Horsepower with Dr. Sarah White-Springer

Say it with us: mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly discover the original horse power, equine physiology, and the science behind the Kentucky Derby.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. We're calling this one horsepower. We're going to find out why in just a moment. Let me introduce my co-host, Gary O'Reilly. Gary, all right, dude, a former soccer pro and an announcer in the UK. And then you came stateside and you did some announcing here, too. Is that right?

• 0:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, that's right.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Once again, a loss of American job.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was Chuck Nice. Chuck, good to have you.

• 0:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Love you too, man.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. So Gary, what's going on today? We got horsepower.

• 0:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, we do. And it's, I wanted to look at horsepower in a variety of different ways, not just the output of an engine or a motor. I mean, Kentucky Derby's nearly upon us and it made me think the original horsepower, what's going on and how it's going on. I mean, we can express the term horsepower in so many different ways. I mean, I think of a species that has helped advance the human civilization more than a horse and I come up with nothing. It's the horse has been so important, so pivotal. And then I think, what is it? The physiological breakdown of the horse's internal combustion system? How does that operate?

• 1:42Gary O'Reilly?

  What's going on from there? And then what kind of fuels do you have to bring in? It can't just eat hay and then run at over 50 miles an hour. So I wanted to find out how this was going on? What is taking place?

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so if eating hay was all that mattered, then cows would run 55 miles.

• 2:01Gary O'Reilly?

  And that, that might not be so good. To see a cow do 150.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  We'd all go hungry.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come back here, Elsie. You ain't catching my ass.

• 2:14Gary O'Reilly?

  So we need an expert in equine physiology. And we've, we think we've come up with just that person. Our guest today is Dr. Sarah White Springer. Now, the good doctor is from Texas A and M in the Department of Animal Science. And she's an assistant professor in equine physiology. Uh, she's a specialist in equine nutrition and exercise physiology. Her research has involved things, the performance, and I love this term, performance improvement in equine athletes. How fantastic is that? Seeing those athletes focusing on mitochondrial adaptations to diet and exercise and skeletal muscle bioenergetics. How about that one?

• 3:00Gary O'Reilly?

  And if that wasn't enough, Dr. White Springer is quite talented in the equestrian sport of dressage, or as you might want to call it, horse dancing.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Horse dancing, okay.

• 3:12Gary O'Reilly?

  So let's meet our guest, shall we, after that?

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right. Welcome to StarTalk, Sarah.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Thank you, and thank you for that introduction. That was, you're right, I do make up half of those words. They sound good, don't they?

• 3:26Chuck Nice?

  They really do.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put that on a business card. So I'm just delighted that someone like you exists because otherwise I'm looking at horses and I'm saying, who's managing this? Who's, who, is anyone on top of the situation here? And as an academic, I want to know that there's some academic brains behind whatever else I see going on in this world. It gives me hope for the future of civilization. So did Gary exaggerate? Or I think he's right when he says, we built civilization on the backs of horses.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you go back right to the very beginning and the whole reason horses were domesticated was to help people move from one place to the next and to move their things. And we've just kind of taken that to an extreme when we think about our equine athletes. And we label them as such because they require the same intricate management and dietary intervention and training protocols that human athletes do. And so it's really kind of an interesting way to look at the horse.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying that a horse with a, what is a poor horse diet? Like, I've never seen a horse sitting around eating cheeseburgers and potato chips.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  I have seen a horse eat something similar, but not quite a cheeseburger.

• 4:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it depends on the horse. So each horse has its own nutritional requirements. And if those requirements aren't being met, then that's a poor diet. And when you think about the athlete, his requirements are going to be much higher than a horse that we call them pasture ornaments. Ones that sit out in the pasture and don't really do much for a living. And so if we're not feeding that horse correctly to meet his requirements, primarily protein, vitamins, minerals, and energy. Then he won't be able to perform at his maximal capacity.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Sarah, isn't that just a known diet? Why is that still an active area of research? I want the horse to run fast. Here's food. Put it in the horse. The horse runs fast.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's fun, isn't it?

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very, very Tom Brady.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Yes, we need a Tom Brady in horses. So, well, that's, that's a loaded question. So the first part of your question is, don't we already know this? Part of it we do. Um, part of it, as far as the macro minerals or macronutrients, I'm sorry. So energy, protein, those kinds of things, we kind of have a good grasp on. We don't have a grasp on vitamin and mineral requirements. We know what will prevent a deficiency, but we don't know what will actually optimize performance. And a lot of that goes into how these vitamins and minerals are used in the body. So my interest in skeletal muscle health. We're learning more about certain minerals that might actually help the muscle, um, either prevent it from being damaged during exercise.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Or help it to recover more quickly. After some sort of exercise event, because exercise is a damaging stressor. And so if you consider a horse in training, the exercise is probably six days a week. Then we really need to make sure we're feeding to optimal potential.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And of course, the fast return from injury. I mean, that's true for any sport, people, any, any sport where money is involved. That, you know, days matter, days, time is money.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Yes, and especially in horses, because they're super, super expensive to train.

