535: No Such Thing As An Inside-Out Dolphin

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Hi, everyone.

Welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, where we were joined by a special guest, and that was Helen Scales.

Now, if you don't know Helen, she is a marine biologist, a writer, a broadcaster.

We've known her for many, many years.

She's so funny, so interesting.

She loves her subject so much.

Her books are absolutely great.

The first one that she wrote was called Spirals in Time.

I think that was the first one, which is all about shells and the history of shells.

And her most recent one is called What the Wild Sea Can Be.

And it is basically a look at the future of the oceans, which you might think is quite negative because of all the news stories that are going around.

But Helen, as is her want, is very positive about what the future might be and how we can save the world.

If you'd like to get her books, obviously they're available from all the usual places.

But if you go to helenscales.com, you can visit her shop which is related to the online bookseller's bookshop and if you go there then all her commissions will go to the charity sea changers so you'll help save the sea as well as learning about the sea there's also details on her website about a couple of shows she's doing to promote the book so make sure you have a look at that if you like what you hear in this episode and i know that you will one more thing to say you know we have a tour coming up there is still tickets for most of the uk dates and a couple of the Australia dates left for that.

So, do get your tickets ASAP and the people of Sydney and London.

Do go back to no suchthingsafish.com forward slash live because there are details of new dates on there.

So, if you missed out on tickets to Sydney or London, then fear not because we have put some more dates on.

Okay, that's it.

That's all I have to say this week.

So, really, all there is left to say is on with the podcast.

So, let's say it on with the podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Hoban.

My name is Anna Duszzinski and I'm sitting here with Andrew Hunter Murray, James Harkin and extra special guest today, Helen Scales.

And we have gathered around our microphones with our four favourite facts from the last seven days.

So in no particular order, here we

go.

Starting with Helen.

My fact is you can play peekaboo with an octopus.

Wow.

That sounds like fun.

I think it was peekaboo.

I'm not, I'm, that's what I was doing.

You've done this.

Yeah.

Exactly, exactly.

How did peekaboo work?

How did because the game is quite loose, rules-wise, I think so, yeah.

I mean, maybe it was, maybe it was hide and seek.

No, I think it was peekaboo.

So basically, um, I was coming back from a free dive or a snorkel, if I want to make it sound not as cool, but I'll say free dive because that does sound cooler.

And I was literally just a couple of feet from the beach, and the water was like knee-high.

And I looked down, I was floating, and I looked down, and there was an octopus behind a rock.

And I was like, awesome, because I love octopuses, and I see them occasionally, but it's definitely a special thing to see.

Where were you in the world?

Oh, sorry.

I was in Brittany, in France.

Very nice.

Yes.

So there was this octopus, and I was like, awesome, okay, fantastic.

And then generally, when I see exciting animals like that, you have to be like...

just looking uh as much as possible because any second now it's gonna just fuck off right and you're left with like oh that was a lovely encounter but it lasted like seconds but this one didn't move and i was just hanging out with it and how big are we talking um i mean in my mind it was like maybe a small melon melon-sized, I think, kind of thing.

Yeah.

Okay, so first off, I did the My Octopus Teacher touching thing.

Have you seen My Octopus Teacher?

That's a bit basically where if you put your hand out, an octopus will reach out and touch you with it.

It's like God and Adam in the Michelangelo.

Yeah, because I know they do do that.

Basically, they're tasting you to see what you are, because they're suckers, they're really sensitive and they can have you like taste the chemicals and stuff.

So I put my hand out and it did put its little arm out and it's tiny and thin at the end.

And it was like, and it touched me.

And I I was like, oh, that was amazing.

And then, so we did that.

And I was like, okay, so what else can I do with this octopus, you know, while it's got my kick it up a notch?

So I was like, well, what if I just hide from it?

Maybe it'll try and come and find me.

Wow.

And so I moved out of its line of sight so that it couldn't see me.

And it was just, it just like peered around the rock.

You know, it was definitely like, where have you gone?

You're over there.

And I'm like, no, you go.

But I just really had this sense of something a bit more intelligent, and it's thinking about you and it's interacting with you.

And it was just really, a really cool moment.

So it didn't then hide from you or anything else.

No, it didn't hide from me.

Then I think at that point, I was like, I'm getting really cold.

I need to get out.

Can you do something a bit more interesting than just sit there?

And so I think I was like, I'm going to get a bit closer.

And at that point, it was like, no.

And it went off and changed it.

You know, you hear about how octopuses change colour and texture and stuff.

And it really did.

It had been like pale and smooth.

And then instantly, it turned like really angry red and very bumpy.

And I was like, oh, wow.

Sorry.

Are the bumps real?

Yeah, yeah.

So their skin...

It's not that it looks bumpy.

Yeah, yeah.

So their skin has like loads of little muscles and they can pull up and make little like warts and little bumps and then they can flatten themselves

and change the colour is also muscles too.

They have these like bubbles of pigment which can open and close and they can change their colour.

It's like pixels basically.

I knew that's how they change their colour.

I just sort of assumed that they

I didn't assume anything.

You didn't really think about it, did you?

No, because he wouldn't really.

They just like the way that you blush maybe.

they might just change colours.

They have layers and blushes.

If only we could blush loads of different colours, like I could blush blue if I was.

That would be like a really cool thing to do with like GM, right?

Just to like give ourselves chromatophores, like in that's what they're called in octopuses.

That would be good.

It'd be easier for those, you know, those parties where you have to go in a colour, like if you're available, you wear green.

Oh, your swingers passes.

It's not always easy to find an amber shirt.

They definitely do seem to be animals where you can have a bit of a relationship with.

I think so.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to say I made friends with it, but I just felt like for a moment we had a bit of a play, and that was cool.

I mean, I haven't ever played with a crab, for instance.

That's never really worked out.

Or a big trope.

Yeah, the crabs just don't go for the peek-a-pook they ring.

Well, sometimes, though, octopuses don't want to befriend.

Like, they seem to have such personalities that they're discerning about who they like.

There was a person who worked in a New England aquarium who one of the octopuses there just completely took against him and used to squirt him in the room whenever he walked in just absolutely hated him and then I think he left and did a degree or something left university and he came back and immediately the octopus was like not Barry again and went with him again yeah they are a bit moody like that I've heard stories about octopuses being given food they don't like and just being like this and they hold it up to the person and go like uh see what I'm gonna do with this and they'd swim across to the other side of the tank and stuff it in the drain and be like no wow that's where that's going like a toddler yeah yeah I imagine there are those sorts of studies of like intelligence that are about that kind of level of I reckon although toddlers can't play hide and seek can they not no no because they just think you're not there when you close your eyes they did a study where they gave a toddler a doll and they put a blindfold on the doll and the toddler thought that they couldn't see it wait they thought that the doll couldn't see the toddler yeah but the

dog they thought that the they the toddler thought the doll had gone invisible the doll had gone invisible because they don't think that i because i've i feel like i've heard that kind of thing and obviously the study was done.

