Learn about what researchers found when they sequenced the bizarre duck-billed platypus genome; a trick for unlocking your creativity; and the strange reasons for job-specific voices, like those of pilots, newscasters, and poets.
Learn about what researchers found when they sequenced the bizarre duck-billed platypus genome; a trick for unlocking your creativity; and the strange reasons for job-specific voices, like those of pilots, newscasters, and poets.
The duck-billed platypus genome was just sequenced, and it's a doozy by Grant Currin
To Unlock Creativity, Brainstorm and Then Step Away by Sonja Hodgen
The Strange Reasons for Pilot Voice, Newscaster Voice, and Poet Voice originally aired June 5, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/gluten-free-labels-the-fbi-s-most-viewed-file-and
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-duck-billed-platypus-is-weirder-than-you-thought
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 what researchers found when they sequenced the duck-billed platypus genome; a trick for unlocking your creativity; and the strange reasons for job-specific voices, like those of pilots, newscasters, and poets.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
The platypus is one of the coolest creatures on Earth. That’s simply not up for debate. And now, researchers have a better idea why. According to the first complete map of the platypus genome, platypuses genes are a mix of mammal, bird, and reptile.
But a platypus is, officially, a mammal. Just one that looks like an otter with the bill and feet of a duck and the tail of a beaver. The males have venomous spurs, and lactating females ooze milk from their skin, sort of like sweat. Because they don’t have nipples. They also have ten sex chromosomes plus biofluorescent fur.
Soooo, is it a surprise that their genome is out of the ordinary? Not really. Platypuses belong to a tiny group of mammals called monotremes. It’s a group with only one other member, the spiny anteater. Monotremes are the only mammals that lay eggs. Researchers still aren’t totally sure how exactly the monotremes are related to their sister groups, the marsupials and placentals. But this new genetic analysis makes it look like the egg-laying mammals set off on their own evolutionary journey about 187 million years ago, in the Jurassic period. Jurassic Park definitely missed an opportunity there!
Platypuses are distinctive because they lay eggs, but this analysis tells us that those eggs are pretty different from the ones you’ll find in a bird’s nest. Birds and reptiles have three different genes that tell their bodies how to make the proteins in their eggs, but platypuses only have one egg protein gene. The other two apparently fell out of the platypus genome about 130 million years ago.
That’s not such a big deal because platypuses do have a full suite of genes that code for milk proteins. They even make a couple of extra proteins that other mammals don’t, though researchers aren’t sure what use they are.
And that tells us something interesting about human evolution. Since mammals across all three groups make very similar milk, it’s very likely that mammals have been capable of producing milk for a long time. Humans and platypuses are almost certainly the great, great, great grandchildren of a milk-producing ancestor that lived in the Jurassic period.
It’s a shame that our evolutionary grandma didn’t have a duck bill, too.
Have you ever worked hard to come up with an idea, only to have the solution pop in your mind when you’re in the shower? It’s a common experience. And a recent study has a tip on how to program that ah-ha moment into your work schedule. To unlock creativity, it’s about brainstorming…and then stepping away.
Past research has already established that a brainstorm session followed by an “incubation period” enhances creativity. It works because even when you're doing something else, your subconscious mind works in the background to put your ideas together.
The researchers behind this study wondered whether incentivizing people to come up with as many ideas as possible before that incubation period would lead to better ideas than, say, incentivizing them to only come up with the best ideas.
So they had study participants come up with rebus puzzles [REE-biss] — those are those riddles where a combination of images and letters represent words, phrases, or sayings. In this experiment, the researchers offered some participants pay based on the number of ideas they generated; some, only for ideas that met a standard for creativity; and others just got a fixed wage of $25, regardless of the quantity or quality of their puzzle ideas. At first, none of the incentivized groups outperformed the fixed-wage group when it came to creativity. Bad news, right? Well, not so fast: when the researchers had the participants come back to the creativity task 10 days later, those who had originally been paid to come up with as many ideas as they could outperformed the other groups in both the quantity and quality of ideas.
But you don’t need to wait 10 days to see results. In a second experiment, a 20-minute walk around campus was enough for the quantity group to outperform the fixed-pay group. In both cases, having an incubation period after putting their minds to work was key to the participants’ success.
So next time you’re working on a creative project, remember to brainstorm as many ideas as you can. Then reward yourself with a little treat, give yourself a break, and wait for the magic to happen.
ASHLEY: Speaking of being creative, have you ever… changed your voice? Chances are you have — if you have certain jobs. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then don’t worry — it’ll all make sense once you hear this classic story we remastered, from way back in 2018.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Grant Currin and Sonja Hodgen, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: [newscaster voice OR USE VOCAL FRY] Have a brainstorm, because we won’t MIND if you join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!