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one thing, just before you go on, Gary, let me just, just we were on the same page. Could you remind us, who maybe remember, long, long forgot, the whole role of the mitochondrial cells in energy production? Hmm.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Yes, mitochondria, for those of you that took biology and are gonna have PTSD, are the powerhouse of the cell. So they are the organelles responsible for producing energy during times of increased need. So exercise is the kind of number one thing we think about, but mitochondria are active all the time and they are constantly producing energy for all of the things that our body needs, for different cellular processes.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want food for mitochondria, that'll get straight to the way where the horse needs it, right? Or any, where anybody would need it?

• 7:20Speaker 03

  To produce energy, they have to move electrons through the electron transport chain. You've probably heard of that before. And we have learned that different horses move electrons differently, and based on which complexes they're using, they can actually produce more or less damaging byproducts during exercise. And so we're trying to find ways to manipulate that.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so the stuff goes in, but all the stuff comes out too.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta deal with that. I hadn't thought of it.

• 7:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Are there different types of mitochondria? Those that perform certain tasks and then those that perform slightly different tasks?

• 7:52Speaker 03

  So we don't know as much in the horse as we do in humans. In humans, we know there's two populations of mitochondria. There's one called the, one population called the sub sarcolemals. Those live just under-

• 8:03Chuck Nice?

  Wait, whoa, whoa, hey, hey, whoa, come on, Sarah.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  I know.

• 8:06Chuck Nice?

  Just back it up, alright?

• 8:08Speaker 03

  We're gonna talk about it, it's okay.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

  She gave the name and she's gonna say what it is. Yeah, you gotta say it slower.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give the, give the, give the professor a chance.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  I need to like spell it out on the thing.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Say it, say it again, though, you said it very quickly.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Sub sarcolemal.

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay, sub, sub sarcolemal. Alright.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  So the muscle fiber is surrounded by a membrane called the sarcolema. And so the mitochondria, the sub sarcolemal mitochondria reside just below the sarcolema.

• 8:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Makes sense.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Good?

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is exactly what she just said. Sub sarco-

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. I just didn't hear it. It sounded like she said Subway sandwich or something like that.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  That also can fuel your mitochondria.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Okay, and then the other population is the inter myofibrillar. So within the muscle fiber are myofibrils. And then the inner myofibrillars then live kind of within that inner, within the myofibril. So between.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the, the, the name by their location, basically.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we know in humans that they operate differently, but we don't know what that means, what the implications of that are. In the horse, we really don't know much of anything. So, um, we're trying to learn more about that. Unfortunately, this is all based on research dollars and research dollars are quite hard to come by in equine athletes. So we're limited.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  So you should teach them how to throw a football. You get all the money you need.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Hey, we're working on it. I may have one intellectual patent going just to make sure I can retire.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good.

• 9:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, doctor, a horse has something like fifty-five liters of lung capacity. As opposed to a human that might have about six. Now that.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but what is, what is, what is that ratio comparative to the horse's size?

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Oh, jeez.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  Because like fifty, fifty-five liters means nothing if the, if it's a giant horse. I mean, because you would have to make it relative to what is the size of the average human.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The needs of the muscle, the muscular.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  Right, the need, right, exactly.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how, how do you think about how much oxygen is going in and out of a horse with each breath?

• 10:17Speaker 03

  So it's just like in a human where we call it VO2, that volume of oxygen consumed. Um, and they have a VO2 max that is exponentially higher than a human. Part of that is, um, lung capacity and ability to exchange oxygen through the lung to the blood. The other part of that is what we call a spleen at contraction. So the horse is really stinking cool. He blood dopes himself every time he starts exercising. They have a large spleen.

• 10:45Gary O'Reilly?

  How is he blood, how is the horse blood doping, doc? Come on, that's, that's, that's let us in on the secret.

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  That is, first of all, let me just say, that is totally dope, and I'm not even, yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  So they have a really big spleen that holds red blood cells. And as soon as they start exercising, that spleen contracts and just dumps those red blood cells into the bloodstream.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's called blood doping, that's for sure.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  It's blood doping, they just do it all on their own.

• 11:10Chuck Nice?

  Wow, now let me tell you, okay professor, what you need to be doing is forget all this research on the horse. What you need to do is figure out human beings can do that for themselves.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget the horse.