But I've heard that kind of thing where they think if you clover your eyes and you've gone.

But when you do it with kids, they don't think you've gone.

I literally did it yesterday and it worked.

Would you?

Yeah, yeah.

With your kids.

So they just think, but they can see your body.

I said to her, I said, look at me.

That took a while.

Because she doesn't really do what I tell her.

But then eventually she looked at me and I covered my eyes and I said, can you see me?

And she said, no.

Does that mean that she thinks she can't see you though?

Or that she thinks the thing to say in this game is no?

Well, because...

It feels like if you vanished, then children would be like, what the hell?

Well, the other evidence is that if you play hide and seek with a child, if they cover their eyes, they think you can't see them.

Oh, they're just in the middle of the room, eyes closed, I'm hiding.

That's great.

Yeah, yeah.

The really interesting thing is it works for voices as well, apparently.

Although I tried this with my daughter and it didn't work.

But apparently, there was a study where experimenters put their hands over their ears and said to the child, can you hear me?

And the child said, no, I can't hear you.

Now, I did try this and it didn't work with my daughter.

I'm not sure if that means she's too smart or not smart enough.

But if she put on a different voice, will she think that, for example, Bruce Forsyth is in the room?

And she's like, nice to see you.

I can't see you.

Octopuses, I think, have they been reclassed in Britain in terms of their intelligence?

Because they're so, literally, they're so clever that the government has now classed them along with

vertebrates.

They're way cleverer than most, not most, lots of vertebrates.

And they are classed as sentient beings.

That's right.

That's good news.

It is good news.

It means, well, hopefully, it means now we have to be nicer to them.

Because there are all sorts of discussions about, oh, should we farm them?

Should we farm these really intelligent, amazing, weird creatures?

That don't like living together and they're generally cannibalistic and, you know, all sorts of stuff like that.

You don't want to farm like where all the cows are eating each other.

Well, exactly.

You don't want this one great big octopus left at the end.

I mean, that's the only way to be popular.

Chopping up and just sitting on the corner.

You might get the same number of steaks from one enormous cow that's eating all the other cows.

And it's easier to herd, isn't it?

If you've just got one.

You're a big dog.

Very big dog.

It's tragic.

They can't write, but they do produce ink.

Oh, that is tragic.

Is it wasps or bees that can make paper?

Yeah, wasps paper.

Wasps can make paper.

If they could get together.

Never the twain.

Water snorkel and imagine how the two species could reek.

Wonder Alanis Morrisett, ironic.

Yeah, they weren't very ironic.

No, mostly things.

There was someone else.

Right, Avril Levine.

No,

it was a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of skaterby.

Yeah, I confused the two the other day in the social situation, and I haven't had the end of it yet.

Anyway,

he was a wasp, she was an octopus.

Can I make it any more obvious?

They're very strong octopuses as well.

Every sucker is so powerful, isn't it?

And I think I worked out.

So if a sucker touches an object, it like changes shape to form this seal around it and I realized that the common octopus if it's hanging off the ceiling the four of us and I've done some vague weight estimates and I think it wouldn't be true if Dan was here but I think the four of us

Dan is no heavier than I am for sure

but James who does Dan have to be heavier than for this to work with the four of us but not if Dan was here no I do see that I do see it but it did sound like a slam on Dan's way.

It did.

Look, I think we can safely say that Helen is a few inches shorter than Dan's try, but they're both in great shape.

But Dan probably weighs a few pounds more.

Once I was in the ITV studios on the south bank, and there's a load of people in a lift, and I walked into the lift, and it went beep, beep, beep, please leave the lift because I was the person who put it over the level.

And I felt awful, like it was a really low moment in my life.

But imagine that if all your mates are hanging off an octopus and you're the one that pulls him down, and they're just like, nope, that's it.

And let him go.

Do you know what happens if you cut the arm off an octopus?

Ooh.

So this is, you know, if you wanted to eat it.

Does it live?

Yeah.

So fishermen will like chop the arms off and stick them in the bucket and they try to climb out basically.

So octopus have like 500 million neurons, but half of them are in their arms.

So they have a very different kind of nerve system to us.

It's not all in their brain.

So the question is, like, do they think for themselves these arms?

Are they like actually able to make their own decisions?

But what we think they're doing is that their kind of response is to pass food towards the mouth so if a bit of food goes to the end of the arm the suckers are like passing it to the next one or to the next one and actually that same motion if you've chopped an arm off in a bucket is climb out of the bucket do you see what I mean so

they're just trying to pass they're just like this is a thing we do so it's not there's not necessarily any thought in it but they will basically walk off oh yeah

the other thing if you cut the very tip of an arm it will still respond to like nasty chemicals so people are like doing science and they'll take just a little bit of tissue off and then then you try and put the little tip of the arm into a pot of alcohol, and it goes, oh no, ow.

Oh, are we calling alcohol a nasty chemical?

Oh, sorry.

Well, I guess

very high concentration of alcohol used to preserve the tip of an octopus's arm.

Well, 100% scientific stuff.

Unfortunately, if you haven't, that's what Anna likes to do.

My limbs have cut off to go towards the answer to alcohol.

Just a thumbs up from Anna's removed.

And

you don't eat octopuses, right?

No, I don't.

No.

Do you eat other fish?

Not much anymore.

I did for a long time.

I gave up eating meat years and years ago, and then I kind of kept on eating sustainably caught fish.

But definitely octopuses, you wouldn't.

Oh, not since meeting one.

Definitely not since playing peekaboo with one.

I couldn't.

Something else that needs to avoid eating octopuses is the dolphin.

Although, I mean, they do like to sometimes.

And octopuses are really good food for other sea animals because I guess they're very meaty.

But they're quite dangerous to swallow.

And I think when dolphins do eat octopuses, they have to really work hard on cutting up their food to tear them to shreds because they did I think they found a dead dolphin recently in the last couple of years which had an octopus in its mouth and you can see its tentacles like flopping out of its mouth right

so if I'm a dolphin and I have a like an octopus and it sort of clings onto the inside of my throat yeah as it's going down because I haven't chewed it properly yeah does it pull me inside out is what I'm trying to say I end up coming into work the next day saying oh I think I had a dodgy octopus last night

because it's attached to the inside of the tube that is me yes it has done that.

And it's gone all the way through.

I don't think the dolphin was inside out when they found it.

I'm afraid that would be even more grotesque than the already the truth, which is like you say, it suckers onto their esophagus until it chokes them to death, which is quite clever.

Yeah.

Because they'd be trained.

I mean, the CIA are always training dolphins and things, aren't they?

Are you thinking, Andy, that we can defeat the CIA for whatever reason we might want to by sending an army of octopuses to turn their dolphins inside out?

Oh, yeah.

That'll send a strong message won't it.

Britain is back on the global stage.

He's inverted every dolphin CIA has ever trained.

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Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is my fact.

