Today you’ll learn about how some researchers have activated a specific gene in the body that can make your muscles stronger without exercise, how a parasite that can still be found today was discovered in ancient viking poop, and how parrots understand timing when it comes to communication.
Today you’ll learn about how some researchers have activated a specific gene in the body that can make your muscles stronger without exercise, how a parasite that can still be found today was discovered in ancient viking poop, and how parrots understand timing when it comes to communication.
Strong Muscle Gene
The Secrets of Viking Poop
Parrot Chat
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! 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 transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/strong-muscle-gene-the-secrets-of-viking-poop-parrot-chat
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how researchers have activated a specific gene in the body that can make your muscles stronger without exercise, how a parasite that can still be found today was discovered in viking poop, and how parrots understand timing when it comes to communication.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Do you know what is, by far, the worst part of exercise?
CALLI: Exercising?
NATE: Yeah! It’s having to exercise! Doing all that work, all that effort, all that brain power and time that goes into it, ugh. Exhausting. Now, fortunately, for lazy people like me there is new research out of the University of Melbourne has discovered the doorway to a brand new way to get stronger muscles without actually working out!
CALLI: Uh huh. Sure. So, this is actually starting to sound a little bit like a pyramid scheme? Nate? Is this a pyramid scheme?
NATE: I mean I get where you’re coming from. It’s maybe a late night infomercial, “Do you want a big muscle without working out? Have we got a solutio-,” there’s probably a dozen of those products out there already. But no; that is not what this is. This is not a pyramid scheme, nor a late night infomercial. This is a medical discovery that shows that inside the human body there is a specific gene called C18ORF25, or just C18 for short.
CALLI: What?
NATE: I know, it’s very catchy. Now, this gene regulates how strong muscles get during exercise. And by exploiting this gene, we could develop ways to make muscles stronger without actually exercising.
CALLI: Okay, so, this is actually fascinating, usually it’s exercising that makes the muscles strong but there’s a key distinction here: usually when you work out, your muscles get stronger but they also get larger because the tissue itself is actually tearing and regenerating itself, building on itself and it gets bigger by default. The C18 gene activates during that exercise usually to help that process along. So, what you’re saying is that the researchers discovered that this gene can be activated without exercising. So, does that mean that there’s like a way to hack into getting into amazing shape without exercising?
NATE: Well, this could potentially lead to becoming stronger without exercising but, unfortunately, if you’re looking for a more muscular fit body type, then hacking this gene isn’t the way because this method makes your muscles get stronger but it doesn’t have that tearing and regrowth effect that actual exercise does. So, your muscles do not get larger.
CALLI: That’s kinda disappointing. What’s the point of this, then? Like, if I can’t have a future where I put no effort at all and can look like a female Arnold Schwarzenegger, then what are we even doing here?
NATE: There’s actually more of a practical reason for them to be researching this gene than huge muscles. I mean, if you can manually activate the gene that makes muscles stronger, you can do a lot of good things, like fight muscle atrophy and decaying muscles from old age. This is the kind of thing that can be especially helpful for people who, for various reasons such as disability, can’t exercise but need to stay strong.
CALLI: Okay, and when it comes to gene activation, it’s not that easy, unfortunately. There isn’t a way to successfully activate it every time right now but research has actually allowed us to distinguish all the molecular similarities and differences between what various exercises do to the body and that’s gonna be helpful for a number of reasons.
NATE: Absolutely. Now, it’s common knowledge that exercise can prevent and even treat diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, as well as many cancers. But, additionally, by better understanding how different types of exercise create these health-promoting effects at a molecular level, the researchers can work towards making new and improved treatment options for those diseases. Plus, there’s a few other things they also believe we can do with this. We might be able to create healthier meat from livestock and we might be able to develop ways to keep athletes stronger for a lot longer.
CALLI: See, those are two very different subjects and I’m curious about both, so… let’s put a pin in it.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, I have a really gross story today.
NATE: … Yay.
CALLI: Today we are talking about the whipworm parasite which was recently discovered to have lived in the gut of humans nearly 55 thousand years ago. AND it’s still around today.
NATE: Wow, 55 thousand years seems like an awful long time for one parasite to hang around.
