Pod Insights The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week Ant Yogurt, Bunny Horns, Deadly Feather Fashion About this episode Liz Clayton Fuller joins the show to talk about the deadly feather trade. Plus, Jess hops in to explain the strange virus causing bunnies to sprout horns, and Rachel gets into the way some folks are using ants to make yogurt. (It's actually kinda good...)
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1:33 Rachel Feltman? At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman.
1:54 Speaker 04 I'm Jess Bodie.
1:55 Speaker 05 And I'm Liz Clayton Fuller.
1:57 Rachel Feltman? Liz, welcome back to the show. It's always so great to have you.
2:01 Speaker 05 Thank you. Just keep having me on. I will keep coming back.
2:04 Rachel Feltman? Our weird bird correspondent.
2:07 Speaker 05 Yes.
2:09 Rachel Feltman? So on the weirdest thing I'm in this week, we start by offering up a little tease about a factor story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then, once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Jess, what's your tease?
2:30 Speaker 04 Rabbits are growing horns, and that's actually not really that scary if you know what's up. And also, I'm gonna tie it back to Elden Ring.
2:41 Rachel Feltman? Shocking.
2:44 Speaker 05 How did I know that was coming?
2:46 Speaker 04 Shocking.
2:47 Rachel Feltman? Liz, what's your tease?
2:49 Speaker 05 My tease is how two women put an end to the deadly feather trade and why those ladies are the reason that you can't keep feathers that you find when you're hiking.
2:59 Rachel Feltman? Well.
3:00 Speaker 04 You can't?
3:03 Rachel Feltman? I did not know that.
3:03 Speaker 05 We'll talk about it. It's okay if you didn't know, but that is true.
3:10 Rachel Feltman? Well, cool. My tease is, what is this yogurt for ants? No, don't be silly. It's yogurt from ants.
3:21 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, I'll, I'll start, because, because what the heck?
3:25 Speaker 04 Agreed.
3:25 Rachel Feltman? So, the study came out in September in the journal I Science that showed how this traditional recipe for yogurt used a kind of unusual funky secret ingredient to kickstart the fermentation process: ants. So first, a quick refresher on what yogurt is. So basically, yogurt happens when microorganisms break down the lactose in some kind of milk. They produce lactic acid while they're doing that, and that does a couple of things. It thickens up the dairy, and then it also makes that signature tangy flavor that any, you know, traditional unflavored yogurt will have. And the cool thing about yogurt is that it was probably discovered accidentally. And repeatedly, just wherever people domesticated animals for their milk.
4:11 Rachel Feltman? It happened probably when you just happened to get the right bacteria in there while dairy was sitting around, which dairy was want to do before you had refrigerators and stuff. And one common theory is that people would carry around milk in bags made from goat stomachs or other animal skins and that that had some nice, you know, microflora on it that got the job done. Another idea I've read is that some of the helpful microorganisms for creating yogurt tend to live on plants. And so maybe animals' udders would get this bacteria on them from like brushing up against grass and stuff like that. And that then that would get into the milk. And up until the 1900s, yogurt was a staple in many diets, but it was
4:57 Rachel Feltman? pretty regionally specific. Central Asia and the Caucasus, Western Asia, Southeastern Europe and the Balkans, Central Europe, and the Indian subcontinent all had loads of yogurt, loved yogurt. And then around the turn of the 20th century, this Bulgarian medical student in Geneva, he actually looked at the microflora in Bulgarian yogurt. And he basically described this like rod-like bacteria that made lactic acid. And people were generally getting interested in yogurt at this time. There were some researchers in Paris who were looking at this guy's research on the Bulgarian yogurt and were like, Bulgarian peasants live a long time. Could it be
5:43 Rachel Feltman? this weird stuff they eat? That's yogurt. And that kind of, yeah, people started getting into the idea that maybe eating yogurt would make them live longer. In 1919, we started to have our first industrialized production of yogurt. This guy in Barcelona, he named the business Danone after his son Daniel. It was like a pet name for Daniel, which of course became Danan.
6:09 Speaker 05 Oh.
6:10 Rachel Feltman? Yeah. Fun fact.
6:12 Speaker 05 What? Wow, Danone.
6:17 Rachel Feltman? And pod favorite Kellogg, who had a lot of weird feelings about constipation and fiber, he loved a yogurt enema. So he also really helped popularize yogurt in the US. I think he also was into the idea of eating it for your health, but the yogurt enemas loom large in my mind. So basically, once people outside of these regions where it was traditional got into yogurt, commercial production followed not long after. And that sort of led to us honing in on a couple of bacterial species and really relying on those to make all of our yogurt for like consistency and safety. Because as anybody
6:57 Rachel Feltman? who's had like a wild ale or like wild sourdough or something knows, if you're relying on just ambient microflora, you don't actually really know what you're gonna get at any given time. So it makes sense that we narrowed the scope and ambitions of our yogurt. But the downside is that there were tons of traditional regional methods that fell by the wayside. And one of those was a traditional practice from the Balkans and Turkey involving ants. So the authors of this new study decided to take a closer look at the ant yogurt recipe. And apparently this all started because some food scientists slash chefs at like two Michelin
7:40 Rachel Feltman? star restaurant in Copenhagen, they'd been working with ants as like a funky adventurous gastronomy ingredient. And someone, there was like some milk that had an ant in it and they noticed it started to curdle in the fridge and they were like, huh, interesting. And so they got in touch with some researchers also in Copenhagen. And they were like, oh, for sure, for sure. We want, we are also interested in the, in why, why this yogurt, why this dairy is turning into yogurt thanks to ant. And I will say just side note for anyone who hasn't been to Copenhagen, they do have an insanely good adventurous food
8:22 Rachel Feltman? scene because Noma, which is like the archetypal, like fancy futuristic restaurant is there, is closing soon, I think. But anyway. Basically, all these people like moved to Copenhagen specifically to become chefs at a Michelin star restaurant, and then a bunch of them have opened their own places over time. So, including ones that aren't like fancy, like I had the best burger of my life at a like Noma offshoot, and that's dope. So anyway, go eat food in Copenhagen.