My fact this week is that during winter, the ground is too cold for male Emperor Penguins' feet, so they spend two months leaning back and balancing on their heels.

That's great.

It becomes so painful and uncomfortable.

They sound like kind of relaxed dads.

You know, they're leaning back.

The tail, like they prop back, they lean back on the little sort of

like a hunting stick, I guess.

Is that what it is?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A shooting stick.

Shooting sticks.

Yeah, yeah.

Or like one of those seats that an old lady sits on on the beach.

So, yeah, I'm guessing you're very familiar with this, and we should just say why they have to do this.

Because it's cold.

Because it's cold.

Really cold.

It's sort of easy to really cold.

It's freezing.

They're in Antarctica.

It's like minus 40 Celsius.

And the female essentially lays her egg.

I think this is right.

And it's in the middle of winter because they need to start incubating the egg so that it's born in nice springtime when there's lots of food.

So middle of winter, coldest possible time, the females laid the egg, plopped it in front of the male, disappeared for a couple of months.

And they have this incredible pouch that they plop over the egg and the egg balances on his feet.

But then if his feet are flat on the ground, then they just get super, super cold.

And so as you say, he leans back and like a tripod balances on his tail

two months.

I had vaguely seen that they did this, I had no idea about the details and how difficult it is.

The dads can only eat snow for those months, basically.

But they get pretty skinny, don't they?

By the end, they lose half their weight sometimes, or 40%.

And the dads basically had an enormous mega barbecue the summer before.

All the dads hang out, they put on lots and lots of weight because they know they're going to need it, and they use it all up.

Oh, it's just interesting.

So, when am I going to lose this weight that I've got on after being a dad?

You need to head on down south and spend quite a bit of time on the sea ice.

They just lose no heat.

Scientists did the sort of, you know, those heat map body things that you do, you know, you see where someone's losing heat.

And I think they found that the only places they're losing heat are through their eyes.

You know,

in Dune, the film Dune, and the book Dune,

they've got those still suits, which allow them to lose zero moisture.

They're basically in the desert.

We're on the planet Arrakis.

And

we get the idea.

Yeah, yeah.

So they've got these suits, which means they lose no moisture.

And the penguins, emperor penguins are basically that bodily.

They just can do it and not lose heat.

Yeah, it gets so hot.

Like, you know, they do that huddling thing, the males, when there's a blizzard and they all cuddle together.

They can be, like, so hot they have to break apart and be like, oh, God, and they just sit steaming.

Yeah.

It sounds more of a thing, which you wouldn't think because you see them in documentaries and you feel so sorry for how cold they must be.

But actually, it seems like overheating is more of a problem.

Potentially more of a problem, yeah.

And I always thought that those big huddles where, you know, hundreds of them, as you say, clump clump together, don't they, and they rotate who's on the inside.

I always thought they lasted for ages.

That was kind of how they stood.

But apparently, it's about 50 minutes each one lasts.

So, and it's really

like, yeah, when a blizzard blows through and it's really cold.

Do you think they don't feel cold then?

I think they would if they got cold.

It just sounds like that they don't.

Their threshold is just way lower than humans, so it's I think it's down to minus 10 Celsius.

They're basically comfortable.

Well, that's actually the same as someone from Newcastle, I think.

That's why the black and white is the essence.

They're still a bit chilly, then, I guess.

If minus 10, they're comfortable, minus 40, they're probably like.

That's when they're like, oh, let's all, you know, be together.

Do they have human conceptions of discomfort in the way that we do?

You know, I don't know.

Well, that comes back to the whole sentient thing, you know.

That's kind of the big thing of that: are they suffering?

Is the first penguin dad to suggest a huddle looked on as a bit of a wuss?

Yeah.

Or is everyone secretly hoping someone's going to suggest it, but no one must be the first one?

Oh, I'm not going to hug.

One thing I like about the whole penguin feather thing is, have you seen the video, have you seen kind of on Blue Planet or whatever it was of the penper penguins whooshing up underwater and jumping out of like they do this kind of leaps, right?

They basically, that's like need to get out of the water because there's probably something coming to eat me, but my little legs aren't going to be very good at clambering off onto the ice.

So they swim up from deep down and it's again that's their feathers.

So basically as they go down, they hold their contour feathers, the outside ones, in place.

They lock them in place so that the air is trapped.

And then, as they're coming up, they basically let that air out and it all comes fizzing out of the little under fuzzy bits.

That's cool.

And forms a stream of bubbles, and it's called air lubrication.

And it basically reduces the friction against the water.

So they go a bit faster and they go popping out of the water at the top.

And then they land on the ice, and they've got a nice little tummy.

Their fronts are covered with more feathers, so when they land, it's nice cushion.

That sounds so cool.

They're Iron Man.

They've just got shrinks for days.

They're a real risk of climate change, aren't they?

Yeah, sadly.

They live on sea ice, and if sea ice melts...

This bit, specifically this bit with the males and the chick rearing is on the sea ice.

And it's all on the outside, isn't it?

Yeah,

because they need access to the sea.

If the ice melts, basically, then that means they might, like, lots of colonies have had complete breeding failures where no chick survived to the next year.

It's happened two years in a row now.

It's really...

It's really bad.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think the idea is that if the world keeps to 1.5 degrees of warming, then the numbers will hold up much, much better than if it goes far beyond that.

Yeah, no, it definitely matters.

Like every degree, every degree we can avoid of heating, the better the Emperor Penguins will do.

And you know, the cool thing I love about it as well is how we study numbers of penguins is from satellites.

Once a week, a satellite passes over Antarctica and takes photos.

And you can only do that during the summer because it's dark during the winter, obviously, and you can't see anything.

But in the summer months, they pass over and take photos, and then you can count the penguins and they're poo, basically.

The guano stains the ice and and you can see where they are.

So, that's how you figure out how many there are.

And so, basically, the end of the winter, when the sun comes up again, it's like fingers crossed, everybody, like how many are still there?

Like, how many of these

basically, yeah, and then that's when we see.

So, basically, this year we won't know till because it's just going dark now, right?

Uh, we won't know till like September, October, how this year's clutch of penguins have started.

I wonder, do they take into account the level of poo?

By which I mean, like, let's say your penguins are not eating very well for whatever reason.

They might poo less.

And I wonder if when they look at it, they can.

To be honest, yeah, I don't know whether they do the poo for individual numbers or whether they're just like, here's a colony

that's generally there.

And then you zoom in and you can actually see like a little shadow.

That's how good the satellites are.

You can see, and they're so tall that you can see a penguin's shadow in the satellite images and then for count each individual.

Yeah, and actually, I think one really interesting thing is you can tell how many individuals there are in one of these huddles by knowing the size of the huddle and the temperature outside.

Oh, because they all really mathematically precise, they go into like hexagons.

You know how hexagons are the best way of packing things.

If you kind of take a big pile of penguins, you know how much they're huddling because you know how cold it is, and you just put a load of hexagons on that grid.