• 11:23Chuck Nice?

  And you will be the richest woman in sports.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  So we just need to grow human spleens larger.

• 11:30Gary O'Reilly?

  What if you took, what if you took a horse and made it train at altitude and then brought it down to sea level, like they do with track and field athletes, does that have a similar effect on the spleen?

• 11:39Speaker 03

  So they've tried that and the answer is no. Um, it doesn't, because their spleen contraction is so efficient, you can't really help it. It already works at a really high level.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  It's working at peak efficiency.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  And this comes from the horse being a fight or flight animal, right? He needs to be able to run fast and for a while to outrun the lion. And so.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because, because a horse is like other four-legged, horsey-looking things like zebras and things, they're food for predators.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 12:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basically.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Herd, herd, they run in herds.

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why, maybe that's why horses are so jittery. Cause you could be a lion coming up behind it, right?

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's why they're always on the lookout and you'll actually find, it's quite interesting, in the wild, stallions will have very small ears and then mares will have very large ears. And the reason for that is that the mares kind of keep an eye out on everything. And so their larger ears help them to hear any predators coming.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They keep an ear out for everything.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  That's right. Dad jokes on dad jokes.

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, dad joke. I'm a dad, so I'm allowed.

• 12:44Chuck Nice?

  There you go, you're allowed.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One a day. I get one dad joke a day.

• 12:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you? You sure? You sure you didn't lie to us?

• 12:53Gary O'Reilly?

  I came across this term, doctor.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, why didn't we finish hearing about the, wait, keep describing them.

• 12:59Chuck Nice?

  So stallions.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The stallions.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Oh, no, that was just a fun fact as far as being herd animals and stallions are just sort of protecting.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  They have small ears, so they don't need to, to hear anything, they just come when the trouble is already there.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  It's just an interesting thing that you don't think about, I don't, I guess, if you're not a weird horse person like me. But, um, yeah, I just think it's a really cool, there's, you know, little fun facts that I like to throw out in my class. So you guys get some of them too.

• 13:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's something else I heard from my sister who's, who's a horse person, that the horse with those big old horse eyeballs, which are on the side of its head, that when it is down grazing.

• 13:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has much better view behind it, like 340 degrees or 320 degrees out of 360 than when the horse's head is up. So that when it's grazing, it has more latitude.

• 13:53Chuck Nice?

  Field of view. Yeah.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's actually quite interesting. That's reason the horse's head is designed as it is because he's a grazing animal. So his eyes are really high up on his head. That way, if the grass is high, he can still see around while he's grazing.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he'll get bitten in the ass. Yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Well, there's that. But they also.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Good luck with those shit and ponies then. That's the most delicious part.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  But interestingly about their eyesight, because their eyes are on the side, they can't see directly in front of them. So most people, when they approach a horse, they want to come at the front. Once you get about a couple of feet away, he can't see you anymore.

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  Can't see you. Oh, you're in a bronze.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  So that's actually a really, it's a threatening way to approach a horse.

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  It really is. I found that out the hard way.

• 14:36Gary O'Reilly?

  There was a term that popped up and respiratory coupling, which

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:43Gary O'Reilly?

  it's mainly in mammals that run. So how is that a thing and what is that thing?

• 14:50Speaker 03

  So yeah, it's really interesting. It's called respiratory locomotor coupling. And so what it means.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, did you hear that one?

• 14:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, that was easy.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Slow down if you need me to.

• 15:00Chuck Nice?

  Everybody, I mean, everybody knows the locomotion.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We all got to slow down for Chuck. Okay, go on.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  So their breathing is coupled to their movement. And that's only once they reach a gallop. So the fastest speed that they run at, so what a racehorse would do. And all it means is that every time they pick up their front legs, they inhale. And every time their front legs hit the ground, they exhale. And they can't change that. The only way they can change their breathing is to change their stride frequency. So if they want to breathe faster, then they have to increase their stride frequency. And if they don't need to breathe as quickly, then they can slow their stride frequency. But they cannot hyperventilate intentionally like we can.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Wow. That's pretty well. Now, is that, is that something that they call up? Or is that just tied to all of their?

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the whole physiological.

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  And then via, and then via, I mean, I'm sorry, an involuntary response.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  It's involuntary. Yep. And part of it, the reason for it is it actually makes breathing more efficient. So whenever they.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  inhales, when they pick those four legs up, if you actually look at the horse's body, it almost turns kind of, we think about it like a bow and an arrow, or a bow and string. And so the bow would be the top, his back, and then the string would be his belly. And if you think about when the horse picks his front legs up, that bow comes up, the back raises, and then that leaves more space in the abdomen to actually pull the diaphragm back with negative pressure, helping to pull air into the lungs.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. Okay, so the whole thing works in symphony.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Yep. And then when he puts his front feet down, the abdomen comes up, helps push that ox for the actual air out through the lungs. And so it takes less energy for him to breathe, because he's using that natural movement.

