SciShow Tangents - Seeds

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

The knowledge of our couch of finely-honed scientific minds didn't pop out of the ground fully-formed - it had to be planted, tended, and grown lovingly over a long period of time to flower into the beautiful curiosity tree it is today. But like so much of life, it started as just a tiny, humble seed - which is super convenient for the topic of this episode!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscriber Garth Riley for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen[Definition]https://www.nybg.org/planttalk/what-is-a-seed/https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2020.00027https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/female-gametophytehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/male-gametophyte[This or That: Seed Numbers]25: seed weight or germination time2000: preserved species or oldest germinated seed385 million: individual Amazonian trees or oldest seed-producing fossilized planthttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2012/687832https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/science/12/chap5.htmhttps://www.seedvault.no/about/the-seeds/https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1153600https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/708279https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309767/https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1102491https://web.archive.org/web/20130608110356/http://sura.ots.ac.cr/local/florula3/docs/Hura.pdfhttps://www.britannica.com/story/can-apple-seeds-kill-you[Trivia Question]2024 record for smallest creature to disperse ingested seeds https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1042977https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppp3.10519https://bantam.earth/common-rough-woodlouse-porcellio-scaber/[Fact Off]HybriBots are a cyborg way to plant seeds, made from wild oats and human-made capsuleshttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202313906  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34506974/Video of wild oat fruits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlUparIDfzEHuman urine does not protect acorns against predation by the wood mouse[Ask the Science Couch]Heirloom seeds and non-recently-hybridized plant cultivars (vs. hybrids vs. genetic modifications)https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/heirloom-vegetables/https://extension.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/dkk-mg-seed-swap-hybrid-heirloom.pdfhttps://ag.umass.edu/home-lawn-garden/fact-sheets/heirloom-vegetable-varietieshttps://extension.illinois.edu/node/21430https://hles.unl.edu/translating-language-seed-packets-hybrid-heirloom-non-gmo-and-morehttps://www.fda.gov/food/agricultural-biotechnology/gmo-crops-animal-food-and-beyondPatreon bonus: How seeds germinate and seeds that grow better after being digestedhttps://www.mdpi.com/2311-7524/9/4/462https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2005.00973.xhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1433831904700104https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.1667[Butt One More Thing]Mysterious tomato plant on the volcanic island Surtsey came from a seed in human poophttps://www.icelandreview.com/news/dirty-secret-uncovered-doing-business-surtsey/https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1267/

You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host Hank Green and joining me this week as always is Forbes 30 under 30 education luminary and science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. And more importantly, according to our show flow, our resident every clone, the incomparable Sam Schultz. Hello. I am curious, we were having a conversation right before this, we started recording. What the most embarrassing thing that there is about you that has come up with work colleagues?

Or school colleagues? Or like people who didn't know you and then they're like, they like found out a thing about you from the internet. Mine's really easy as somebody who hosts a Muppet podcast. I'm constantly humiliated by my mom and by my co-host and by my wife not as much. She doesn't really care about the Muppet podcast.

But when somebody will say, oh, did you know Sam hosts a Muppet podcast? Apropos of nothing, it's the only thing they know about me, probably. And then I have to go. Is it the only thing your mom knows about you? It's probably. Yeah, and then I have to go. Yeah, I thing your mom knows about you? It's probably. Yeah, and then I have to go.

Yeah, I do, it's true. It's called Kermitment. Did you know Sam has a Muppet podcast? You do. I don't know. I don't know if the people of Tangents know about your Muppet podcast. Kermitment, I'll let the people listen.

No, I don't have to look them in the eyes. They have to look me in the eyes as I say it. Kermitment is a Muppet podcast that I host. It's me and Matt Gado, so you might know. We're watching every Muppet thing that exists, as available to watch, and even some stuff that's like illegally on the internet, stuff like that, that we can get our hands on sequentially.

And they still haven't found the episode of the Muppet Babies that I remember, but I don't know for sure exists. I don't think it exists. We're in deep in the Muppet Babies. There's like 10 seasons of Muppet Babies that I remember, but I don't know for sure exists. I don't think it exists. We're in deep in the Muppet Babies. There's like 10 seasons of Muppet Babies and we're like on the third season. So we got a way to go. Well, there's a lot left then.