That's how many penguins there are.

Oh, well, you mean if it's colder, they'll go closer.

There's like 10 to a meter instead of.

I don't know whether to be more impressed by scientists or penguins than that, as if working that out is unbelievable, then working it out as penguins is unbelievable.

I've just heard this play over there.

They're really cool.

Yeah.

I didn't know that part of Scott's expedition

was about penguin eggs, collecting penguin eggs.

So crazy.

Scott of the Antarctic.

Scott of the Antarctic, that one.

So 1910 to 1913, his Terra Nova expedition.

A lesser-known part of it, and I think 1911

was where three of them, so let, I think it was sort of the brainchild or the person who's most passionate about it was Edward Wilson, who was Scott's second in command.

And then there was this other chap called Apsley Cherry Garrard.

But they were there to go and collect Emperor Penguin eggs, weren't they?

Because they believed it was going to be really evolutionary and possibly a link between yeah, they thought they were the oldest birds.

And there was this theory of recapitulation, which totally fell out of favour.

But the idea that an embryo retraces its evolutionary heritage of its ancestors.

So it would kind of basically start off in its egg as a little reptile and then turn into a bird as it was growing.

And so it kind of totally comes back to this this whole like crazy winters and the males with the eggs on their feet because the only way to get an egg with an embryo in it is to go in the middle of winter.

Absolutely.

The coldest possible.

And not only is it freezing cold, of course, pitch dark.

Dark.

They kept falling down like holes in the ice.

It was ridiculous.

But then surely you've also got to fight an angry dad.

It's not at his fighting weight, though, is it?

At that stage, actually.

So the three of them went and then the three survived, but Cherry Gerard got back and he was so ill from this expedition that he didn't go on the bit to the South Pole, which is where Bowers and Wilson died with Scott.

Right.

But they did get the penguin eggs.

But, I mean, it sounds extraordinary.

So Cherry's teeth chattered so violently with the cold that they shattered, apparently.

Do you know how they kept warm as well?

How?

By burning penguins.

That's dark.

Dark, guys.

That's very dark.

How you do what you can.

I thought you were going to say they had a lovely hug and a cuddle together.

Oh, I'm not hugging you.

I'm going to burn this penguin.

I mean, that was when they went to the colony.

They grabbed a whole bunch of eggs and they took some adult males.

I know, like, and they burnt them because they're really oily.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, scoas, they burn quite well, don't they?

Like,

they use those as lamps in the sky.

Oh, they stick a yeah, they stick a wick up there.

But yeah.

I mean, how strong are your ethical principles when you are near the South Pole and suddenly you realise there's death or penguin burning?

It was a couple of penguins.

That's just

a couple.

And it was, so it took him 45 minutes each night to chip into his frozen sleeping bag.

They probably burnt like the novels that they brought with them in the finish before they burnt the famous.

I think so, yeah.

Not the Dickens, because you need to keep holding the best ones.

But it took 45 minutes to chip into his sleeping bag.

Each night it would be a block of ice, and he's like 45 minutes.

And all I've got is one of these pieces of my own tooth to chip away with.

Oh, my God.

That sounds...

Yeah.

Well, I'm going to bed.

You'll go to bed early.

Yeah, yeah.

Got the old sleeping bag chipping to do.

There was also a thing where they had three sleds, I think, but they could only pull one at a time.

So for every sort of mile they traveled, they had to do three back and forth.

Oh no, God, and they couldn't leave the chicken on the sled at the same time as the crane.

We've got a penguin, an octopus, and a dolphin.

Okay, it is time for fact number three, and that is Andy.

My fact is that when Queen Elizabeth II got married, the people of Leamington Spa clubbed together and bought her a washing machine.

Oh.

Yeah.

That's nice.

That's very nice.

Clubbed together?

How expensive was the washing machine or how little did each individual in Leamington Spa contribute?

Wow.

Wow.

I'm sorry, but that's less than one penny each, isn't it?

Why don't you take everyone?

I'm sure they were more expensive in 1947, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was also a time famously of massive deprivation.

Sure.

After the war.

Yeah.

Bread was rationed at this point.

They all used their ration cards to buy her a washing machine.

Did she have one already?

Unclear.

I think out of diplomacy, she was a famously diplomatic woman.

She would never have said, I actually have 16 washing machines in my different houses everywhere.

Yeah, so she was Princess Elizabeth at the time because she wasn't yet queen.

That's how it works.

And 1947, post-war, really poor time.

So lots of gifts were food, you know.

I mean, people, people, and gifts from around the world.

she got given lots of dresses most of which she gave away to other girls getting married around her age around the same time you know so that's cool yeah the list of wedding presents this is so weird was published as a book and you can buy it today and I have ordered it and it hasn't been delivered yet

so tune in next week when I'll be doing the same fact again

yeah but it's like just weird present like 500 cases of tin pineapple can you get that much pineapple in your life I don't think I could

The governor of Queensland sent me.

I haven't had one tin this year.

Haven't you?

No.

Gosh.

Maybe after this.

Would you?

I think I had my first tin pineapple of the year yesterday.

That is a coincidence, right?

Isn't that bizarre?

Yes, it was part of a Penang curry.

People sent her stockings, which I find quite a personal thing to send someone.

And she got over 100 pairs, I think, hundreds of pairs of nylon stockings, which were a high-value item.

Nylon was a newly invented thing.

Yeah.

And

what would the equivalent be to a Bitcoin, probably?

The people of Leamington Spa chipped together to get you one Dogecoin.

Royal wedding gifts are often quite weird, aren't they?

Yeah.

Grace Kelly, friend of the podcast.

Oh, yeah.

She got a yacht.

That's

from Aristotle Anassis.

Miss Please.

Yeah, which village club together to buy that?

Better than a washing machine, isn't it?

The interesting thing about that is it was a repurposed ship.

It was a yacht.

And then it got turned into a ship for the war and was used at Dunkirk to help evacuate soldiers.

And then after the war, Anastasis bought it again and turned it back into a yacht and then gave it to Grace Kelly as a wedding gift.

That's sort of

recycling.

Sort of.

Sorry, which bin does this yacht go into?

Oh, that's great.

That's much better than what I felt.

Prince Charles and Diana, when they got married, a council in Somerset sent one tonne of peat.

Oh, because he's a farmer and you know,

well, he's not a farmer, is he?

But he owns lots of farmers.

Yeah, but you know, that was a huge faux pas.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

He's really sending excrement to a wedding.

Is that a faux pas?

Oh, peat isn't excrement.

I need to do some basic lessons.

But it is, it was, it was Sedgmore district council.

They sent him a ton of peat, and this was exactly about the time that Charles was banning peat because he is very environmentally aware and has been for a very long time.

And in the 80s, he banned peat use on all of his farms because, you know, it's a big biodiversity area now.

Impossible.

Yeah.

And also, it like sequesters a lot of carbon, doesn't it?