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We gotta take a quick break, but stay with us with Dr. Sarah White Springer. And we're going to ask her, what is precision management for horses? And what does that mean? The answer is on the other side of this break. Startalk Sports Edition.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Startalk Sports Edition, Horsepower with Dr. Sarah White Springer, who's in, what does, Sarah, your department is just animal science department, but you're specializing in horses within that department, is that correct?

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Correct, yeah.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, very cool. And you're an assistant professor there, is your title?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, for a couple more months, then.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, getting tenure, on the tenure doorstep?

• 17:38Speaker 03

  Yep, that's word on the street.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Word on the street. Well, we fully expect that to happen. All right. Congrats. And good luck anyway, because sometimes you need a little bit of that. So, Sarah, let me just start off by saying, how do you make your horse go faster? Is it the muscle? Is it the skeleton? Is it the diet? Is it how hard they get whipped on the ass by the jockey? What is it?

• 18:05Speaker 03

  If I had that answer, I'd be retired. So it's a combination. So we, they have to be bred right. They have to have the right genetics. They have to be built right. They have to be fed right. They have to be managed right. Um, and they all are individuals and that's what makes it the most difficult. Uh, we talk a lot about how do we quantify performance in horses? Because the easiest way to quantify would be a racehorse. One would think they run faster. They don't. However, some horses like dirt, some horses like turf, some horses like when it rains, some of them don't. Some of them are just really competitive and I actually have.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But this is not a Dr. Seuss story.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  It is a Dr. Seuss story. This is how I make my living through Dr. Seuss horse research.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some like it in a, in a boat, in a train, on a plane.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 18:54Chuck Nice?

  I will not run in the mud.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Running under those conditions.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 18:57Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, Dr. With, with track and field athletes and I, and have no horsey background whatsoever. But you might carb load in the lead up to an event.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In humans, yeah.

• 19:09Gary O'Reilly?

  For humans.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Infusing your, your, your bloodstream with very accessible, uh, carbohydrate energy.

• 19:18Gary O'Reilly?

  So have, have, have horses been carb loaded successfully? Is, is it something that they're, they're, you, that, that can be useful for them and their performance?

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  And is that why I see them eating crap loads of spaghetti?

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spaghetti dinner the night before.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  They love spaghetti. That has nothing to do with carb loading everything because horses love spaghetti.

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They like spaghetti. Cool.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Kidding. So.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  Sorry. Uh, no. Yeah. Yes, it's been tried. No, it doesn't work. Um, so horses have a really high glycogen content in their muscle. Glycogen is a storage form of sugar and it's the most readily as accessible, uh, form of energy, right? For immediate needs. So unfortunately, there's not a whole lot we can do to change that. We've tried in horses, just like in humans, where they give a large sugar meal or a large carbohydrate meal. And it doesn't change the glycogen depletion rate in the horse. So most of the time-

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  But in humans, we use up that glycogen. And then we, our body goes and finds stored reserves, converts it into sugar so that we can continue to have fuel. So does that process still happen in horses? Or is it just like they got all the glycogen they need?

• 20:36Speaker 03

  So the process happens, but it's the replenishment of that glycogen that takes longer. So they, with humans, part of the reason we carb load is to make sure that all of that sugar is stored and ready and to make sure that blood sugar is high enough, right? Because we're going to use blood sugar first and then stores of sugar, like glycogen in the muscle. So in the horse, you can't do anything to really change those ratios. So you can give a large grain meal and it's really not going to change a whole lot. Part of the problem there too is you don't want to have a ton of gut fill right before you exercise, especially at a high speed or a high intensity. Because you can imagine if you've tried to eat a large meal and then go for a quick run, it's not the most comfortable in the world. It also, if you feed a large meal before exercise,

• 21:21Speaker 03

  all of that blood flow is diverted to the gut to help process that meal. And so now it's not going to be diverted to the working muscle or for thermoregulation to the skin.

• 21:31Chuck Nice?

  That's why we throw up. Do they throw up?

• 21:33Speaker 03

  Horses can't throw up.

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  They can't throw up? Oh man, so they just stopped. They're just like, look, I can't do no more. Look, I already unbuckled my third belt loop. Oh man, this saddle is killing me, man.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  And I have a mirror that would have that exact response.