There's a lot left. There's a lot left. But what the embarrassing thing is, you can tell when somebody hears that I host a Muppet podcast, you look in their eyes and then if you can see the light extinguish, but you still have to say what it is

and you still have to be like, cause you don't wanna put that, you don't wanna be like that other person like, why'd you say that stupid? So you have to still be like, yeah. Yeah, here's the whole synopsis of my Muppet podcast. I'll give you the elevator pitch as if you're a potential investor.

That's great, yeah. When I first showed up for my graduate program, I sat down next to a guy and he looked at me and he said, like we introduced ourselves to each other and he was like, oh you're Hank Green, I looked you up and I was like what? And he was like, I googled everybody. I googled every name of the people in the program. And he was like, and I was like very excited because I used to work at JPL on Mars missions and on the Hubble. And I saw that you have done Mars journalism in the past. And I was like, actually, now I'm telling the story.

I'm like, actually, this is embarrassing, because it was great. He had done the embarrassing thing of admitting to having Googled everyone. Googled everyone. But what he discovered is that I was into Mars. But he was into Mars too. But he was into Mars too. So I feel like that is a friendship moment,

not the light extinguishing from their eyes when they realize you host a Muppet podcast. You're still friends? We are still friends. That's great. You probably met him at a party at my house at some point. All right. Not in like a sexy way though. You know, Hank's parties, oink, oink, oink.

I in general try not to reveal information about myself to my coworkers until I know I can trust them as friends. I used to be very easily to trust, then now I'm slightly less easily to trust. Is that how you grammatically say that? I don't know. We get it. And so usually when I talk about my work outside of work,

I describe it very vaguely of like, oh, I do science communication or, oh, I have a podcast with my friends. It's wild that they don't just know who Sari Riley is. That's right. Sometimes people do walk up to me and they're like, oh my gosh, I recognize your voice after your info session. But my coworkers don't really know who I am. And so when I was like,

oh, I host a podcast with my friends, they assumed that just guys talking on a podcast, you know. You're just one of those. Like Sam is. I'm just one of those guys. Yeah. So after the Forbes thing came out, I heard, not directly, so I still don't know who in the office said this, said it to someone else, like,

I didn't realize Sari had a real podcast. I thought it was just, she was just one of those podcasters, you know? Yeah. You're not a hobby podcast. Something about being like like people finding out about your your success that is even more uncomfortable than them finding about just about your normal human weirdness. Well, I'm not very successful, so I don't have to worry about it. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one up and amaze and delight

each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank books, and one of them at the end of the episode is going to be the winner of this. But first, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This week is from me. Herod the First, or Herod the Great, the leader of the Herodian-Judean state, died just around the birth of Jesus.

And Herod the First or Herod the Great was probably a pretty big fan of dates, a fruit that to this day does please us. And Herod the First or Herod the Great definitely had more than just dates on his plate. He had many long days to get through. But Herod the First or or Herod the Great, suffered the same universal fate in that he died as mere men tend to do. But 2,000 years after his death, after that great king took his last breath, after he finished all his great deeds, we found in his palace a number of seeds. While empires fell down and we went to the moon, that seed just lay buried in King Herod's room.

And one of those seeds, just so we could see, we planted and it turned into a tree. That's the story of the oldest germinating seed out there. And hopefully y'all didn't have that as a science fact and the topic for the day is seeds. That is always a risk, isn't it? I think you're getting better at writing full children's books every episode of Tangents, Hank.

Getting middle end, a twist. Yeah, the topic is seeds, but I didn't want to write about seeds. I wanted to write about one specific seed. And I found out that there is a date palm in Israel growing that was grown from a 2000 year old seed that was found in King Herod's castle. It's still going or what?

When they do it? It's still going, it's still going, but you can't eat a fruit off of it. It's not old enough, but also it's a male tree. So it is not going to create fruits. Oh, that's too bad. But before we dive in, we're gonna take a short break and then we is not going to create fruits. Oh, that's too bad. But before we dive in, we're going to take a short break, and then we'll be back to Define Seeds!

[♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING! Hey, Sari, what are seeds? You know, we kind of have an idea for this one. This is maybe one of the ones more specific. I was thinking maybe it'd be tricky because of like spores, but I guess those don't count. I was going to bet this would be like everything's a seed. What are you talking about kind of moment? This is a, well, if you go in botanically,

then we have a pretty specific definition. But when you start naming things in the world, then- That have seed in them, it gets messy. Yeah, then it gets messy. So we can do both of them. Botanically speaking, there are a group of plants, most plants that exist on Earth, that are spermatophytes or seed plants.

That includes both angiosperms, which are the plants that flower, and gymnosperms, which are the conifers and cycads, the naked seed plants. The difference between those two is how those seeds are contained. Flowering plants have seeds enclosed in ovaries, and the ovaries, once they develop, are fruit. I don't love that we call that an ovary, because to me, ovaries are made of animal meat. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, isn't fruit... I don't like the idea of, like, biting into a nice, crisp ovary.

But did we call those ovaries first, and then we call the other thing ovaries? No, I think that it was the human ovaries first. Okay. But they are, I mean, the, oh, an ovary is egg. Yeah, and so you start drawing parallels because it is like sexual reproduction, so a lot of the parts have the same names, but it is kind of plant flesh, but either way,

so seeds, flowering plants have seeds enclosed in ovaries, gymnosperms, so like conifers and whatnot have seeds that just grow on modified leaves, which are the cones. So the seeds are just out in the world, nothing surrounding them, exposed to the elements. And the seed itself is the fertilized baby to ready to go out into the world. There's usually like a the embryo itself, which is the pre plant, it has a root stem, and whatever the beginning materials are, there is some nutrients, the endosperm, which is usually some starches and oils and whatnot, that is the food for the embryo. And then there's a seed coat, which is some sort of protective covering or accessory bits on it that can help seeds stay over time.

Some of them, if they're a date seed and under the proper conditions up to 2000 years or many more thousands of years in permafrost or other things like that. Since this is fairly straightforward, can I throw a wrench in and ask if seeds are alive? Hmm. This is a big one for me where I'm like, wait a second,

wait a second, they're not alive yet, but they're gonna be, but they are, they must be because they can be, but they aren't because they're not doing anything and they can sit around for 2000 years doing nothing. They're just sleepy. I think they're alive, they're just taking a nap. Maybe they're alive, but just sleepy. I think they're alive, they're just taking a nap.

Maybe they're alive, but just sleepy. Okay. Yeah. We eat a lot of seeds, and when you eat a seed, then you're eating something that's alive, I guess. But when you're eating lettuce, you're eating basically living or slowly dying things also. Oh, yeah. So yeah, I think seeds are slowly dying at the very least, but I guess so is everything

that's alive. Yeah, that's everything. Yeah. Oh, never mind. The weird thing to think about when I was digging into what is a seed versus not is some things that we think of as seeds are actually the fruit surrounding the seed. So there's fleshy fruits like avocados or apples or the vegetables that are fruits like tomatoes or whatnot, where there's like the fleshy bit and then the seeds inside. But some fruits, botanically speaking, are really dry and on the outside. So like a nut in many cases is actually a fruit, but then we eat the seed and discard the fruit part.

Cause the shell is the fruit. The shell is the fruit. So a walnut shell is a fruit. A walnut shell is a fruit, and the nut inside is a nut. They can really do it any old way, can't they? Yeah. And it's weird that like all of these plants are like,

that there's just these two categories of plants, basically. Yeah, that is, this is disappointingly straightforward. I really thought they were going to have a big fight. But it is very strange. Like, it's very weird because we have this idea of like what a fruit is. And then it turns out that it's just like whatever. Like, you're totally wrong. And the seeds can seeds can be all kinds of things.

Like, there are lots of things that you look at and without dissecting them, you'd be like, is that a seed? Is that a fruit? Is that a nut? Like the biggest seed is the coca de mer, I think. Oh. Which is a seed of a palm tree and it can get really, really, it looks like a giant coconut basically, but that's a seed.

It looks like a coconut, but also the hoof of a bison. Yeah. Yeah. Looks like something. Oh, so also the hoof of a bison. Yeah. Yeah. Looks like something. Oh, maybe they bought it in a monkey. Looks like some other stuff, too. Okay, fine. Yeah. Hey, is an egg a seed?