So, yeah, yes, although he knew that at the time, but he was very, you know, predicted.

So, Sedgmore, you screwed up.

And that's

one nice wedding gift I found is something that people get in Japan called the Venus Flower Basket.

Oh, yes, I know this one.

Yeah.

Come on, tell us what it is.

So, it's a deep sea sponge that's a glass sponge.

So, they're made out of kind of silica, basically.

They look like a very ornate stocking.

So a bit sort of like a woven knitted stocking.

And then there are these shrimp that live inside them.

And they get inside them when they're larvae.

So they can sort of go through the holes of this glassy sponge thing.

And then they get trapped.

And so basically, you have a male and a female that are trapped inside this sponge and can't get out.

And that's like a marriage.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And they send their babies off into the world through the holes of their sponge, but they stay their entire life inside the sponge.

Yeah, it is that.

It's because, like, the male and the female stay together the rest of their lives.

Oh, it's a claustrophobic concept of marriage, isn't it?

It's lovely.

What I also found is like, because it's like this glass sponge is like in a framework, isn't it?

It's like a lattice.

Yes.

And they found that the currents go into it and they create like a little vortex.

And it means that when the male and the female release their sperm and eggs, it's the perfect vortex to make them all sort of mixed together.

Cool.

So that's quite romantic as well, isn't it?

It is.

It's lovely.

I've heard as well that they designed the Gherkin in London around the skyscraper, around

the sort of shape of a sponge as well.

And it was like, rather than water and other things circulating around it, it's like it's for air conditioning and it pulls air in and it goes up the building.

Do not release sperm around Gherkin.

We'll see what happens.

The building security and the cleaning team will both be dispatched.

That's so interesting.

wow that's very cool

we do a washing machine thing or two washing machines um yeah they're bad are they yeah washing machines are bad uh synthetic clothes washing accounts for 35 of primary microplastics found in the environment wow high

and they're trying to come up with um a law where all new washing machines have to have a filter in them and it's already the law in france i think but at the moment it's not the law in the uk and it needs to be the law in the uk And does that stop the microplastics getting out and into the water system

as a filter?

Yeah.

And when you say synthetic fabrics,

that t-shirt you're wearing, I would say.

Oh, it's cotton, I guess.

I guess, I think it is.

No, I think you're talking more like fleeces and yeah, like polyester fleeces.

Polyester fleeces are particularly bad because they just shed loads of fibers.

Why would you ever wash a fleece?

Yeah, good point.

Don't really,

next time don't.

I'm at the school of like,

if it's an outer layer, you never wash it.

No.

Unless you fall in a swamp.

Oh, yeah.

And if you're wearing a fleece, you might be.

What if a bird poo's on you?

Oh, yeah.

Swipe it.

Wait till it's dry and then a stiff hog's back brittle brush.

Do you know that the first fleeces were called synthetic chinchillas?

No, stop it.

Yeah, yeah.

I think that's right.

When was that?

When?

Yeah, roughly.

20th century.

Get away.

20th century, yeah.

Because before that, people were wearing chinchillas.

I think chinchilla was a name of a fabric that was kind of similar to what a chinchilla was, but it was like it was made of cotton, but it was called chinchilla.

I remember synthetic chinchilla.

That's amazing.

That's ironic because actually they're sort of chin warmers, aren't they?

That's very right.

Yeah.

Gosh.

Good grief.

Can I tell you a washing machine fact?

Yeah.

Sure.

This is good.

So you know the Samsung jingle.

The Samsung jingle.

No.

That's not one of the things.

When your washing machine finishes, it plays a little tune.

Samsung.

This is a Samsung, yeah.

No, I don't know.

There's a tune.

Well, lots of mine washing machine just goes beep, beep, beep when it's finished.

Does it go doom doom doom or something like that?

That's an announcement of the underground, the other thing.

Yeah, yeah.

I installed the wrong thing in my kitchen.

It's the one that goes,

and it's really long, right?

So, this is so mad.

It was composed in 1817.

The Samsung washing routine jingle for this, with this in mind.

it's Franz Schubert wow I know and it's a it's a song it's called the trout so there's an aquatic theme

and it's based on a poem a different confusingly a German writer called Schu Bart

and it's about it's about a trout that gets caught by a fisherman and it's a warning to young women to stay away from men Well, there you are.

Yeah, this is the tune that is in every Samsung washing machine.

It's a little sort of ceremonial ditty that plays at the end of, and I have one of those washing machines.

I hear that tune a couple of times a week.

And

your wife leaves the house.

What a multi-layered fat hair.

So many bits to cross.

Well, I mean, to start off with, I didn't know Samsung made washing machines.

I thought they made TVs.

Right.

That's the foothills of this fact.

Yeah.

Shoe button, shoe bark.

I want to know that comedy double-ups.

Can I ask you guys a question about your washing machines?

How much washing powder do you tend to put in?

I just put one of those, like, you know, those Tide Pod things that Americans eat.

I've got one of those.

Oh, you do the Tide Pod.

Yeah, just a scoop.

I don't use powder.

I use liquid

from a refill shop.

Well, damn.

Dion message.

Yeah, just a cup of that.

No, I knock a lid.

Good, but I'm afraid it's not quite as good as the old reusable egg full of dry granules that I use.

I've got one of those.

You do have to fly down to the Antarctic to get the egg, don't you?

That's why I've lost all these teeth, these front teeth and mine.

It's all right.

You wash with a reusable egg.

There's a little plastic egg, which is full of dry granules, and they last about like a hundred washes or something.

You just replace those dry granules.

I wondered why you smelt so.

Like it works.

It's really good.

Well, this isn't, that's a much better public service announcement than mine, which is if you're just using normal washing powder, you should never need to use more than really a tablespoon, which is much, much less than you're probably using.

This was a New York Times expose, and it's really bad to overuse it because it makes your clothes go all crunchy.

Can I ask, Anna?

As someone who has a toddler who's currently potty training, and so I often have urine and feces stains on my clothing, is it different for me?

It says for extremely heavy loads, you might want two tablespoons, but you're never going to need more than that.

Thank you.

And they're lying to you, the companies, with their cups on the lids because they

keep scoop, don't they?

Oh, it's in their interest.

Yeah.

There you go.

But, because I've always thought the whole thing's a scam, and what I've always thought is the whole

washing clothes thing, it's a scam.

The thing I've always thought is the draw thing, got to be a scam.

So, I've always put everything in the drum.

Yeah, I do that as well.

Well, what I've realized, if you use fabric softener, if you put that in the drum, which I always have done, it's completely pointless.

And it's because it's to do with the charging of it.

So, fabric softener is partly there to stop your static clothes sticking together.

And it does that by being positively charged so that the negatively charged clothes sort of bind with it and become neutralized.

So, it's stopped.

There you go.

That's kind of what it does.

But it has the opposite charge to your washing powder.

So, if you put them in at the same time in the drum, they cancel each other out and it doesn't do any good.