8:55 Speaker 04 Isn't there that whole episode of The Bear where the guy goes to like learn how to do pastry in Copenhagen? Is that, is that Copenhagen?
9:03 Rachel Feltman? That sounds familiar.
9:04 Speaker 04 Or does he, is it Amsterdam? He goes somewhere. I don't know. It's over there somewhere.
9:11 Rachel Feltman? But go to Copenhagen. They're making yogurt out of ants and having a good time.
9:15 Speaker 04 Yes.
9:15 Rachel Feltman? And this was at the restaurant Alchemist, by the way, if you're curious, which I think is very fancy. So if you want to go there, you probably have to plan your trip around it. So these researchers, they wanted to test the hypothesis that you can use the ant holobiont to ferment yogurt. A holobiont is a word I'd never heard before, but it refers to like the being and its microbial communities. So like you and your microbiome are a holobiont.
9:52 Speaker 04 Me and all my friends.
9:53 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, exactly.
9:56 Rachel Feltman? And they also, they started working with one of the study co-authors, who's a doctoral student at the University of Munich, who had been gathering oral histories from people in Turkey and Bulgaria about different methods of creating yogurt. So basically, this cookie restaurant ended up getting a research dream team to investigate yogurt from ants. And yeah, she was, she, her paper had, had referred to this traditional Balkan ant yogurt recipe.
10:28 Rachel Feltman? And so the researchers got together and they actually went to this co-authors family village in Bulgaria. And apparently, like, people weren't actively making ant yogurt there, but they like, had a recent enough oral history of it to be like, sure, we can, we can help you figure out how the heck they did that. So they're in this Bulgarian village. They take four ants, they were redwood ants, put them in a jar of warm milk, cover it with a piece of cheesecloth. Then this part I really like, they, it's really using the whole animal. They buried it in an ant mound overnight, because the heat of the colony's activity is perfect for incubating fermentation.
11:13 Speaker 04 Wow.
11:13 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
11:14 Speaker 04 That's cool.
11:15 Rachel Feltman? Yeah. And then the next day, they took the sample out, and it already showed signs that it was fermenting. The milk was coagulating, it was becoming more acidic, it had a slightly sour taste. So they also took it back to the lab and did some additional ant in dairy experiments to figure out what was happening. And first of all, they found that redwood ants naturally carry lactic acid bacteria on them. So, perfect, they're introducing lactic acid. They also carry acidic acid bacteria, like the kind of bacteria that you might use to make vinegar, including a strain that's really similar to what's used in commercial
11:55 Rachel Feltman? sourdough starters. So they had everything you needed to get fermentation going, including, apparently, the formic acid that ants make as a defense mechanism, actually lowers the milk's pH, which probably helps create an ideal environment for these bacteria to thrive.
12:13 Speaker 04 Wait, that's so cool. They're little yogurt machines.
12:16 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, exactly. They like, they bring all the bacteria you need, and they also set the scene.
12:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:22 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
12:23 Speaker 04 Oh, my goodness.
12:24 Speaker 05 The hive's the perfect temp, you know?
12:25 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
12:26 Speaker 04 What the hell, ma'am?
12:27 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, they're all, they're ready to go.
12:29 Speaker 04 How did this happen?
12:30 Rachel Feltman? Well, and I am really curious about
12:35 Rachel Feltman? How one figured this out, right? Like the sort of very basic, yeah, some bacteria from a plant or an animal's skin got into the milk. That's like not hard to imagine. And I guess ants falling into milk and interesting stuff happening isn't hard to imagine either, but somebody had to be paying attention. So, yeah, the researchers then, like I said, they had already been partnering with the chefs and food scientists at Alchemist. And they ended up actually using these ant cultures to create stuff for the menu. They had an ant witch, which was an ice cream sandwich. It had sheep yogurt made from live ants in the starter culture.
13:17 Rachel Feltman? And the ant, yeah, and the sandwich was shaped like an ant.
13:23 Speaker 04 Oh, that's cute. That's cute. Come on.
13:26 Speaker 05 It had to be.
13:26 Rachel Feltman? They said it was, it was good. Everybody who talked about the flavor of the yogurt, including, I'll link to this on popside.com/ weird, but a contributor for The Guardian, like, read this study and was like, I must try it for myself. And she says the yogurt was good. And everything the researcher said in the paper said that it was good. Apparently, the diners enjoyed the various ant yogurt things they were given at Alchemist. But, yeah, it's like, it tastes like yogurt.
13:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'd be so curious, like, how it differs, you know?
13:55 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think it depends on, as is always the case with yogurt, it depends on the milk you're using and how long you ferment it and stuff. And they talked about some, like, specific flavor notes. Apparently with the sheep ice cream, it had a distinct acidity that contrasted really well with the fat of the milk. They also made a goat milk marscapone. And that texture, they said, was like the right sort of soft cheese texture. But they said the flavor was very aromatic. It was more like a mature pecorino cheese.
14:28 Speaker 04 Oh.
14:29 Rachel Feltman? And then
14:31 Rachel Feltman? their, one of their favorites was a, a milk wash cocktail that they made. So for listeners who don't know and don't live in cities where people sell you $25 cocktails. Milk wash cocktails actually date back to like the 1700s, but they are recently like newly trendy. And basically you, there's milk in the, there's some kind of dairy in the cocktail, but they curdle it usually by adding acid, like lemon juice or something. And then you filter it. So you're getting rid of the dairy solids. So you have this like clarified dairy. So it adds like the richness and the body of a milk, but without actually drinking straight milk in your cocktail.