A chicken egg? Is that a seed? Is semen a seed? Because they call it that. They do call it that. Semen and seed come from the same base. Or sperm, I guess not. That's the only linguistic interesting thing. Cause we've been calling seeds seeds since Proto Indo-European.

The original prefix see means sowing. So we had an agrarian society. We knew how to sow seeds and we still use it that way. But that same prefix, the seed formed semen as well, starting in like the 1300s. And that's when we started getting poetic about it. That too is a seed. What if humans were like plants and could fertilize and create? Then probably we'd look a little bit like these Coco de Mer.

Yeah, that's right. This website refers to it as the sexy nut, which I can't. What are you thinking? Now let's hear them out. I mean, God bless a blogger. I just thank you for whatever you were up to in 2014 that resulted in that. I would like to create a blog called A Sexy Nut in Paradise. And it's just me like acorns around the world. Or different like a walnut.

Just Sarri in the tropics. Yeah. That sounds like what a, like what a divorced mom would call herself when she was out on vacation with her girls. Just a sexy nun paradise. I'm just a sexy nun paradise. Yeah. With a sun brim hat, like definitely tan lines, big old.

Yeah, she's having a couple mistakes tonight, and it's gonna be awesome. Yeah. Now it is time to move into the quiz portion of our show. Today, we are gonna be playing This or That with a few seed-related superlatives. I'm gonna give you a number related to something biggest, oldest, bestest, and so on, and you're gonna guess which option that number refers to.

Number one, the number is 25. Is that the weight in kilograms of the largest seed in the world or the time in years for the seeds of the largest tree in the world to become mature enough to germinate? And yes, we are talking about this sexy nut. Did you say years? Yeah, it's either years or it's its weight in kilograms. Can you tell me how many pounds that is? Yeah, thank you, Siri. Sure.

It's like 50 pounds. It's like 55 pounds. Bad thing isn't 50 pounds, I'm going to say. This is the sexy nut in paradise, you said? The sexy nut in paradise. Yeah, the biggest of them. I think it's gotta be 25 years then, because I don't think that thing could weigh 50 pounds.

How heavy is a bowling ball? 16 is the heaviest it's allowed to be. I mean, I suppose it would be dense, but I mean, I'm seeing some people pick it up on, I'm seeing people pick up the sexy nut. 25 is a lot, so I could pick up a 25 pound nut, but I wouldn't not make a noise. But you said 50 pound. Oh, a lot. So I could pick up a 25 pound nut, but I wouldn't like not make a noise. But you said 50 pound.

Oh, you're right. I did. I said 50 pounds. Could you pick up a 50 pound nut? I could pick up a 50 pound nut, but I'd have to like use good form. You'd have to bend your knees, keep your back straight. You might have to team lift the 50 pound nut.

Yeah, the Co-Coop Coco de Mer is a team lift. Has that little logo from Target boxes on it. Two guys picking up the sexiest nut in paradise. Just two guys and a sexiness sexy nut. Two pros. I'm gonna say years. I'm gonna say years too. I can't believe that it's a 50 pound,

well, this is how we get, I can't believe it's a 50 pound nut. Well, the seeds of the Coco de Mer palm tree can weigh up to 25 kilograms. Oh no. They, these giant seeds grow giant trees and the palm easily hits 30 meters in height. And also people, gotta be careful

if you look at them too long. Why? The seed, not the tree. Oh, okay. Well, you gotta be careful if you look at them too long. The seed, not the tree. Oh, okay. Well, you gotta be careful if you look at the tree too long, because the seed might fall out and destroy your body. Absolutely obliterate you, yes. Yeah, you wouldn't stand a chance against a 50-pound nut.

I thought you had to be careful if you look at the nut too long. You can't control what happens if you look at the sexy nut. I'm about to act up. I'm looking at the nut. I'm looking at the nut. Stop looking at the nut. My friend's lifting it with me. The cones of the giant Sequoia take over two years to form and may not release their seeds for another 20 years.