So, if you are like me and you're just tipping your fabric softener in the drum,

stop it and stop using all of it and be more ethical like these guys.

Get the egg.

Get the plastic.

I swear, get the egg and the granules.

Get the giant penguin egg.

Shove it in the washing machine.

Wow.

Yeah.

Can I just tell you one wedding present thing?

So it's based on a fact I discovered, which is that in 2015, Cristiano Ronaldo bought his agent, George Mendez, and his wife, Sandra, Greek islands, a present.

So they're best friends.

I think he was best man at his wedding or vice versa.

So they're very close, house suite, bought him a Greek island.

And I was just like, how do you buy someone a Greek island?

And do you know, there's a website called privateislandsonline.com, which just has loads of islands for sale.

And this, when Greece went through the credit crunch, I didn't realize, but lots of economists advised, and eventually they went with it, advised that they put up a bunch of their islands for sale to make back some of the money.

I have been on this website, I think.

Have you got an island?

No, I think like if memory serves, you go on and it's like some of them are like not beyond the realms of possibility of someone like me could buy, but it's always like a tiny island in a lock in the northernmost part of Scotland.

And it says no electricity, no water, no ability to get to the island.

Well, you know, you'd be living a little bit off-grid, yes, but I still think the cheapest Greek one I found was 5 million US dollars.

So if, you know, if we all club together,

if those bastards in Levington Spa actually chipped in and dug deep,

maybe I don't know what the mortgage offers are on this.

It's Strogilo Island or Strogilo Island.

It's got beaches around the edge.

Okay, hear me out.

No such thing as a fish island.

Everyone who's listening

chipped in a bit.

Go ahead.

And everyone gets to go there.

Okay, lovely.

I love it.

Let's do it.

We can get $5 million.

It's 54 acres, so we could all fit.

Is there anything on it?

Some trees.

It's very green, very verdant.

Sounds lovely.

Oh, and it's got

power in some way.

I mean,

there is a nuclear power station in the middle.

And it had a little hiccup a few years ago, but honestly, it's fine.

Anyway, just something to bear in mind, I think.

Yes.

Get that Kickstarter going.

Yeah, I think I will.

Get Hannah Island.

Lovely.

Can I do animal gifts?

Oh, yeah.

Wedding gifts.

Can we do this quickly?

Technically known as nuptial gifts, and there are lots of animals that give each other presents before mating.

Did you know about this?

No.

So,

it's usually the males, but occasionally it's females that offer something.

And it's usually food.

But the really cool one I found was the nursery web spider.

So the males approach the female and give her a gift of usually an insect, and he wraps them up in silk.

And The females prefer the wrapped ones, they like the white, shiny, wrapped-up presents.

But he'll give her the present and she will open it and start eating it.

And meanwhile, he's getting busy with what he needs to do, so they start mating while she's opening her present right there.

And generally,

it's sort of the whole point.

And if she can at least sing happy birthday,

he's mating while she's

opening the the present, but basically, because it's wrapped up, he can cheat, and they don't always put something inside.

No way!

That's so funny.

It's like deal or no deal.

Yeah, yeah.

So basically, some of them are like, well, I'll just put this old piece of shit in here.

Like, no one's going to know until she's opened it because it takes a bit of time.

And if she opens it, she's like, what is the okay, and then basically.

Too late, too late, I've done it now.

Yeah, so, and so then she'll be like, no, off you get, we're going now.

But the male, they also do a thing where, so he, and I read, this this is from the paper, actually, there's a study of this, and I just thought this is a lovely sentence.

However, if the female moves and attempts to terminate copulation, the male may perform thanatosis, which is death-feigning behaviour.

He stretches out his legs, which is unique to this species.

The male then ends the insertion and grasps the gift with his chelicerae, which are his like mouth parts.

And then the female moves away while holding on to the gift, and the male is dragged along behind the female until eventually she'll give up, and then he revives and resumes mating.

Wait, okay, I was going to ask what his aim game is here because I thought he was just trying to get the present back.

Yeah, me too, to re-gift it.

Well, I don't think we really know.

I mean, his aim game is to basically try and mate with her as long as possible because you do, like, the more the longer they go, the more chance they have of fertilizing.

And so, basically, breaking, like, giving her a crap present is not a great idea because she will be like, No, I'm going to stop now because there's nothing in here.

And the better the present you get, the more time.

But it seems that sometimes they just don't have anything, or they're really hungry and they eat the gift first.

So they take the insect, they use it.

Honestly, I did buy you a bottle of wine, but it was a long train journey.

Anyway, here we go.

Shunching the wine bottle in her mouth.

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Okay, it's time for our final fact, and that is James.

Okay, my fact this week is that hermit crabs are facing a housing crisis.

Join the club.

Holy

Sai bell, everyone.

Ding, ding, ding.

What do you mean?

I think it's relatively self-explanatory in that hermit crabs, as you might know, don't have their own shell, so they go and find a new shell, and usually it's one that's discarded.

But it turns out that there aren't as many shells as there used to be.

There's various different reasons.

One reason is because gastropods, shell creatures, are shrinking, the populations are shrinking.

But the papers basically analyzed photographs of crabs online.

Social media pictures of hermit crabs.

Pretty much, yeah.

They basically went into Instagram and looked for hermit crabs and found loads of pictures of them using bottle caps, soda cans, Lego brands.

The really scary bit is the broken end of a light bulb.

So they're like the metal bit that you screw in.

They used that.

Yeah.

There's quite a few pictures of hermit crabs.

I guess those are very durable in the ocean, I suppose.

Yeah, yeah.

They just last a long time, don't they?

And I think that's one of the other reasons they're doing it just because it's what's there.

Right.

Yeah.

And there was another study in 2019 that found that half a million hermit crabs are dying every year after getting stuck inside bottles and things like that.

So it's bad news for hermit crabs.

It is.

I mean, it's kind of mad.

Apparently, as well, this plastic starts to smell like dead crabs, and that's one reason why they come towards them.

So there's a stuff called dimethyl sulfide, which is this molecule that does all sorts of important things like make clouds and it comes off plankton in the ocean.

But it also is like it's the smell of a rotting crab.

But it sticks to the outside of plastic stuff and plastic pollution in the ocean.

So one reason, possibly, why why these crabs are going for the Coke bottle lids and yogurt pots is because they think it smells like a dead crab and therefore it's a shell that's just been

left behind by another crab.

Because you would use that naturally.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

These homo crabs will use whatever they can find.

So, in Madagascar, there was a beach where there's a big cliff full of fossil shells, so really old shells, and the crabs will wait at the bottom of the cliff waiting for the fossils to drop out, and then they will use those as their home.

That's so cool.

That's like buying like a period property,

like a listed building they're not allowed to decorate though

no no no no

particular so they will use all sorts of things it's really interesting what you said about how they'll go towards the smell of a dead crab because obviously in nature that's very unusual isn't it like usually if a member of your species has died you would usually give that a bit of a wide birth yeah unless you want to eat it yeah well yeah which is what they do i think as well right they might do but yeah you're right it's not a good smell like carrion rotting carrion is not.