15:10 Speaker 04 That's so interesting. I don't think I've had one of those.
15:12 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, I've had, I think I've had one and it was good.
15:17 Speaker 04 I'm kind of curious. I want to try it.
15:19 Rachel Feltman? Yeah. I feel like the reason I haven't had the more is because it does tend to be on the more exorbitant end of cocktail offerings.
15:26 Speaker 04 I've definitely had cocktails with like the egg whites and stuff in it. That's definitely more common, but like this, this is, this is, I'm intrigued.
15:33 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
15:33 Speaker 04 I'm trying to picture what it looks like and I cannot.
15:37 Rachel Feltman? It's really, if you watch the process of someone making one, it's definitely like fascinating and weird. But once you receive it, it's been strained. So it doesn't look any different from a regular cocktail.
15:48 Speaker 04 I will be going on a YouTube adventure later.
15:52 Rachel Feltman? In this case, they used dehydrated ants to do the curdling. So to, to make the milk separate. So they could strain it out. And they said it was great. They said it had really fruity notes that was from the other ingredients. So, but they did note that. And they said the residual milkway, you know, made it nice and silky, the way it's supposed to. But they said that the ants, as opposed to the usual citrus, it came out with a more mild acidity. And that they think that it, the flavor amplified the fruity notes of the cocktail. So like very successful. And one of the studies co-authors, I think one of the ones who's actually like works at Alchemist,
16:32 Rachel Feltman? was quoted as saying, this is all about the holobiont thing, because if you take one microorganism, the way commercial yogurt might have one or two specific bacterial strains, it's going to make a very specific. Compound aromatically, taste wise. But if you're using like a whole bouquet of microorganisms that say a sourdough starter has, or that ants carry with them, then things are, you're getting a lot more like synergy and variety. So it's, it's less controllable, but you're going to end up with a more interesting flavor profile at the end. You shouldn't go digging around for ants to do this yourself.
17:14 Rachel Feltman? The researchers warned that ants can carry parasites and some of them do carry parasites that can harm humans. They did extra steps in the lab to make sure they were filtering out any potentially dangerous microorganisms. So don't do that unless you have a really knowledgeable Bulgarian uncle or something. And even then, that's probably at your own risk, but I would trust a knowledgeable Bulgarian uncle who loved Ant Yogurt to keep me safe.
17:46 Speaker 05 Yeah. I wouldn't trust any of my personal uncles, but yeah.
17:52 Rachel Feltman? I really wanted to find some other like very weird historical, traditional yogurt making methods. And it seems like this might be the weirdest, but the paper does mention some of the other ones we know of. Like I said, that, that co-author had done oral histories about yogurt. Cause yeah, that sort of bouquet of bacteria that colonize the milk and establish the fermentation ecosystem can come from really anywhere. So a lot of cultures even historically were produced by what we call back slopping, which sounds so gross, but it's, it's just when you take a little bit of already cultured yogurt and
18:37 Rachel Feltman? use it to culture the next yogurt. So.
18:41 Rachel Feltman? I know. You can call it literally anything else. Yeah. There's always the question of like, how do you start it and then start passing it around? Or what do you do if you don't have a culture ready to go? And apparently in some Turkish mountain villages, they used pine cones, which similarly ants just have a bunch of interesting microbial species on them that get fermentation going. And then in Turkey and other countries, there have been some other historical references of plant materials like chamomile flowers, linden flowers and nettle roots. And yeah, basically it seems like people have thrown a lot of different plants into milk to get it to start fermenting.
19:26 Rachel Feltman? And it's just a question of what microbes are on there. But these people used ants, which is obviously weirder and cooler. Yeah. I will say in my search for weird historical yogurt recipes, the one other thing I came across was from Atlas Obscura, of course. This was about the bow tie people of modern day Kazakhstan. So they tamed wild horses in Central Asia thousands of years ago. And that that meant they had access to horse milk, which unlike many milks, you don't actually just want to drink straight up. It's really high in lactose. I've talked on weirdest thing before about how humans started drinking animal milk before any of us developed tolerance to lactose, which is Right. wild.
20:11 Rachel Feltman? We really just brute forced it. But apparently mare milk is so high in lactose that it has it an almost medicinally laxative effect. Oh my God, really? So nobody was drinking that straight unless they were specifically looking to have that kind of bad time. But you could make it good to drink by fermenting it. And that beverage is called kumus. And apparently according to modern tasters, it's like champagne mixed with sour cream.
20:47 Speaker 04 That sounds actually good.
20:49 Rachel Feltman? Yeah.
20:49 Speaker 04 Two of my favorite things.
20:50 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, yeah.
20:52 Speaker 04 I'm serious.
20:53 Rachel Feltman? No, you're not wrong. Like, it's not two things I would think of to put together, but
20:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:57 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, I'm, I'm willing to try.
20:58 Speaker 05 I'm part of a combo, but I would try it.
21:01 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:01 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, yeah, cuz it is fizzy and alcoholic cuz it's like roll fermented.
21:06 Speaker 04 It makes me think of like kefir.
21:08 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, you know, very similar.
21:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:10 Rachel Feltman? But starting with that really sugary horse milk that you don't want to drink straight. And yeah, basically, since it has so much lactose in it, so much sugar, you really just churn it and then let it acidify and start bubbling. But apparently, the weird part about it that I found really fun is that they would take the liquid and they would transport it in leather bags and apparently they would often hang them up where passerby could punch them and that was
21:43 Speaker 05 What?
21:44 Rachel Feltman? That was to keep it agitated while it was fermented.