Wow. What are they waiting for? After it forms. So that's pretty close to 25 years. They're just operating on a different time scale. Yeah. All right, question number two. 2000, is that the number of species preserved

in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault or the age and years of the oldest seed ever to germinate? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. This is what happens when you don't write the whole show. It's just a fun little bonus for us. Yeah. The funny thing is, Hank, I just learned about this date tree, but I can't remember where

I learned it from. So I really think it's the oldest seed. No, I think this is great. Yeah, I think I'm going to have to also go with the oldest seed. You think it's the oldest seed. No, I think this is great. Yeah, I think I'm going to have to also go with the oldest seed. You think it's the oldest seed? Yep, I think it might be. Well, the oldest seed ever to germinate is from the Middle East, dated to the first century CE.

Researchers have also grown a plant from a 30,000-year-old frozen tissue, but it was from an immature fruit, not a a seed so that doesn't count meanwhile this vulbard global seed vault currently preserves 5,000 species and 1.2 million individual samples many of them are important cereal crops like wheat and rice Because as much as we want to protect the earth we also If we have to rebuild from scratch it would be nice to have that have some wheat We got to have a little bit of wheat. Yeah. Next number, 385 million. Is that the number of individual seed-bearing trees in the Amazon rainforest or the age in years of the oldest seed-producing plant in the fossil record?

I can't even comprehend that amount of trees, but I feel like this would be one where you said, actually, it's a two billion trees. So I'm going to go with the oldest seed producing fossilized plant. All right. Yeah. The problem is, one of my fatal flaws of many is that I can never remember time scales of anything. Yeah. Yeah. And I learned a bunch about the Carboniferous period at some point. I

visited a fossil beach where you can find fossils. She went to the Carboniferous period. I traveled back in time to the Carboniferous period. But it was a very cool beach where you could just walk around and find fossils. But you can't remember anything about them. But I can't remember anything about the informational signs that I walked around delightedly going, ooh, how interesting. Because this would be probably, that's plant sestri. Anyway, I'm gonna agree with Sam. I'm just gonna ride his coattails.

Like I will ride the coattails of commitment to success. No, that's a good call, you guys. There's 390 billion individual trees in the Amazon. Not two billion, Sam. 390 billion. 390 billion trees? Yes. Holy cow.

There's a lot of trees in the Amazon. What the hell? I don't know. We should cut some of them down. It's too many. No, no, no. There's one ethical billionaire. I say let's get it down.

Let's get them down. So yes, researchers have identified what is technically a precursor to the seed-bearing plants. They named it Runcaria and dated it to 385 million years ago. It is a small, this is quotations, a small radially symmetrical, inter- indegumented mega sporangium surrounded by a cupule. So now you know that. Whoever wrote that's a nerd.

But I like, I like biology because you can tell, I bet I can guess what a cupule is. Yeah. I bet it's a cup shaped structure. I'm often surrounded by a cupules. It's very uncomfortable. I like them to back off a little bit. It's funny what a cupule is. It's a cup shaped organ.

Of course it is. Of course it is. Thank you biology. This is how people are like, oh, biology is so hard. And it's just, you got cupules, that's it. There are also cupules that are made by man in archeology. Man-made hollows on the surface of a large rock or rock slab. We need something fancier than manhole to call them.

All right. What does that what does that mean for our scores here? It means that it's a tied ball game as we head in to our short break, and then it will be time for the fact off. Welcome back, everybody. Our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge which one is the more mind blowing. And that person will be the winner of the episode, because we're coming in with a tie. But to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question for you.

A critical way that plants spread seeds is by getting eaten and then pooped out by animals and also bugs, which are animals. Earlier this year, a new record was set for the smallest critter to disperse ingested seeds. Guess that smallest critter. Is it the camel cricket, the common rough woodlouse, or the pygmy jerboa rodent? The smallest of these guys. Okay, so they're going to be like, oh, this rodent's smaller than these bugs.

I'm a metagaming today. That's what they're going to say. Can you believe these rodents are smaller than these bugs? And camel crickets are freaking huge, I think. I think those are one of those like, you see a scary picture of a big bug on the internet, it's always a camel cricket. I think that's right. No, I don't think so. I think it's a weta. Or it's a Jerusalem cricket or something like that, which might be the same thing. I mean, Sam is correct in that camel crickets are like kind of upsettingly big, but they're

like, it's more that their legs take up a lot of space than their bodies do. That's bad. A big bodied bug is cute. A big leg bug is not. That's my that's what I said. We can all disagree on many different things. Actually, I agree with Sam 100 percent. A giant isopod, I would cuddle it.