• 21:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh my god. So doctor, you said earlier on in the show about some of your research work was focusing on how you get certain minerals to activate mitochondria in a higher performance way.

• 22:06Gary O'Reilly?

  What are they? What are you just giving them? You're going to CVS or any other pharmacy, getting some multivits and just put them in their feed? Or how are we getting this through?

• 22:18Chuck Nice?

  Centrum for horses.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Funny you say that because we don't go to CVS, but there's there's kind of a similar concept in in creating different feed ingredients. It's, you know, that's the problem. We there's so much we don't know. So there's my favorite mineral of choice is selenium. There's quite a bit of research showing that just a slightly elevated level of selenium enhances mitochondrial biogenesis. So we get more of them.

• 22:44Gary O'Reilly?

  So you give them?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  And enhances mitochondrial capacity.

• 22:48Gary O'Reilly?

  You give them walnuts?

• 22:50Speaker 03

  No, we don't give them walnut.

• 22:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Because they're high in selenium.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think that they would eat walnuts. I don't have a horse that's eaten a walnut. But we there's different forms of selenium. So there's selenium yeast, there's selenium methionine, there's selenium selenium selenite inorganic.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just have to interject because I'm a big fan of the periodic table of elements.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That selenium is named after the moon. Named after moonlight. And it was discovered in paired with in a pair of elements with this other element that they named after the earth. So there's tellurium and selenium. Which were discovered together and named together after the earth and the moon.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  That's interesting. I didn't know that.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's commercial brought to you by the periodic table of elements.

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  And now a star goes over in the ocean. The more you know.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Sarah, please continue. So selenium is good. All right.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Well, to an extent. So here's the problem. Selenium is also highly toxic. And so if they get too much of it, I don't know if you remember back to 2009 in South Florida, 21 polo ponies collapsed on the field and either died or had to be euthanized.

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. I thought that was just a protest.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Well, may have been by someone other than the owner. But, um, yeah, they they found out those those horses that used to inject with the antioxidant cocktail immediately before our performance, trying to enhance performance by decreasing oxidative stress, while the selenium dose got off by 1.1, so one decimal place, and it killed 21 horses.

• 24:20Chuck Nice?

  Man, and those horses cost a lot of money.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  A lot of money.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  Like, they are super expensive.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  Yep. So that's where-

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, that's very capitalist of you. A horse died, and you're talking about how much they cost?

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, listen, have a moment for the dead horse, please.

• 24:35Chuck Nice?

  Eh, if my grandmother died, I'd be like, I wonder how much this is gonna cost.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  You don't wanna know.

• 24:42Gary O'Reilly?

  So, Chuck, you work with-

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me remind our audience, Chuck is a comedian.

• 24:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  He loves his grandmother.

• 24:50Gary O'Reilly?

  So-

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I do very much, more than anything.

• 24:53Gary O'Reilly?

  We're into the sort of mitochondrial aspect of things to see how this whole energy chain happens, but invariably to run faster, bigger muscles. And it's not if you put a multi-gym in a stable and just say to the horses, there you go. How do you develop muscle strength in a horse?

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so that's the question, Sarah, is we know how to increase muscle duration, stamina, strength by isolating them with these suite of instruments. What do horses have to do the same thing? Or is that not what happens?

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  And is it the same process? I mean, our muscles build because we literally tear them down. And it's the healing process that makes the muscle. So is it same for horses?

• 25:42Speaker 03

  So the process is the same. The problem is, in humans, we can very easily separate the strength from the endurance training, right? If we wanna endurance train, we do some sort of cardio, so we run, row, whatever. If we want to strength train, we isolate that muscle group, so bicep curls, whatever you wanna do. I don't do any of those things. But in the horse-

• 26:05Speaker 03

  I used to, then I had a kid.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  You're my new hero.

• 26:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow, there you go. That'll do it.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Have a good time.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're both binging Netflix on a couch, right?

• 26:14Speaker 03

  No, my left arm is really strong, cuz he's only 10 months old and he weighs 25 pounds, so I carry him.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Only cuz I'm less coordinated with my right arm.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, your son you're talking about?

• 26:23Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's a, that's a Texas corn-fed baby right there. Oh my goodness, that's a fullback. You down in, you down in where football is a religion. They're already, they're, they're already buying that kid pads and a helmet.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  I'm so ready. I'm so ready. Anyway, I don't even know where I was going with that. But so horses, we can't separate those two types of exercise. If they're doing some sort of strength training to engage those muscle groups, they also have to be running, right? They have to be moving somewhere where they're using the cardiovascular system. So it's hard. And how we do that is just in a racehorse, essentially, we just make them do more sprints, because more sprints are going to engage that hindquarter a lot more than a slower pace would. In some horses, we can start to integrate different exercises. If you're, if someone's in a spot where there's like hills, that's actually going up a hill engages a lot of the hindquarter as well. And so that is kind

• 27:21Speaker 03

  of a strength or a muscle hypertrophy type stimulus.