CALLI: Oh, absolutely. And you may be wondering why you haven’t heard of this before and it’s because, thankfully, the whipworm is rare in industrialised parts of the world these days. But, it still affects as many as 795 million people globally - and for people with impaired immune systems or suffering from malnutrition, it can actually be a fatal infection.
NATE: I was joking about how this parasite could last for so long, 55 thousand years, but the reason the whipworm has stuck around for that much time is it’s very durable. The whipworm is attracted to places with poor sanitation and its eggs are easily spread through soil and water. They’re not very noticeable either, they’re so tiny that if I put one in a glass for you right now, you wouldn’t be able to see it or taste it. But once it’s in your guts, this egg will hatch and then a female worm will proceed to lay 20,000 eggs PER DAY for an entire year.
CALLI: That is just so many eggs I can hardly wrap my head around it. The whipworm can actually infect people due to poor cleanliness. So, I’m gonna put this as delicately as possible, whipworm eggs are spread through what is known as a fecal oral route. So… contaminated fecal matter gets into soil or water, gestates for around three months or so, then it gets washed away into the water supply or stuck to vegetation grown in the soil. Regardless of whether they’re ingested right away, the eggs can survive in the soil for an extraordinary amount of time. Sometimes even years.
NATE: So really this is another poop story…
CALLI: This is another poop story! Okay, well, here’s the thing: gotta dial it back a little bit because this is actually a very serious parasite that’s affecting millions of people.
NATE: Alright, that’s fair and we’re not trying to make light of the situation that they’re going through. But I do feel like I should ask: how was this discovered that this parasite has been around for so long?
CALLI: Well, remember how I said these eggs were durable? They’re so durable that a research team recently discovered ancient fossilized human poop from an ancient Viking settlement over 2,500 years ago. In the poop, they found a colony of unhatched, though thankfully fossilized, eggs inside of it.
NATE: You really weren’t joking about that durability to last that long.
CALLI: Nope.
NATE: These eggs are made of a substance known as chitin, which is the same substance that crab shells are made of. The DNA inside of the eggs was preserved for tens of thousands of years, and possibly could have been preserved for even longer.
CALLI: Scientists found they were 55,000 years old, despite the 2,500 year old sample, through stacking the initial research up against contemporary samples gathered from humans and monkeys all over the world. Living, dead, fossilized, etc. They think the whipworm must have originated 55,000 years ago somewhere in Africa and that wasn’t really surprising to a lot of researchers.
NATE: Is this something they were expecting? Why is this not surprising for them?
CALLI: Not necessarily expecting but it has to do with “The Out of Africa” hypothesis. It’s the scientific theory that human life began in Africa, and slowly migrated all over the planet to create life as we know it. But unfortunately, the evidence seems to exist that “life as we know it” includes “life with a highly volatile parasite.”
NATE: If we evolved in Africa then it does make sense that something that coexists with us, even if it is parasitic in nature, would have evolved in the same area. So, if we came from Africa, it coming from Africa also makes sense. It is still impressive that it has this big of a lifespan and this kind of resilience.
CALLI: Oh absolutely. And researchers imply that the whipworm has found a way to adapt alongside the human body to remain unnoticed and continue to spread. There’s actually some evidence that suggests that mild whipworm infections might actually have a beneficial affect. How you get a mild infection with something that’s laying 20,000 eggs in your gut, I don’t know.
NATE: Now, that is the mild infection and, unfortunately, a lot of people have more severe ones, so let’s talk about those side effects which sound pretty nasty. They include dysentery, anemia, or a rectal prolapse.
CALLI: Okay, if you could never say the words, “Rectal prolapse,” again, that would be great.
NATE: I’ll do my best to accept that challenge. Additionally, if this parasite gets into children it has the possibility of inhibiting healthy growth.
CALLI: Yeah but there is a silver lining. You see, research is still in its early days but we need whipworms right now to know how to prevent whipworm infections.
NATE: Uh, I’m actually on team eradicate ALL the whipworms. So, I don’t know if we need to preserve any of them or not.
CALLI: Listen, 55,000 years is a long time so that would be kinda difficult to eradicate them all. That’s actually longer than the entire histories of America, England, Rome, AND nearly one-fifth of the entire existence of the modern human. So, in that case, who do you think will win - the whipworm or the science podcaster?