21:47 Speaker 04 Slap in the bag?
21:48 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, just slap in the bag.
21:52 Rachel Feltman? And yeah, that's, that's all I found about that, but I just had to mention it cuz I think it's good.
21:59 Rachel Feltman? And those are all my yogurt facts for today.
22:02 Speaker 04 I love that. There were so many. Somebody didn't even know, like, like, like from ant, from tiny ant to large horse.
22:10 Speaker 05 Yeah, true.
22:13 Rachel Feltman? What can't you make yogurt out of?
22:14 Speaker 04 Can, can you, is, is it possible to like find that the, the fizzy, the, the, what is it? The champagne sour cream?
22:23 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, Kumas, I think you, there are places that make it now.
22:30 Speaker 04 I'm gonna be in LA in like two weeks. I feel like LA has to have it somewhere, right?
22:36 Rachel Feltman? Let's see, according to Atlas Obscura, today companies produce it, but it's rarely fermented long enough to have more than 2% alcohol. It's usually made with fortified cow's milk. You need to actually go to Central Asia. You have to go to Central Asia and find some, some people raising courses, which you can do.
22:57 Speaker 05 You gotta punch some bags.
22:59 Speaker 04 Gotta, yeah, gotta go slap the bag. Well, alright, I'll go, twist my arm.
23:06 Rachel Feltman? Alright, we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with some
23:08 Speaker 00 More facts.
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24:18 Rachel Feltman? Okay, we're back. And Jess, tell me about the horned hairs.
24:23 Speaker 04 Gladly, gladly. Okay, so a while back, there was a news story that y'all might have seen, like, over the summer, late summer. And it was about the rabbits with what people were calling tentacle horns. They were over in Colorado. And they were, they were real horns. They weren't squishy. They were, they were, they were horns. I don't know why people said tentacle horns. They were, they were horns. And at first glance, it seems pretty not chill, you know? There are bunnies with weird horns all over their heads. And they're, they're, they're real ass horns. They're made of keratin, which is like the stuff that makes up our hair and nails. And the horns are on their heads, but sometimes also like on their faces.
25:08 Speaker 04 So what's up? What's going on with that?
25:12 Speaker 05 I'm on the other side of my seat.
25:13 Speaker 04 What's up? So the horn-faced bunnies have a virus called Schop's papillomavirus. So this is also known as cotton-tail rabbit papillomavirus, also known as CRPV, which is what I will be calling it because it is easiest. So CRPV is mostly benign, though in a small amount of cases, it can turn cancerous. But most of the time, it just resolves and all the growths just fall off. The only other way it gets dicey is if the horns interfere with their ability to eat or to see, which is very sad, and I don't like to think about that. But if you're an Elden Ring enjoyer, this already sparks some Elden Ring connections already, and I won't get ahead of myself.
25:57 Speaker 04 But if you play Elden Ring, you're probably already thinking of Moog, Lord of Blood, a demigod omen. So the omen are a sort of race or classification in Elden Ring. And they're known for many things, including their many tangled and unruly horns. And Moog has one growing right into his eye, but I'm getting ahead of myself, so I'll get back to that later. So let's go back to CRPV for a moment. So this virus was discovered back in 1933 by a virologist named Richard E. Schopps. And this dude was like a capital V virologist. So before all the horn-faced bunny stuff, he helped isolate influenza A in pigs. He was working with another dude on that.
26:42 Speaker 04 And he, then he begged to go with that other guy. The other guy's name was Paul A. Lewis. He was wanting to go with that guy on a big research trip to Brazil to go study yellow fever.
26:55 Speaker 04 But Paul A. Lewis said, no, dude. And like, I'm dying to know the drama there. Like, did they not work well together? Like, why did Paul say no to Richard? Like, was there something juicier at play? Like a love story? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Who's to say? But it's perhaps for the best that Richard didn't go because Lewis ended up accidentally contracting yellow fever from a laboratory incident and dying. No. In Brazil? So, so yeah, there's like a whole arc there, perhaps enough for an entire episode of Grey's Anatomy. It's crazy. But yeah, anyway, Richard E. Shoupes. In the 1930s, this guy was successful in isolating virus after virus after virus. So he became known as like the virus hunter in the medical community.
27:41 Speaker 04 And as one does, he was out in New Jersey hunting rabbits. It's kind of like what, what medical dudes, doctors do. Like shooting the shit. It's like golf in the winter. You shoot, you hunt rabbits. And he noticed that some of these rabbits had these horned things on their heads. And he had seen those horns on the bunnies back in Iowa when he was there on farms studying the swine flu. So he was really curious. He started checking them out. He was sampling the bunnies, taking them back to the lab, sampling the horns, doing hashtag, just little virologist things. And he was able to isolate the virus that he named after himself, Shoupes Papillomavirus, AKA Cotton Tail Rabbit Papillomavirus, AKA CRPV.
28:26 Speaker 04 So one bunny gives the virus to another bunny. They grow a couple horns. It resolves ideally. And the horns fall off. Everyone hops away. All fine and dandy. And like, yeah, it's cool and useful to know, like on its own, why the heck these bunnies grow weird horns. From like a population dynamics and ecosystems level, that's really important and cool and useful. Like it'd be good to know if a new contagious cancer in rabbits suddenly appeared or suddenly became super deadly. Like because if that happened, it could obliterate food webs in a ton of different ecosystems. Like if rabbits suddenly disappeared, think of all the overgrown plants and weeds. Think of the hungry predators.
29:07 Speaker 04 Things could get pretty whack pretty quickly. So that's like a good enough reason right there to just like catalog and study CRPV on its own.
