Learn about how to combat revenge bedtime procrastination; the power of elephant trunks; and how pineapples eat you back. How to combat "revenge bedtime procrastination" by Kelsey Donk Cohut, M. (2021, March 19). Revenge bedtime procrastination: A plight of our times? Medicalnewstoday.com; Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/revenge-bedtime-procrastination-a-plight-of-our-times Patia Braithwaite. (2021, May 28). Revenge Bedtime Procrastination: 6 Ways to Manage It. SELF; SELF. https://www.self.com/story/revenge-bedtime-procrastination Kroese, F. M., De Ridder, D. T. D., Evers, C., & Adriaanse, M. A. (2014). Bedtime procrastination: introducing a new area of procrastination. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00611 Elephants can suck water into their trunks 30 times faster than you sneeze by Cameron Duke How an elephant’s trunk manipulates air to eat and drink. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/giot-hae060121.php Schulz, A. K., Ning Wu, J., Ha, S. Y. S., Kim, G., Braccini Slade, S., Rivera, S., Reidenberg, J. S., & Hu, D. L. (2021). Suction feeding by elephants. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 18(179), 20210215. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0215 Pineapples eat you back, thanks to a meat-tenderizer enzyme by Grant Currin Here’s The Scientific Reason Pineapple Burns Your Mouth. (2018). NowThis News. https://nowthisnews.com/videos/food/heres-the-scientific-reason-pineapple-burns-your-mouth Scheve, T. (2008, August 4). Why do pineapple enzymes tenderize steak -- and your tongue? HowStuffWorks. https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/edible-innovations/pineapple-enzyme-tenderize-steak1.htm Di Lullo, G. A., Sweeney, S. M., Körkkö, J., Ala-Kokko, L., & San Antonio, J. D. (2002). Mapping the Ligand-binding Sites and Disease-associated Mutations on the Most Abundant Protein in the Human, Type I Collagen. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 277(6), 4223–4231. https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.m110709200 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 how to combat revenge bedtime procrastination; the power of elephant trunks; and how pineapples eat you back.
How to combat "revenge bedtime procrastination" by Kelsey Donk
Elephants can suck water into their trunks 30 times faster than you sneeze by Cameron Duke
Pineapples eat you back, thanks to a meat-tenderizer enzyme by Grant Currin
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/revenge-bedtime-procrastination-elephant-trunks-pineapples-eat-you-back
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 to combat revenge bedtime procrastination; new research into how ridiculously fast elephants can suck water into their trunks; and how pineapples eat you back.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Some days, by the time work is over, the dishes are done, and the house is relatively tidy, it often feels like it’s already time to go to sleep. But you want your me-time, so you scroll, binge-watch, or read instead of going to sleep — and wake up the next morning feeling tired and cranky. If this sounds familiar, you’ll be happy to know that it actually has a name: revenge bedtime procrastination. Even better, psychologists have found some strategies to help reduce revenge bedtime procrastination and get to bed on time.
The concept of bedtime procrastination has been around since 2014. Researchers at the time defined it as the act of going to bed later than you plan to even though no external factors get in the way.
Revenge bedtime procrastination is a little different — not in how it happens, but in the emotions behind it. If you feel like you’re staying up late because work or other responsibilities have stolen away the rest of your day, you might be experiencing revenge bedtime procrastination.
A 2018 study showed that the less enjoyable a person’s day was, the more likely they were to put off sleep in favor of doing some of the fun things they hadn’t had a chance to do during normal waking hours.
Revenge bedtime procrastination is just one way that people try to reclaim their time.
But there aren’t any advantages to missing out on sleep. In fact, a lack of sleep has been linked to weight gain, poor mood regulation, poor heart health, and inflammation, in addition to mental health challenges. Skimping on sleep can make your day less enjoyable, which is what causes revenge bedtime procrastination in the first place.
So how do you fight it?