Yeah, so what happens is that sometimes they'll climb into a bottle, and because the bottle's smooth, they can't get out, and so they'll die.

And then the smell of the dead crab comes out, and then the next crab goes, oh, great, dead crab goes into the bottle, and then they get stuck.

Oh, no, it's like a horror film, and then the next crab goes to find that dead crab.

And then you've got a bottle full of dead crabs.

Oh, God.

And another kind of crazy thing about this is that maybe it actually kind of makes sense from the crab's point of view, because if there's a ton of plastic around and you want to hide then you hide inside the plastic

and then you might

and then predators might also not really have figured out that there might be crabs inside of yogurt pots and so they haven't kind of learned yet to go looking so it could be actually an advantage for the crabs and they're also lighter yeah yeah as a shellfaloo they take almost no energy to pick up they are really clever the the sort of the way they do it so they they sometimes evict each other so if you have outgrown your shell and you spot a hermit crab with a shell that would be perfect for your current size, they go over and bang on

the shell with their claws.

They do.

And before the fight breaks out, they'll show each other their claws.

Because if you've got the bigger claws, then generally you're the one who wins.

So they try not to have a fight.

They'll be like, look, I'm this big.

And the other one will, they'll compare claw size.

And that can deflect fights.

That would be good.

You know, in boxing, at the start, before the boxing fight, they always come up to each other and sort of like stand head to head and sort of talk to each other.

It'd be good if every time one of them just went, oh no, I'm going to lose this.

You're way bigger than me.

Is that the weigh-in, Jack?

Yeah, yeah.

Are they actually weighed at that point?

Yes, they are.

Because in most weights, there's a maximum weight you can be, and they try and get as close to that as possible.

And are they both, I've always wondered this about boxing, are they both standing on the same set of scales?

Because they're standing right facing each other and looking at each other.

I always wonder if there's one big set of scales in the middle that they both have to get on.

As in, like, one of those balanced scales that goes up and down.

No, it's one set of scales and they take turns.

Oh, they do.

Okay.

You've got to use the same set.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

But it would be nice if there was a joint set.

They could both use it at the same time.

And if it goes over the weight.

Just a seesaw.

Exactly.

And it has to be exactly balanced.

Yeah.

And it would be a nice, actually, it'd be nicer if in the middle of the boxing area was a seesaw.

And whoever wins the seesaw.

How do you win at seesaw?

Yeah.

I was a very competitive file.

Absolutely crushed them on the little springy dogs at the park today.

Hermit crabs, hermit crabs.

Hermicrabs.

So they do actually decorate their homes quite well.

And so we've talked about the way they move house, but when they're living in their house, they do various things.

The anemone hermit crab gets anemones and sticks them to its shell.

And I think it's because they've got stinging tentacles that affect other passers-by and so it's a little bit of protection.

The anemone gets some food.

But when they move shells, they do then take all the furniture with them.

The flat doesn't come furnished.

And so I think they spend ages.

Is this right?

They spend ages prizing off the anemones.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a species of deep sea anemone that was discovered just last year, and they got a couple into an aquarium.

And this was scientists in Japan, and it spent two days trying to move the anemone.

Yeah, it was like pinching it and pulling it, and like just generally trying to get it to let go.

And then you've got to persuade it to cling on to the new one as well.

It just doesn't want to move.

Yeah, the anemone, I don't know if it knows.

It's basically just, I don't know.

But it's just not cooperating.

It just clings on.

But the crab is like, well,

they might not get another anemone and they're in short supply, so you have to bring them with you.

Wow.

So great.

So fun.

That's really amazing.

It's a lot of fun ever when you're moving out of a house.

Scraping away.

Yeah.

Why did I put that poster up?

Have you heard of Aki Inomata?

She's a Japanese artist.

I don't think so.

She does collaborations with animals.

And one of the animals that she's done an art project with is a hermit crab.

Okay.

So she's 3D printed miniature cities.

Oh, yeah.

And she then turns and she puts the miniature city sort of model she's built

on top of a shell and then lets the hermit crab move into that.

It is cool.

I mean, I guess it's also not a natural shell, which would be the best thing.

But it's an interesting.

They won't move into anything.

Like, you give them, like, you can make them little Lego homes.

They'll try that.

And I looked a bit more into her work.

Inamata, she's done another project, which is called I Wear the Dog's Hair and the Dog Wears My Hair.

Okay.

And she and her dog wore capes made from each other's hair.

Oh, okay.

And it looks a lot nicer than you would think it would look like.

When you say collaboration,

it was the dog's idea.

She said, I collected the hair of a dog called Ciolo and my own hair over a number of years, and then make clothes out of my hair for the dog and the dog's hair for myself so we could exchange coats.

The two species, human beings, and dogs, have developed together over the ages.

This work examines the relationship between a human and her pet.

Okay.

What kind of dog was it?

I just wanted to know what kind of patterning it has.

Oh, wow.

Was it spotty or stripey or?

Just brown, I think.

I was just wondering if it's a small dog, what kind of outfit you can make, really?

It's wearing quite a natty little waistcoat.

It looks good.

Nice.

And she's wearing a kind of cool, sleeveless jacket thing.

So the dog's waistcoat is made out of her hair.

That's right.

So why don't we make more clothes out of human hair?

Yeah, Andy.

That's a good question.

Oh, I don't know.

Let's do it.

Well, one creepy, I would say.

Yeah.

But I mean, you get a lot of, I mean, I guess they use, like, when you get your hair cut, like, they'll, if it's good hair, they'll use it for for making wigs.

Yeah, so

that's good.

That's true.

Maybe we do that instead.

I don't know.

I've just wondered.

Probably.

I mean this woman's a very good artist it sounds like and probably most people who try to make clothes out of human hair would look like shit.

Yeah and also just think of all the head and shoulders you have to put in the washing machine.

Do you guys know about I really love historical manias and I think we often cover them on the show and I don't think we've talked about conchilomania or conchilomania.

In the 18th century people just got really really obsessed with collecting shells, didn't they?

They really did.

And it sounds like a really fun time to be alive.

And the

cons, you'll die at 40.

Pros.

Lovely shell collection.

Consider my shells.

Yeah.

Worth it.

So I suppose, like a lot of these manias, it's a time when people in the Western world or in Europe are exploring more, so they're finding more exciting shells around the world.

The most valued was this one called Glory of the Sea.

Have you seen a Glory of the Sea shell?

Yes.

They're not that impressive, are they?

Well, no, you're not.

You're right.

I've seen one that was from that time and it was collected by Victorian collectors in the Natural History Museum.

Oh, cool.

Down the back.

But yeah, it's because no one had one.

And so, therefore, you know, the few that existed.

Is that the one where there's a story about someone buying another one?

He had one already, bought another one at auction and then immediately smashed it to pieces.