29:16 Speaker 04 And luckily CRPV is pretty chill. So like I said earlier, it pretty much just like resolves on its own. Like rabbits don't really get decimated in population by this. And a lot of the news stories that we saw over the summer do say that. They're like telling people chill, tentacle horns are normal. Don't freak out.
29:35 Rachel Feltman? Freak out.
29:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly. And also like, humans can't catch CRPV for the record. Like it goes between bunny species and it spreads also mostly through bites from ticks and fleas as well. That being said, don't go cuddle the tentacle horn bunnies. It's still a good idea to keep your distance. You never know what kind of, yeah.
29:59 Rachel Feltman? Oh, yeah. We're just wild animals.
30:01 Speaker 04 For one, yes, for one, you know, they're doing their own thing. And two, like, you never know what kind of diseases can jump between species, like zoonotic diseases are no joke. That's how really bad strings.
30:14 Rachel Feltman? You know, like, you, my mom always says, when,
30:20 Speaker 04 Here we go.
30:20 Rachel Feltman? when you're, when you're getting tested for something and like, you don't seem to have anything. It's like, well, you could always end up having Feltman disease. It's like, you don't want to be, at any time, you could become patient zero.
30:35 Speaker 04 Yeah.
30:36 Rachel Feltman? Of the bunny tentacle, human crossover epidemic.
30:39 Speaker 04 Exactly, exactly.
30:40 Rachel Feltman? You do not want that to be you, no.
30:42 Speaker 04 Just be cool, man. Just be cool. So yeah, that, that's the whole thing. But another slightly bigger reason why this was a cool discovery is that it was pretty foundational in our understanding of transmissible cancers. So, transmissible cancers, terrifying thought, right? Yeah, these contagious bunny horns can somewhat rarely turn cancerous. There are some other kinds of transmissible cancer as well, but basically all in non-human animals, most famously like the Tasmanian devil who have this contagious facial tumor disease that's cancerous. Very, very sad. But there is also a kind of a human version, kind of,
31:22 Speaker 04 there's like extra steps in the middle. And that brings me to the big reason that Schop's CRPV discovery matters. It's because it directly led to the connection of the human papillomavirus, AKA HPV, like the STI, to cervical cancer.
31:42 Speaker 04 So AKA, this is like the reason that people with the cervix have to get pap smears. So also like, man, getting a pap smear is like, it's like, they act as a part of your anatomy so deep. I didn't know it existed.
31:59 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, often when we're talking about screening procedures, it's so important to be like, listen, it's really manageable. Like, you gotta do it. And with a pap smear, it's like, you do gotta do it, and you're gonna be okay. But like, not gonna lie, man, it's not, it's not a fun time.
32:16 Speaker 05 You're not gonna have fun, no.
32:17 Speaker 04 It's like they reach your soul. Like, how, I don't know, it feels, I don't know.
32:22 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, but it's important.
32:24 Speaker 05 The soul swab.
32:26 Speaker 04 The soul swab, literally. So yeah, understanding how the bunny CRPV worked helped us understand how certain strains of HPV can cause cervical cancer. So in turn, researchers were able to develop the HPV vaccine, which I've gotten and is really neat and cool and great. And it was actually so interesting to be like, nine or 10 years old, right as the HPV vaccine was becoming available. Because it was like an act of, act of conversation being brought up by my doctor. And at the time, it was just like, whoa, medical advancement's happening before my eyes. The future is now. And in hindsight, I'm like, you know, of course, we're just now getting stuff that protects the cervix from cancer. Not, not that vaccine development is
33:09 Speaker 04 like a quick process in any way, but like, we learned about the bunny stuff, like, in the early 1900s. And like, now, 10 year old me is like, I'm getting the vaccine to protect me from cervical cancer. What can, what can you do? Yeah, there's just been so little dedicated research done on the female reproductive system. And that just, that just makes me sad sometimes. But also just as a disclaimer, not all people with cervixes are women, not all women have cervixes. I'm just using the annoying medical binary language for simplicity's sake. Disclaimer, asterisk. But a shout out to Richard Schobes for saying, hey, those bunnies look weird, because now my cervix is protected from cancer more.
33:46 Speaker 05 Thank you, Shopes.
33:48 Speaker 04 Yeah. Yeah. And anyway, I was gonna tie it back to Elden Ring, because why not? Because when I say those bunnies look weird, I say they look weird like Elden Ring.
33:56 Speaker 05 They must look really weird, then.
33:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, you should Google it. Google it. I highly recommend. So yeah, the, I mentioned this class of creatures in the game called the Omen. They totally have these tangled tentacle horns everywhere. They look basically one to one. Like, I would not be surprised if it was a direct inspiration. And if y'all don't mind, I'm gonna round out my fact with a little Elden Ring lore moment. Even for non-knowers of Elden Ring, I'll make this completely digestible because it's just really, really cool. And the horns are truly so deadass similar, and they use the Omen and their bunny horns as an, as an amazing storytelling tool. So, okay, here's my, here's my Elden Ring story time. Back in the day, before you, as the player, is in the Elden Ring world, the Omen were like, pretty well-regarded.
34:43 Speaker 04 They were high in command, and their horns, like the bunny horns, were considered divine gifts. But then a new queen came in, and she decided, for many complex and heart-wrenching reasons, revealed in the DLC, she decided that the horns were out. She decided that they were like beastly and lowly, and definitely not divine. So she ordered horns to be cut off, literally.
35:06 Speaker 05 Wow.
35:07 Speaker 04 Or beings with horns to be sent underground and to live in the sewers. But then, she has two children, and they are both Omen with the horns. Which is unexpected, because she is like a very traditionally beautiful woman. She's tall, long, blonde hair, like gorgeous goddess woman. So yeah, she's got those two kids with all the Omen horns that she hates so much because of her trauma. And one of them is that Moog guy with the horn growing in his eye that I mentioned earlier, like, like a Shopes CRPV bunny. And Moog is like, [BLEEP] yeah, I'm an Omen, I'm cool and evil. And he makes a pact with this formless goddess and learns fire-blood magic.
