and your reflection in a spoon.
Mammals can breathe through their butts, and this could help humans with respiratory failure by Grant Currin
Even If They Don’t Use It, Babies Remember Their Birth Language by Ashley Hamer
Why is your reflection upside down in a spoon? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Bella in Austin, Texas)
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/mammals-can-breathe-through-their-butts
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 mammals can breathe through their butts; and how babies remember their birth language even if they don’t use it. We’ll also answer a listener question about why your reflection is upside down in a spoon.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
The butt is way more versatile than you might expect. The terminal end of the digestive tract is best known for waste disposal, but new research suggests it could be good for... breathing? You heard that right. It's not just turtles. Mammals — possibly including humans — have the capacity to absorb oxygen through the rectum.
This new discovery is, objectively, hilarious. There's no denying it. But the researchers aren't just in it for the giggles. The project actually aims to help one particular group: patients with severe lung failure. Right now, mechanical ventilators are the technology of choice to help people who can't breathe on their own. But as we've all seen during the pandemic, ventilators have a lot of shortcomings. That's why researchers are looking for alternatives.
This particular line of research found inspiration in the animal kingdom.
It turns out that a ton of animals have a plan B for breathing — and that’s “B” for “BUTT!!!!!” There are fish that will momentarily surface and swallow a big gulp of air when oxygen levels in the water get too low for comfort. But they don’t have lungs, so that air goes into the digestive tract to be absorbed into the blood. And turtles are famously known to take in oxygen through their butts. They do that during winters spent at the bottoms of ponds.
This all suggests that maybe mammals could do the same thing. The researchers haven't started testing this theory in humans, but they've reported promising results in experiments using mice and pigs. They started off by putting mice in a low-oxygen environment while pumping pure O2 into their rectums. That approach helped the mice survive longer, but there were some problems that made it an unattractive option for use with sick humans.
They had more success when the oxygen was dissolved into liquid. That shouldn't come as a surprise, since the intestines specifically evolved to absorb nutrients and other stuff in a liquidy environment.
The researchers tested this approach by putting mice and pigs in low-oxygen chambers and then pumping the oxygen-rich liquid into their rectums. The results were pretty stunning. Mice that didn't have the strength to stand started walking around when the liquid started to flow. As for the pigs, their skin transformed from a cold and sickly grey to a warm and healthy pink. One of the researchers described it as complete recovery.
Experiments in mice and pigs are one thing, but will it work in humans? It's just too soon to say. Right now, researchers are making sure it's safe enough to test. If they get the green light, the scientists behind the project hope to start clinical trials as early as 2022. Until then, we’ll just have to SIT TIGHT. [END WITH PUNNNS]
When parents adopt a child from another country, many want to find ways to keep them connected with their original culture. Well, here’s more benefit to keeping that connection: adopted children’s brains retain traces of the language they were born around, even if they’ve never spoken it.
This comes from a 2017 study that looked at two groups of Dutch adults. The first group had been born in Korea and adopted by Dutch-speaking families, some when they were younger than 6 months old and some when they were toddlers. None of them had spoken Korean since they were adopted. The other group were native Dutch speakers who didn’t know Korean. They were the control group. The researchers chose three Korean consonants that were unlike anything in the Dutch language and trained all of the participants to pronounce them over two weeks. Afterward, the researchers recorded each participant attempting to pronounce the consonants and played the recordings for native Korean speakers, who gave them a rating.
Over the training period, the adoptees improved their pronunciation significantly more than the native Dutch speakers. They were also better at reproducing the sounds in the first place. This shows that some vestige of the language they were first exposed to as newborns left an imprint in their brains, which made it easier for them to pick it up again later.
Of course, some of the adoptees had spoken a little bit of Korean as toddlers. Did that make a difference? Surprisingly, the answer is no. There was no difference in pronunciation ability between those who were adopted as infants and those adopted as toddlers. You might also think that the longer you were around a language, the stronger its imprint would be in your brain, but this research found that this wasn’t the case. In the study press release, one researcher explained, quote, “This means that even in the very early months of life, useful language knowledge is laid down, and what has been retained about the birth language is abstract knowledge about what patterns are possible, not, for instance, words.” end quote.
The take-home message: if you’re an adoptive parent or were adopted yourself from another country, start checking out language lessons. You might be surprised how quickly that native tongue comes back.
We got a listener question from Bella in Austin, Texas, who writes, “why does our reflection appear upside-down or right-side-up depending on which side you look at on a spoon?” Great question!
This is kinda related to a listener question we answered back in April about why mirrors seem to flip right to left but not upside down. Check out the show notes for a link to that one. But in that, we explained that mirrors reflect particles of light, called photons. When you’ve got a flat mirror, photons bounce off of your right side, go into the right side of the mirror, and then bounce straight back so you see them on the right. Same for the left side.
But a spoon isn’t a flat mirror — it’s a concave mirror on the bowl side and a convex mirror on the back side. So, imagine you’re looking into the bowl of a spoon. Photons from your forehead take a straight path into the top of that bowl, and photons from your chin take a straight path into the bottom. But because both surfaces are curved, they bounce those photons in a different direction: the top bounces your forehead photons down, and the bottom bounces your chin photons up! As a result, you see your forehead at the bottom of the spoon and your chin at the top.
But the paths of those photons actually meet at a certain point between your face and the spoon, at something called the focal point. Past that point, they keep going and everything you see is upside down. But if you get your face close enough that the focal point isn’t between you and the spoon, you can see your reflection right-side up again. Pretty handy for checking if there’s food in your teeth!
So what about the backside of the spoon? That’s a convex mirror, and it does the opposite. Photons take a straight path toward the spoon, then they’re reflected out in all directions. The result? Your face looks all wide and distorted. The focal point of a convex mirror is actually behind the mirror. That doesn’t really matter for spoons, but it does matter for something transparent like a lens. Telescopes use combinations of concave and convex lenses to magnify distant objects without turning them upside down. Cool, right?
Thanks for your question, Becca! If you have a question, send an email or a voice recording to curiosity at discovery dot com or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
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 why pro soccer players miss penalty kicks;
The earliest evidence of humans changing their ecosystems with fire;
How social media could be hurting your memory;
Why evolution doesn’t just have one direction:
And more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: The writer for today’s first story was Grant Currin.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend! Put a spoon in your butt! Then, join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!