• 27:24Gary O'Reilly?

  So, Doctor, we've, we've seen horses being doped. And we've seen their, if their winners have that wing taken away from them, and trainers and all sorts of people get in trouble. What are they doping with? And for what kind of results are they looking for?

• 27:45Speaker 03

  What are they not doping with? Yeah, that's a good question. So most, they're always try, everybody wants an edge. And so they're always trying something. We've heard beta two agonists, which are used in meat production, they increase muscle mass. And so people have tried that in horses that are primarily bred for sprint, because we want bigger muscles in those guys. So bisphosphonates are used in human medicine to help with osteoporosis, because it prevents bone breakdown. And there's concern that people were using it off-label in horses and young horses to make their bones appear stronger on x-ray. Problem is, when young horses, their bone doesn't break down, it can't remodel. And so when you don't get remodeling with growth, now you actually have a more brittle bone by the time you go

• 28:30Speaker 03

  to, to exercise.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  And is that kind of like sewing, you know, testicles on a goat? Is, is that the idea behind? Why is, why, why is anything in the universe? Where did your head go?

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Relate it to that sentence.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so what I meant to say-

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How does that sentence connect to anything that has ever happened in the history of the universe?

• 28:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so what I was really asking is, is that a means of defrauding a buyer into thinking that you have a, you know, a superior horse? But the, sewing the testicles on the goat is, in certain island cultures, male goats are worth a hell of a lot more than the female goats. And so when you wanted to defraud somebody, you would sew testicles on the female goat?

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were trusting that we, on this call, and everyone in the audible range of this, knew about this island practice?

• 29:27Speaker 03

  You feel smarter for being here today?

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not on the island, I want, I want, I want a geographical location.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, okay, anyway, is that a means of defrauding people? Like, if they're buying a horse?

• 29:43Speaker 03

  Yes or no? You know, just because they, they're doing it as a precaution, so all thoroughbreds have to have x-rays at sale to make sure that they do have good legs. And so, I think it's, I don't, I think it's just, it was something they thought, well, this will make sure that they have good legs, right?

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  And again, none of this stuff is proven, so we don't know how common it is, or, it's all, who knows? But, um, there's a whole slew of things. Anything that people hear can maybe enhance performance, enhance muscle health, enhance bone strength, they'll try it, because they want the up, they want the advantage. So, yeah, it's, uh, the big thing is you can't, you don't get to find out what a lot of those things are, because it's all so hush hush.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So, before we take our second and last break, just, we realize how much money there is in horse racing, and, and show jumping, you know, it's, it's an elite thing, yet you don't have all the money you could use to do the research you need to do. So, why, why doesn't somebody just tax all of that and have it go into equine research at land-grant universities? Wouldn't that be a cool source of money?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  I'd be good at that.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Solve that problem.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  You know, I think- It's not everyone's involved, right? It's a huge industry. I mean, the economic impact is incredible, but I think it's looked at as an elitist sport. And so it's looked at as something that not everyone can partake in, even though that's not actually true because there's different levels. But I think that there's just not enough support. You know, something like that would have to be voted on, right? And I don't know how we would convince the general public that this is important enough to support.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  And it would make sense for the owners to actually put together like a consortium because they would be the beneficiary of all the information.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, of course. I think I know how much money is made. Millions.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been sat on that for how long? You've been wanting to do that for how long? Millions of dollars are made in racing horses. All right, when we come back, more with our good professor from Texas A&M, who's telling us all about horses, stuff we never even knew was something to know. And maybe we'll talk a little bit about her dressage work and what that's all about on StarTalk Sports Edition.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, third and final segment, StarTalk Sports Edition. Horsepower, Dr. Sarah White-Springer, soon to be, word on the street, Associate Professor of equine science in the animal, animal?

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Animal science.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Animal science department. So, so your funding comes primarily from where?

• 32:47Speaker 03

  So we, there's a couple of agencies that actually work a lot with the thoroughbreds, and they do offer some competitive grants. So the Grayson Jockey Club, they're based there in Lexington, Kentucky. And I know some of the farms like Windstar have specific grants that they, or specific calls that they can offer money towards to help with these different research grants. And, and so that one is really a good one for the thoroughbreds. Also, the American Quarter Horse Foundation has their own specific call of research grants. And so those ones are available. They're not the largest grants in the world, but they're at least options that we have and are supported by the industry. So we're able to get some dollars that way.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool. Very good, very good. So Gary, where else were you going to take Sarah on? Well, we can't have the good doctor on.