NATE: Ooh, sounds like quite a fight. Tune in next week for Whipworm versus the Science Podcaster, exclusively through Discovery!
CALLI: Spoiler alert - the whipworm wins.
NATE: It’s a one-two punch to the gut!
CALLI: No!
NATE: Get it? The gut?
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: This is a weird way to start the conversation, but parrots sure do say a lot of words. But… have you ever wondered WHY they say those words? I’m happy to tell you the answer actually exists!
CALLI: Not to parrot you here, but that IS a weird thought to start the conversation, and I’ve actually always wondered if parrots can actually understand me or if they’re just mimicking me.
NATE: Well, for years it was believed that they were just mimicking people. But a new study, appropriately titled the ”What Does Polly Say” project, has revealed that parrots can actually use the words they learn in COMPLETELY different, but appropriate, contexts.
CALLI: That’s pretty incredible. So you’re basically saying that parrots can not only learn certain words and phrases… they can learn exactly when they’re supposed to say it?
NATE: Yep. The project collected data from over 900 companion parrots owned by humans, from across 73 different species. This data was mostly self-reported information on what “words” and “phrases” the parrots use. So for example, the classic saying “Polly want a cracker?” was known by a few of the parrots, but some of the parrots also knew songs that their owners had whistled.
CALLI: Aw, that’s kind of adorable. So what did the study find?
NATE: They found a few things. First, the species of the bird matters. Some parrots are better mimics than others. Like African gray parrots were found to have the largest selections of words, with an average of about 60 human words. And then there’s cockatoos, amazons, and macaws, who averaged around 20-30 words. Though most species learned more phrases than sounds, a few, like cockatiels, learned more human SOUNDS than phrases.
CALLI: So if I had a parrot in my room right now while I was recording and I was just like, “Naaate,” it would actually learn my inflection and know how to say your name?
NATE: It’s possible! It also might know the name of the podcast or even my first phrase that I say.
CALLI: Fair enough.
NATE: But another thing that matters for parrots is “learning over time.” Now, that doesn’t mean older parrots know more words. What I mean is that the amount of time exposed to words matters the most. So a five year old bird COULD have a bigger vocabulary than a fifty year old parrot if the older parrot is out in the wild and isn’t exposed to language.
CALLI: With the way social media is today, that also sort of applies to humans!
NATE: True. But another interesting observation the study found was that there wasn’t a difference in learning between males and females - for the most part. Males of a different species called Budgerigars, or budgies, had a bigger vocabulary, which was the same for Pacific parrotlets, but when it came to yellow-headed amazons, female birds learned more sounds. Other than that, male and female parrots were equally good at mimicry.
And the final observation was the most important: timing. An astounding 89% of companion parrots would use human mimicry in the right context. For example, if a parrot knows how to say “awww what’s wrong, Polly?” it would say it at a time when the owner might be sad or feeling discouraged.
CALLI: So it actually sounds like parrots can understand empathy.
NATE: Maybe! The researchers aren’t 100% sure yet and need to conduct a few more experiments to figure that out. But their conclusion is that this shows us how much parrots still have to teach us. Around 30% of parrots in the wild are declining because of poaching and habitat loss. So, if we don’t conserve those remaining populations, we risk losing all opportunities to understand how complex their communication has become. And that would be a huge loss, because parrots are important research subjects when it comes to understanding the physiological and evolutionary reasons behind acoustic communication in nature.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Researchers in Australia have discovered a gene that, when manipulated, can affect the strength of your muscles!
CALLI: Older than most written history, the whipworm is a stomach parasite that has ravaged millions of people across the globe for longer than we may ever know. However, a recently discovered fossil of the fecal parasite has led us closer to not only discovering how long it’s existed for - but how to possibly harness its powers for good, rather than evil!
NATE: Ever wonder WHY a parrot says a specific thing at a specific time? Turns out parrots don’t just learn words - they learn timing. It’s not clear if it’s because of empathy as we understand it, but a new study has revealed that parrots usually say things at the appropriate times they need to be said. Considering how endangered parrots are becoming, this is a huge discovery and yet another reason for us to push for more parrot conservation efforts.