Yeah. Big spider crab. like whatever those spider crabs. I actually got spider crab. I was able to touch a giant isopod once, and I have to say, I did not, I did not find it like a cuddly experience. Cuter cuddly at all. Well, I guess I'm going to go with the pygmy gerbohorodent, which means that I think Sarian has to go with a different one, probably. Yeah, I think just for ease of someone winning trivia, I will let go of your coattails

and choose the woodlouse, I guess. A little bug pooping out a tiny seed. Oh my gosh, it's the common rough woodlouse. In May of this year, botanists at Kobe University published a paper in which they studied the seeds of the silver dragon plant in East Asia, which have seeds the size of dust particles. The researchers confirmed that the minuscule seeds are robust enough to survive the small

but mighty common woodlouse's digestive system, making it the smallest known seed-dispersing creature at an average of 18 millimeters long. He eats little dust seeds that he cannot digest. Which means this area gets to go first! In April 2024, a research paper debuted a new invention to help with complex environmental challenges like reforestation and precision agriculture. And they called their invention, Hybrobots.

That name alone sounds cool and cyborg-y, like what combination of living thing and machine could it be? Part tree, part titanium, part goat, part carbon nanotubes. But no, it is much more small and humble than that. It is part biodegradable seed capsule and part wild oat. Okay. Which I am a huge nerd and even I can admit that sounds very anticlimactic, but hyperbots

are actually so cool and weird. They are built to mimic the dry fruit of Avena sterilis, which is one of the species of wild oats out there. They're fairly common plants, native to Africa, Europe, and Asia, but they're found all across the world except Antarctica. And they are very, very good at spreading their seeds, which is probably what led to the whole, sow your wild oats idiom, and they have a reputation as a menace or competition to other edible grains. And the way that they spread their seeds, they have these

pointy hairy compartments that contain two seeds each that are attached to two appendages called awns that look kind of like long bug antennae sticking out from them. This is where it gets cool. The awns are hygroscopic, which means that they attract water molecules from the air, and as they get wet or dry out with changes in humidity, they end up twisting around and moving, almost like twitching bug legs, sometimes interlocking and building up potential energy. And in doing so, this pod tumbles and jumps

across the ground. It looks alive, basically. Then the pointy compartment will eventually get wedged into a crack where the awns will keep spinning around but no longer propel it. And that is a better place than laying on the surface of the ground for the seeds to germinate. So what these researchers did is create a synthetic version

of the seed body out of a flower based substance Like the grain powder not the blooming thing by casting it in a mold They could put whatever seeds they wanted inside trees or crops or whatnot And then they took the on's from a bunch of wild oat fruits and then stuck them on to so synthetic pod Stolen on's on it and these hyperbots crawled or walked or tumbled, however you want to describe it, the same way and successfully degraded to let tomato seeds grow. And I don't know, like sometimes you think, you know logically that plants are alive,

but then when you see these little seeds squiggling and wiggling around, you're like, that's a bug. That's just, that's not're like, that's a bug. That's just, that's not a plant, that's a bug. And the thought is that by scattering a bunch of these hyperbots, we could hypothetically broadcast seeds out there more effectively because they'll naturally sort of like squirm around and plant themselves in uneven ground instead of laying out on the surface to be eaten. Gotcha.

The researchers call them bio-inspired miniaturized machines. So it's kind of like robotics from nature, but we just stole nature behaving like a little robot arm. So it's all activated by water? Just water in the environment as it gets like slightly wetter, slightly drier. And then it like moves around and is able to dig itself in. Because like one of the things that a seed has to do is theoretically dig itself in somehow, unless it gets to be like just inside of a fecal pellet, which is awesome.

It's kind of remarkable just like think, I'm just like laying on top and then I have to like get my roots to go down in there. Yeah, they worm their way into the dirt so they can start decomposing. Is this like a agriculture thing? Yeah. Because it's going to be good for agriculture? That's theoretically, I think so you can sprinkle a bunch of seeds and then they can burrow their way into the ground if you want to, you know, grow more trees in the Amazon rainforest

that you think is so flush. It's got enough. Yeah. But hypothetically, if you wanted to plant a couple more billion in there, then you could put tree seeds in these bots. And then they would wiggle and squirm and dig their way into holes a little bit. Why are they, why can I call them bots? Why are they allowed to do that? Robot is too, it seems like they're getting away with something calling them robot.