• 33:36Gary O'Reilly?

  And not address dressage. Or as Snoop Dogg said recently, crip walking for horses. The best. Um, which I must admit made me laugh, um, but that's another story. For a sizzle. Exactly. So, Doctor, when you've got a horse and you can make it run fast, I understand the act, the sort of

• 33:58Gary O'Reilly?

  the, the thing that's going on there, but with dressage, this is a different kind of horsepower. This is all about control. This is all about how you get this horse to be in harmony with the rider. So how does this development happen? How does this relationship go? And what sort of work do you have to do to get the power in the horse so as it can perform these amazing feats?

• 34:23Speaker 03

  So it's funny, since we were just talking about, uh, strength training, dressage is one of the disciplines that we can really identify some strength exercises. So if you watch the Olympics, one of the moves they do is called a p off, and it's where they trot in place. So you'll see they'll be trotting and then they'll stop and they'll continue to do it. And so they have to.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Sarah, when I, while they're trotting, just showing off.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  Well, that too. It's mainly that rider is showing off.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally showing off when they trot in place.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know. I have no other explanation. The most vain horses always win.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Yes. A little bit of that is not far from true, which is a little sad. But, um, yeah, so that's, they're lifting themselves and their rider, and that's a lot of weight, right? I mean, that could be close to eighteen hundred pounds. And so, depending on the horse. And so you have a very different type of training. So we're not just going fast and going forward. We have to learn to be, teach the horse to be supple. So he needs to be able to bend through his rib cage to really, you'll notice and they, when they do that movement, the p off, they sit, they almost look like they're sitting in the hind end because they have to carry so much of that weight on the hind quarter in order to maintain that type of, uh, movement. And so it's.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's to be so light footed on their front, on their front legs.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And naturally a horse carries sixty percent of his body weight on his front legs and forty percent on his rear.

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  And so you really have to teach him how to move that back. And that's a really difficult thing to do.

• 35:46Gary O'Reilly?

  That's core strength.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:48Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, you can't sit that horse down and say, go and do some abs.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had thought about that because the horse's huge neck and head sticks forward of the front legs.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the only thing that sticks rearward of the rear legs is the tail. So clearly then the front legs have most of the weight. I hadn't thought about that.

• 36:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, and when you see injuries, they actually tend to happen in the front leg too because they're carrying that extra weight.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  And how do you, how do you get a horse to do something like that? You know, it's like, it's not like they're going on Dancing with the Mayors and they get to just get together and they have a little dance teacher. It's how do you get a horse to trot in place, pulling itself?

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or to do any of those things.

• 36:35Chuck Nice?

  Or any of those things.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Don't be so picky.

• 36:37Chuck Nice?

  And not, not all, you're right, because some of those moves are straight up dance moves.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  Like, yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of yours.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my favorite one is when they, when they sort of do a sashay sideways.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Half passes. Yep.

• 36:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because how many animals other than crabs ever move sideways?

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, none of them, right?

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's very difficult because that, that's more muscles you have to develop, right? Those adductors and abductors to help move those legs sideways.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, does she say those slow enough?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  I mean, humans have those too, just to.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:13Gary O'Reilly?

  So what, what happens, doctor? If your horse, you're just about to go into an event, your horse looks at you and says, you know what? I just do not fancy it today. You can do one. What, how do you deal? Because horses have their own characters. So what happens?

• 37:30Speaker 03

  You just pray and hope that you can make it, hold it together for the next four minutes or so. I've definitely been there.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  By the time you get to that point of competition, you're hoping, you always train harder at home than you have to compete. That's just to make sure that the horse is strong enough to meet that competition level. And so your hope is that even if your horse decides that he doesn't feel like playing today, you're good enough that you can, can keep it together and make a good enough picture for the next couple of minutes.

• 38:01Gary O'Reilly?

  So that mantra, that mantra?

• 38:03Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 38:04Gary O'Reilly?

  You train harder than you play?

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's the sign of a champion.

• 38:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Where I am.

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a sign of every champion. It's, the game, the game is a lighter lift than practice.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's how that, so the game should just be enough, just another, another out there for you.

• 38:19Gary O'Reilly?

  See, your performance. And we had this with the triathlete, well, Mark Allen, remember him, the triathlete Chuck?

• 38:26Chuck Nice?

  That runs forever, yeah.

• 38:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Anything that he did in a race was inside his comfort zone.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 38:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:31Gary O'Reilly?