35:52 Speaker 04 And his twin brother Morgoth was a total mama's boy and renounced his blood and sealed some of it into a sick-ass sword, really neat, and he cut off his bunny horns. And instead, so he didn't let it like poke his eye out and be super metal, he like cut his horns off.
36:11 Speaker 04 So yeah, it's like become evil bunny horn man or cut them off and like be a mama's boy, crazy stuff. Uh, so yeah, that's just like scratching the surface of the Elden Ring lore. It is just a grain of sand on the beach that makes you the Elden Lord. Yeah, I could go on for, for hours. That's my Elden Ring bunny, bunny horn cervical cancer fact.
36:35 Rachel Feltman? The range.
36:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, we tried a lot in there.
36:38 Speaker 04 Yep, I couldn't resist.
36:40 Speaker 05 I'd like to add that I feel very validated by this because when I was a kid, I thought jackalopes were real.
36:46 Speaker 04 Yes, like, yes, and this is why. This is why. Yeah.
36:50 Speaker 05 Yeah. They, it turns out they kind of are actually.
36:53 Speaker 04 Totally. This is like why people were inspired to like go on that whole weird taxidermy fake journey, which is like, that's a whole other weirdest thing fact for somebody to do another day.
37:03 Speaker 05 Absolutely. I would love to hear about that.
37:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
37:08 Rachel Feltman? Okay, we're going to take one more quick break and then we'll be back with one more fact.
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38:15 Speaker 05 Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.
38:50 Rachel Feltman? Okay, we're back. And Liz, stop me from ever picking up feathers on a hike again, I guess.
38:56 Speaker 05 I'm about to.
38:58 Speaker 05 Okay, so yeah, I guess we should start with the fact that you are not supposed to pick up and collect feathers of songbirds and various birds. There is a distinction about that, but let's just say blanket all birds for now until we get a little deeper into the fact here. So my teaser was how women put an end to the deadly feather trade. So we can thank two women for the end of the feather trade. And the history of that is why you cannot collect bird feathers that you find, just take pictures of them, or I personally can recommend drawing or painting them if you'd like to keep a memory of them.
39:38 Speaker 05 So let me take you back to 1886. A journalist and ornithologist Frank Chapman went on a birdwatching mission in an unlikely place, an uptown shopping district in New York City. As he walked through the crowds and looked around, he was identifying birds, not in the trees, but ones that were adorning the hats of fashionable women. Over the course of just two trips, Chapman counted 542 hats adorned with 174 different whole birds or their disembodied parts.
40:12 Rachel Feltman? Oh my gosh. Yep.
40:14 Speaker 05 The more extravagant hats flaunted not just feathers, but also the eyes, wings, bodies, legs, tails. Carefully arranged with other natural accessories like
40:26 Rachel Feltman? I just wanna say.
40:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
40:28 Rachel Feltman? When people say that autism is new and didn't exist. I wanna point them toward this man's special interest in counting bird hats.
40:40 Speaker 05 Oh, yes. Absolutely.
40:42 Rachel Feltman? Oh, my God.
40:43 Speaker 05 Point them towards Frank.
40:47 Speaker 05 So Frank, on his bird watching trips, saw at least forty different bird species were represented among these hats. So nineteenth century women were clamoring for feathers, the more eye catching, the better for their fancy hats. They used the feathers of woodpeckers, blue jays, bluebirds, owls, warblers, waxwings, and quails. But even more sought after than those songbirds were the dramatic wings and tails of ostriches, peacocks, pheasants, egrets, vultures, eagles, swans, herons, and turkeys. So this trend of feathered hat wearing can be traced all the way back to Marie Antoinette's fashion that just simply refused to die.
41:31 Speaker 05 Until enter our two Boston ladies, Harriet Hemingway, not Hemingway, Hemingway, Harriet Hemingway and Mina Hall. So Harriet was known, this came up in multiple articles that I read, so I really felt like I needed to share it. She was known for going bird watching in the like eighteen eighties, wearing unfashionable white sneakers. And apparently at the time, that was like a really big deal for everyone. I was like, I'm feeling a little called out here.
42:07 Speaker 05 But yeah, her white sneakers were mentioned a lot, so.
42:11 Rachel Feltman? Now I need to look up what they even meant by sneakers of that time.
42:14 Speaker 05 What did that mean? That's honestly a whole nother thing.
42:16 Speaker 04 Oh, I can see our Air Force Ones.
42:19 Speaker 05 Exactly. I'm picturing like really chunky hokas, just like huge shoes.
42:23 Speaker 04 Which I love.
42:25 Speaker 05 I do too.
42:26 Speaker 04 And save my ankles and knees.
42:29 Speaker 05 Exactly. Yeah, shout out to my plantar fasciitis, literally.
42:34 Speaker 05 So we have these ladies to thank for the activism that eventually led to the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and halted the avian massacre for the sake of hats. So 10 years after our guy Frank's Bird Hat Bird Watching Walk in New York City, Harriet read an article that described the harvesting of egret feathers in South Florida. So it really upset her because the article explained that egrets have these incredibly beautiful plumes that they only sport during their mating and nesting season. So the hunters would go down when they were at their most vulnerable and the egrets were amazing parents and they would not leave
43:17 Speaker 05 the nest. So the hunters really easily harvested all of these egrets for their feathers and effectively would wipe out two generations at a time because they would take the parents for their feathers and the eggs would be left and they couldn't survive. So Harriet read an article about this and I, this is what happened in my mind. I pictured her looking at her hat collection in horror because she was just taking part in the fashion and wearing these hats. And she read an article and was like, oh, hell no. And also, actually, we need to do something about this. So at the time, by the way, egret feathers were valued at $32 per ounce, which was twice the price of gold at the time.