In order to up the value of the

apocryphal.

I don't know if it's true, but it's that kind of level of

vibe.

Yeah, yeah.

There's definitely one that sold for three times more than a Vermeer painting at the same auction.

And then there was this awful moment where we slightly got over the shell collecting obsession by the 20th century, but they were still really valuable.

And I think in

1966, there were only 41 known specimens in the world.

Wow.

And then in 1969, we just found this habitat in New Guinea where they all live.

And now there are tons of them.

Scuba divers found them, didn't they?

Yeah.

I think.

And there's probably not so many left for hermit crabs now.

Oh, no, that's true.

Actually, I don't know if they're good for hermit crabs.

They've got quite a small opening.

They are very petite.

It would have to be at the very lower end of the housing market, I think.

First time it starts, so yeah.

You've written a whole book about shells, haven't you?

I have.

Spirals in Time.

That's correct.

Such a great title.

Thank you.

Can I ask you, Helen, about periostrachum?

You won't be saying it.

I say periostrachum, but you know, I'm making that up.

You're an actual expert in this field, so

is it true that shells this is like a skin yes shells have skin some do yeah so it's like a hairy layer that grows on the outside I think it's like a probably camouflage probably some sort of protective thing that makes them look less like a shell and more like a bit of weedy rock yeah just weird yeah all the shells that we see well no like lots of them will have had skin That's weird, isn't it?

Yeah.

Isn't that weird?

I find it a bit weird.

It's quite weird, yeah.

And then things like cowries, which are really shiny.

You know, if you've seen like big, lovely, shiny cowrie shells.

But the reason they're shiny is because part of their body called the mantle, which is like the pink bit on a muscle when you eat mussels, that's the mantle.

Anyway, it folds over the outside when they're alive, so they cover themselves in like a part of their body, which means they stay nice and shiny and they don't have like stuff growing on them.

That's why they are so like porcelain-y, kind of

shiny glasses.

Is it porcelana is the Italian for cowrie shell, I think.

Oh, cool, there you go.

Yeah, so that's why they I think porcelain was named after the cowrie shell, I think.

Ooh, that's cool.

And the cowrie shell was named porcelaina because it reminded people of a pig's vagina.

Yeah, cowries have got a lot of that sort of stuff going on.

You can see that when you picture a cowrie shell.

I mean, yeah.

The first thing that springs to mind.

If you've only ever seen a cowrie shell or a pig's vagina, basically you've seen them both.

I think that's correct.

Yeah, I would say.

For people at home.

Is it true, Helen, that we don't really know how shells form when animals grow their own shells?

The process of biomineralization

is still a bit of a mystery because it's one of those things that takes a very long time.

I think there's a lot going on.

There's like a protein scaffold that gets laid down first, I think, and then the calcium carbonate, which is the hard stuff, gets laid down in that.

And it's all at the outer edge of it.

They harvest the calcium ions and carbonate ions from seawater and then combine the two of them together and they make crystals of calcium carbonate which then go on this scaffold.

Right.

It sounds like we do know how it's made.

Okay, but

I mean, that's

from a brush.

We know what happens, but,

and also why.

And then it can be.

But I just think that's insane that they can harvest.

But they don't know they're doing it.

It's not like they're currently.

It doesn't make it less impressive.

Well, it does make it a bit less impressive than I do.

It's just amazing.

That's really cool.

The world's most exclusive textile is made from a bivalve.

I'd never heard of this.

Have you seen this?

It's made from the pen shell.

So a bivalve is like a muscle, right?

Or a thing with two snapshots.

The snap shells.

Yeah, a Pac-Man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are only 60 items known to be made of this special silk from this special pen shell.

And so you've seen one of these things.

And basically, they're huge, aren't they?

The shells.

They're like a meter tall.

Yeah, I mean, they used to be.

Now they're not.

They're doing quite badly now, and there's not as big.

But yeah, it's basically like a beard.

Oh, like when you have muscles, if you eat moul magnier and you pull off the mossy, beardy bits, the same stuff.

The threads.

The threads, exactly.

And they use this hair to embed themselves in the sea bed, right?

That little root.

Yeah, yeah.

And then you make this amazing silk out of it.

Yeah, you go through it, it goes through stages of processing.

I went to Sardinia, which is really where the only people left who do it.

Yes.

And I think that's it.

I think there's one woman left I read, and it's

I met that one woman.

Chiara Vigo.

Oh, wow.

You've got opinions on Chiara Vigo.

I don't know if I should be mean.

No, I'm not going to be mean, but she claims to be the last living mistress of sea silk, as it's called.

But I met several other people who do it.

And this is explosive news to me, and probably no one else is.

No, and it's all in the book.

It's in Spirals and Time.

I talk about it.

I met her, and she's kind of all like very woo-woo about it.

And she goes into her little workshop, and she does all this kind of, oh, and here it is.

And I do all these things.

But then, yeah, I met two other women who've learnt it from there, because it's like, it's handed, you know, no one does it because you're not allowed to harvest these things anymore.

apart from the fact they're not doing very well because they've just been wiped out by a disease um pen shells are now protected so you can't go and take one to get there

so did you did you call the police on this one well no because she she claims that she can sustainably harvest them but no one's allowed to watch her do it that was the part where i was like oh okay yes because she says she doesn't harm the shells exactly she's like no no they're fine they grow back and i'm like they do grow back but i don't know how fast and if it's fast enough and she doesn't let anyone watch her while she's doing it how interesting

i will keep the pig alive while I make this bacon sandwich.

I must do it in a clothes room when you're concerned.

You might hear some squealing.

That's me.

I just love bacon so much.

Okay, that's it.

That's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening, everybody.

And if you want to get in touch with any of us, you can find these guys on some of their social medias.

Andy, you're on.

Twitter at Andrew HunterM.

James.

My Instagram is no such thing as james harken helen do you have any

uh twitter is helen scales and instead drhelen scales because someone already had helen scales drhelen scales on instagram um or you can email podcast at qi.com or you can go to our twitter account at no such thing or instagram at no such thing as a fish

or go to our website no such thingasafish.com where you'll find links to our brand new tour uh which is selling out fast so please get there because we have so much fun we're going around the UK Ireland Australia New Zealand do come see us in any of those places way more important than that is please buy buy all of Helen's books they're amazing but definitely buy the latest book which is

what the wild sea can be it's such a

such a romantic title I love it I came up with it first normally the title comes last spirals and time was particularly painful um that was last minute but this one I came up first too yeah

it has optimism in it doesn't it definitely yeah that's kind of the point.

It's like, let's not give up, and there's lots of things that's hopeful.

And hopefully, there's some fun things in there, too.

So, do that and come back again next week to catch us again.

We will see you then.

Goodbye.

I never heard of that egg.

I gotta look it up when I get it.

Fucking good.

It genuinely works.

At what temperature as well?

Because that's the other thing.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

150 Celsius.

For three hours.

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