  And he rarely had to leave to get a performance to win because he trained so much harder.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  And that's what you'll find, especially in dressege horses, that there's different levels of dressege. At the Olympics, you'll see the Grand Prix level, that's the highest we go. But it starts at training level and so there's different levels and there's different skills that the horse should know at each of those levels. And typically what you'll find is those horses that are competing, they're schooling a level higher than they're competing at. So they can do all of the movements at the next level, but only at home. And so when they compete, they're actually competing a level down because they want, they want that to be easy. They don't want their hardest movements to be at the competition.

• 39:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:14Gary O'Reilly?

  How long does it take? So if I get, walked in and you said, this horse looks like it could be the real deal, but it doesn't have a clue. It has three left feet. There you go. And how, how long does it take in, on average, to, to get that relationship to be successful?

• 39:29Speaker 03

  I would say to get to a, so to start competing, maybe six months, you could get there. To get up to that high level, probably eight years or so.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow, that's serious.

• 39:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Investment.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, Sarah, so how about like the cutter horses?

• 39:47Speaker 03

  Like cutting?

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are these horses with these talents, are they bred that way or are they trained to be that way?

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Both. They have to be bred to be built a certain way. So you can't, confirmation, you can't change. However, they come out, however they're built, it's pretty much what you get. Then you can just change musculature from there.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, you just gave me a great idea for a Disney film. It, it's a donkey that wants to do dressege.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  The dressege donkey.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you need Eddie Murphy as the voice.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Have you seen the Cow that Jumps? I think that's in England, England, maybe?

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A cow that jumps.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a girl that rides a cow and it jumps.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but I don't think they made it over the moon just yet. They have to work on that one. Oh, that's my second dad joke, sorry. I knew you had more in you. Um, so in the cutter horse, they make eye contact with like one of the sheep or something. They cut it from the herd. It's an amazing thing to watch.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and so you're saying some of that is breeding and some of that is training?

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Yep, and some too. So we talked about horse personalities. So we call horses that really have a want to do that, we call them cowie. How cowie are they? How much do they really like to get in there and move the animals? And you'll find that that differs just based on the individual. Because you talked about precision management earlier. We have to remember that horses are individuals and they're going to require.

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Horses are people too.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  Horses are people too. Horse power.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, there you go. So we gotta sort of.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  They have to be fed and managed and trained differently based on their personality.

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I gotta start ending this segment because we, we spent so much time in the first two segments. We, we squeezed this one down. So I want to ask just sort of a final question here. When I look at the fastest running animals. You look at the cheetah, you look at the greyhound, dog. You look at some other cats. When they run, their spine coils. Okay, and then springs and coils back and then springs. And one thing is true about horses, their back does not coil. It basically stays flat relative to what you see a greyhound do or a cheetah do.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should we instead be breeding flexi back horses? If we want them to run as fast as they possibly could?

• 42:13Speaker 03

  They actually do coil, just not as much as you can see on the outside.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I'm talking, we'll coil it more.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know how.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be difficult for a jockey to be on a horse that coiled. Oh, you couldn't hold the jockey.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  When are you gonna make a slinky horse?

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slinky horse?

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Hey, you give me enough money.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  But something that is really interesting that we didn't talk about. So the tendons down the back of the leg are really interesting as well. If you actually watch when the front feet hit their, well, both front and back hit the ground, you'll see that the fetlock, which is the joint just above the hoof, it almost goes down to touch the ground. That tendon that's behind that, that joint stores energy, right? So as soon as that foot comes off the ground, now that tendon's like an elastic rubber band, springs back and helps to pick that leg up so that it can come down again. And so it's another kind of efficient way that the horse uses that he doesn't have to use extra energy to move those limbs because it's being stored in those tendons.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I still think they should have flexi backs.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Well, you know.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A new breed of horse.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Maybe you'll get to retire before I will.

• 43:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, and then you gotta build a special thing for the jockey to sit on because they can't stay on a flexi back. Imagine a jockey on the back of a cheetah? That just wouldn't work. Right, right.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  For multiple reasons.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying. Guys, we gotta call it quits there. Sarah, it has been a delight to have you.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 43:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we know you're gonna make that transition from assistant professor to full professor. If not, you have, have him call us, okay?

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes. And we'll tell him.

• 43:41Speaker 03

  I know where my recommendation letters are coming from, from here on out.

• 43:44Chuck Nice?

  Well, we'll let him, we'll let him know. You, you're about to make a slinky horse and they will, everybody's gonna be rich.

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slinky horse.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Chuck, always good to have you. Always a pleasure. Gary. Pleasure. And Dr. White Springer, we're gonna have to do this again because we're not done figuring out how horses work.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you.

• 44:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking out.