44:00 Speaker 04 What?
44:00 Speaker 05 So highly, highly valuable industry here.
44:04 Speaker 04 Holy moly.
44:05 Speaker 05 And absolutely decimating egret populations and other birds for their feathers.
44:10 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
44:10 Speaker 05 So Harriet called up her cousin Mina and was presumably like, girl, we've got to stop wearing these hats and we need to save these birds. So the two of them called together tea meetings in Boston, which grew in popularity as their cause expanded from condemning plumage fashion to saving wild birds in general. So through these gatherings, Hemingway and Hall persuaded their influential friends to stop wearing feathered hats. And they also had them sign a boycott, which grew to a group of 900 wealthy, high-profile Boston And women who agreed to totally boycott feather purchasing and feather wearing. So their activism spread to other cities and the Chicago Daily Tribune of October 24th,
44:55 Speaker 05 1897, asked women to save wild birds from extinction by pledging that, quote, "They would not wear birds or bird plumage of any kind, except ostrich plumes on their hats, because ostrich plumes can be gathered without torturing or killing the bird." So ostrich feathers, okay, pretty much every other feather, not the same. So as their gatherings grew, they realized like, you know, we're having these tea parties, they're going great, but like, we need to, we need to expand, we need to get more official, we need to get some legislation on the books here. So they targeted established Boston bird experts to join their cause, which helped establish them further.
45:37 Speaker 05 So they named this growing organization, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, which was, in fact, these ladies really like kicked off the dominoes for a lot of really cool things. It was the first of many satellite Audubon societies that later became the nationwide Audubon Society that we know and love today. So what was known as the Bird Hat Campaign of the Audubon Society in Boston, spread to Congress and influenced passage of the Lacey Act in 1900. The act prohibited interstate commerce of protected species taken in violation of state laws.
46:18 Speaker 05 Unfortunately, that law alone did not effectively slow commerce and feathers. It seemed like hunters were making too much money and they were just going to continue to do their thing. And it really didn't, it didn't really stop things. So at the urging of these sort of newly founded Audubon groups, President Theodore Roosevelt named Pelican Island the first federal bird reservation in 1903. So this is like not too long after they started their activism and everyone is thinking, you know what? Yeah, birds are great and cool and we should protect them and protect their environment. And then, of course, Roosevelt went on to name nine more bird reservations in Florida and a total of 55 bird reservations and national game preserves,
47:03 Speaker 05 which eventually, of course, became the National Wildlife Refuge System that we know and love today. So, very cool.
47:12 Speaker 05 So advocacy and awareness did not stop the plume trade, unfortunately. In 1911, 15 years after the Mass Audubon Society was founded, egrets were still being slaughtered for feathers. And William Hornaday calculated that the London market had consumed feathers from nearly 130,000 egrets in a six-month period. So absolutely catastrophic numbers.
47:41 Speaker 04 Oh, my God.
47:42 Speaker 05 Of birds suffering because of this industry. So Mass Audubon knew that the most important thing they could do was to influence public sentiment and inspire Congress to enact more legislation prohibiting the importation of the skins or plumage of wild birds. In 1913, the Weeks-McLean Law, sponsored by Massachusetts Representative John Weeks and Connecticut Senator George McLean, passed. It prohibited spring shooting, night shooting, and interstate sale of wild game. So, spring shooting being especially important because that's like breeding season, breeding plumage, all that business. Once again, despite the regulation, some hat makers continued to fashion feathery creations.
48:27 Speaker 05 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on February 18, 1914, just a year after the passing of these regulations, that Oregon hunters were making good money shooting hundreds of grebes a day for their breast feathers. Grebes are like very cool little water birds.
48:44 Speaker 04 I was gonna say, I love the name of that. It sounds like a cute little like Final Fantasy anime or something. I love that.
48:52 Speaker 05 Absolutely. They would totally fit into Final Fantasy. There's a bunch of different kinds of grebes, but they would all fit.
48:59 Speaker 04 I adore that.
49:00 Speaker 05 So, boxes of grebes were being sent to California factories labeled coyote skins.
49:07 Speaker 04 Oh, no.
49:08 Speaker 05 They were doing it on the sly. Yes.
49:10 Speaker 04 Those bastards.
49:11 Speaker 05 All the, I know, absolute bastards. While the Weeks-McLean Law was ultimately not as effective as they had hoped, it became the model legislation for the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. So, we started in 1886, and we're finally getting somewhere in 1918, which honestly, as far as like conservation and legislation goes.
49:33 Speaker 05 Not the worst.
49:38 Speaker 05 So the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 made it, quote, unlawful to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, possess, sell, purchase, barter, import, export, or transport any migratory bird.
49:55 Speaker 04 Whoa.
49:56 Speaker 05 Period, full stop.
49:58 Speaker 04 The whole, they, the whole thing?
49:59 Speaker 05 Yes, they made sure they included every possible iteration of moving a bird, killing a bird, anything that could possibly be construed.
50:10 Speaker 04 Hell, yeah.
50:11 Speaker 05 So the Migratory Bird Treaty Act effectively put an end to the omnipresent bird and feather hats. The possession of feather and other parts of native North American birds without a permit is prohibited still to this day by the MBTA. I'm going to shorten so I don't have to say the whole thing every single time.
50:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:29 Speaker 05 This protects wild birds by preventing their killing by collectors and the commercial trade for their feathers and extends to all feathers regardless of how they were obtained. There is no exemption for molted feathers or those taken from the road, found on a hike, window-killed bird, no exception. So the reason that I was thinking about this is because it honestly comes up a lot on my Twitch stream. Someone will be like,
50:54 Speaker 04 Sure.