Researchers say it’s important to carve out me-time for yourself earlier in the day. Whether it’s using your lunch break or time right after work to take a walk, read a book, or play a video game, it’s worth it to set the time aside. Try to do something fun every day, well before it’s time to go to bed. Then, when the day is done, put away your screens, take a hot shower or bath, and go to sleep, distraction-free.
Elephant trunks are amazing. They have over 40,000 muscles and are strong enough to rip trees out of the ground, but also somehow have the dexterity to pluck a single leaf from a tree. They also have an incredible sense of smell. Now, new research has found that elephant trunks can suck up water at speeds 30 times faster than you sneeze.
Researchers at Georgia Tech learned this during a recent study examining how elephants use their trunks to pick up food. Their goal was to better understand how elephants manage to handle small food items that should be, in theory, too small for the trunk to grab.
In their experiment, they placed small rutabaga cubes onto a platform for the elephant to eat. At first, the elephant used the end of its trunk to scoop the cubes into a small pile. But instead of pinching the cube with the end of its trunk as if with a thumb and forefinger, it made what the researchers described as a “slurping” sound and sucked up all the cubes into its trunk before transferring the food to its mouth. This was surprising, because not many land animals feed by using suction. Besides, the vacuum force needed to pick up vegetable cubes needs to be pretty strong. So the researchers dug in.
Their experiments found that an elephant’s suction ability can be really delicate. Like when they placed a tortilla chip on the platform, the elephant used just enough suction to hold the chip to the end of its trunk without breaking it.
But that suction can also be really powerful, and that’s where things get mind-blowing. When the elephant was allowed to suck water out of an aquarium, its trunk was capable of pulling in about 1 gallon or 4 liters of water in 1.5 seconds. To do that, the water has to move into the trunk at more than 300 miles per hour, or nearly 500 kilometers per hour. For reference, a human sneeze travels at a speed of right around 10 miles per hour, or about 16 kilometers per hour.
However, it’s not clear whether elephants use suction to feed in the wild. Much of what they might eat doesn’t require suction feeding, and they definitely don’t want dust and twigs getting trapped in their trunks. Because that would really suck.
Have you ever wondered why eating too much pineapple can make your tongue hurt? The answer is simple: it contains a substance that breaks down proteins. In other words, when you eat pineapple, it eats you back.
Here’s how it happens. All kinds of meat are made out of proteins, from beef to your own tongue. Proteins are responsible for a lot of what it takes to make a living thing grow and well, keep it alive. Proteins are made out of long, long chains of much smaller molecules called amino acids. They make those chains with what are called peptide bonds.
The most common form of protein in the human body is collagen. It exists between cells, and it’s what gives shape to muscles, skin, bones — basically everything.
Here’s where pineapples come in. The prickly fruit contains a compound called bromelain [BRO-muh-layne]. It’s a mixture of two different enzymes that break down proteins, called proteases [PRO-tee-ayz-zez]. Remember those peptide bonds that link up the amino acids to make proteins? Well, it just so happens that the proteases in bromelain have the right biochemical makeup to wiggle themselves in between amino acids and break the peptide bonds. That destroys our precious proteins.
That destructive quality is the reason pineapple juice is good for tenderizing meat, and it’s also the reason eating pineapple can make your tongue, mouth, and throat hurt. The fruit is literally dissolving your body.
The good news is that it isn’t dangerous. Sure, you lose some peptide bonds when chowing down on a juicy piece of pineapple. But there are plenty more where those came from. As soon as you start eating, your body jumps into action fixing the damage and metabolizing the proteases that are, well, trying to digest you.
But if you really want to avoid the burn, here are a couple of tips. There are higher levels of bromelain in the pineapple stem, so avoid it if you can. And bromelain can’t handle the heat, so cooking a pineapple dish above 158 degrees Fahrenheit, or 70 degrees Celsius, will neutralize the enzymes and keep your mouth safe, sound, and... undissolved.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Kelsey Donk, Cameron Duke, and Grant Currin.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: You can go to bed on time tonight knowing that you carved out some time to listen to Curiosity Daily. And you can sleep even better knowing you can join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!