50:54 Speaker 05 I found this really cool feather. And I'm like, I love that so much for you.
50:59 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:00 Speaker 05 And we need to talk about the Migratory Bird Treaty Act because you are not technically, legally allowed to possess that feather. And we're like so far removed from the history of it and the fashion of it. But how quickly we could go back?
51:17 Speaker 04 Totally.
51:18 Speaker 05 If people were allowed to possess feathers or collect feathers in any of these means.
51:24 Speaker 04 So you're spreading the good word.
51:25 Speaker 05 Yes, exactly. Please leave feathers where you find them, admire them, take pictures of them, but please don't take them home with you lest we go back to having hundreds of bird parts on hats, et cetera, all that kind of thing.
51:40 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:41 Speaker 05 And I do want to say too, That when this law was passed, so exceptions do exist now for the feathers of legally hunted waterfowl or other migratory game birds. So like, there are invasive species and game species that you are in fact allowed to keep the feathers of, like turkeys, for instance. If you find a turkey feather, totally cool to keep that feather. Also, like, you know, certain types of quail and pheasants and things like that. And obviously duck hunting, as we know, is like a huge thing. So waterfowl are another big part of that exception. But
52:20 Speaker 05 initially, there was not an exemption for indigenous peoples, and it was extremely harmful.
52:28 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
52:29 Speaker 05 Yes, because especially Alaskan indigenous folks who relied on birds for subsistence hunting and harvesting and as well as for cultural and spiritual importance. So Migratory Bird Treaty Act was just like blanket put in place, of course, without thinking, you know, when has the government literally ever thought about indigenous peoples?
52:50 Speaker 04 So unlike them.
52:51 Speaker 05 Right, exactly. So unlike them. So the MBTA rules were enforced upon indigenous populations who were, of course, not having the issues of overharvesting that the hat industry was perpetuating. So if we had been stewards of the land modeled after indigenous peoples in the first place, we would not have had the problem of the extreme overconsumption of birds and feathers that led to the treaty being necessary. So.
53:17 Speaker 04 Crazy concept.
53:18 Speaker 05 Yes, just wanted to make sure we address that. But all of that being said, shout out to Harriet Hemingway and Mena Hall for caring about birds. And now no more bird hats and please leave feathers where you find them.
53:32 Speaker 04 I think people should commission their favorite artist to paint them a nice feather.
53:37 Speaker 05 That is such a cool idea. If only we knew of such a bird artist who was up to the task.
53:44 Speaker 04 Perhaps, perhaps I paint burbs, maybe.
53:47 Speaker 05 They sound cool. I don't know.
53:49 Speaker 04 They sound really cool.
53:53 Rachel Feltman? I did look up what sneakers were like in the eighteen hundreds.
53:57 Speaker 05 Oh, my god, amazing.
53:58 Rachel Feltman? I had to know. Apparently, so the term sneaker was just when vulcanized rubber became a thing and they started making shoes with rubber soles.
54:08 Speaker 05 Amazing.
54:09 Rachel Feltman? They were so much quieter than wooden soled shoes that they called them sneakers.
54:14 Speaker 04 What?
54:16 Speaker 04 Wait, holy [BLEEP].
54:19 Speaker 04 Oh, my god.
54:21 Rachel Feltman? So there were many different kinds of shoes that could be called a sneaker. And they were mostly like geared towards some kind of athletics because it started as like a luxury item. So like, why would you buy a weird rubber soled shoe unless it was like helpful for what you were doing? So it was like ladies playing tennis, like people at the beach.
54:44 Speaker 04 And sneaking up on birds.
54:45 Speaker 05 And bird watching.
54:46 Rachel Feltman? Yeah, apparently seeing them on birds.
54:47 Speaker 04 Oh, my god.
54:49 Rachel Feltman? And yeah, so like surprisingly early in like the early, early nineteen hundreds, Converse started up and did start making what looks very much like Converse canvas sneaker high tops. But yeah, apparently it's they there are all these pictures, if you look up nineteenth century sneakers, of truly just like fancy boots that had rubber soles and they were like a mannish sneaker.
55:16 Rachel Feltman? But for people to actually actively be calling her out as wearing unfashionable shoes, I think she was probably wearing the ones that look more like a soft leather slipper. If you if you ever did like jazz dance as a kid, they look like that with a rubber sole. So it was just sort of a very plain shoe with a sneaky sole.
55:35 Speaker 05 Yes.
55:37 Rachel Feltman? But anyway, that's something I learned just now because I couldn't I couldn't leave it alone.
55:42 Speaker 04 No, that's so. I love that. Linguistics, man.
55:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, I I'd never had thought about that.
55:49 Speaker 04 Me neither.
55:50 Speaker 05 Not once.
55:51 Speaker 04 It seems so obvious now.
55:52 Speaker 05 Yes, it does.
55:54 Speaker 04 I never thought about shoes being wooden, like and loud.
55:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, right. Just clomping around scaring all the birds away.
56:02 Rachel Feltman? You can't have it.
56:04 Speaker 04 Would have sounded like like like in Monty Python with the coconut.
56:07 Speaker 05 Exactly. Yes. A group of friends just clomping through the woods, not a bird in sight.
56:19 Rachel Feltman? Oh, boy. Well, Liz, thanks so much for coming on again. Would you remind our listeners what your Twitch channel is so they can find you?
56:26 Speaker 05 Yes, you can find me all over the internet as I Paint Birbs, B-I-R-B-S, and I am often doing just that, painting birds, so come say hi.
56:37 Rachel Feltman? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, weirdos.
57:10 Rachel Feltman? Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.
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