I think it's because they're using the seed thingy as a mechanism. It is, I guess, in the way that it is intended to, but by detaching it from something and adding it to something else. And it moves in ways that we designed robots to move. But I'm not a roboticist. Well, I bet one's listening. Is this okay? If you're listening, roboticist, is this okay? Are you mad right now? When, when did this happen? And how hard would it be to make like a billion of them? I feel like that's a big question for something that that might be used in agriculture, is that you have to make a billion of them. Yeah. The way that they made it was by making a little mold that they poured the mixture into.

I feel like you can make a billion of them. Yeah. You can make a lot of molds. This paper was from April 2024, so a couple months ago. Still pretty fresh. And it's not one of those where, I don't know, you see one paper about our one news release and then nothing happens. So we got to check back in in a decade

to see if we've made it anywhere with- Everybody's using hyperbots. Yeah, with these bots. Have you ever seen that thing where they spray seeds out of a truck onto like an embankment? Are they in a goo? Are they in a goo? I think I have seen this.

They're in like a green goo, so they can tell where they've painted the seeds on. Yes, I have seen this. So I feel like maybe we could throw some of these into that goo and then we'd increase the chances of the seeds taken. I bet that they can only use certain kinds of seed in the spray because they're the ones

that are most likely to take. But can you get the sexy nut in the spray with a giant bot? Big spray. That just corkscrews it down. A big hurdy spray. Yeah, it's also a machine of war at that point. It needs to be.

Spraying you down with a sexy nut. That's what they say. What you got, Sam? I was just gonna move on quick from that. Deforestation, a hot topic in this episode. And guess what? Despite what Hank says, it's a big problem for the old planet Earth. Forests support soil health, biodiversity.

They can help mitigate climate change, all that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, forests are full of trees. And trees can both really get in the way when you need to build something or have animals graze somewhere. But also trees are made out of wood and wood is great to build with notoriously great to build with. We do like it. It seems important. It seems like a good thing it'd be good to have. I don't have to tell you we've cut down a lot of forests and there are places where we kind of maybe need those forests to come back.

But trees are slow as hell and waiting for forests to regenerate on their own isn't necessarily the most efficient way to do things. Luckily, you can plant trees and then with seeds and there are a few ways to do that. One of the most common ways is planting saplings grown in nurseries, but there's a couple problems with that method.

The trees, the saplings can catch diseases in nurseries that they wouldn't normally contract in nature, and then those diseases can get spread into the ecosystem that you put them in. Roots might not developed correctly when they're replanted, stuff like that. Direct seeding or planting seeds directly out in nature is an alternative planting method that eliminates a lot of these problems, but it introduces one big one. Seeds are delicious and animals love to eat them. So direct seeding programs tend to lose a huge amount

of their planted seeds to predation. In order to combat this, a team at the University of Granada in Spain had a devilishly simple idea. If you were to soak the seeds, in this case, the acorns of the home oak and the urine of a predatory animal, it might just repel prey animals who love to eat seeds but hate to be around predators. So, the challenge was to find a source of urine that would be cheap and easy enough to procure that.

Were this experiment successful, it could be done at scale. And so you might think it's time to go find a fox or a coyote, get some pee out of them. But according to head researcher Jorge Castro, coyote pee is really hard to get. So the team decided to go with pee that is very easy to find, human pee. Oh. So the team collected their own urine. They went out into the field.

They went into the field to start burying these acorns and on some they poured some just regular old water and on others they poured 100 milliliters of piss. Then all that was left to do was sit, watch and wait for the results. So the name of the paper that they published about this experiment is called, Human urine does not protect acorns against predation by the wood mouse. So, with that in mind... Wood mouse is like, thanks for the marinade. A little salty.

So, it's probably not hard to guess what the results were. Unfortunately, by the end of seven days, 97% of the planted acorns, be they pea soaked or not pea soaked, have been stolen by critters. And that result pretty much speaks for itself. So if we want to make a real go at direct seeding, we're going to have to get out there and start making some coyotes pissing cups for us. What about dogs? That's a great idea, Hank. What about dogs? That's the next one. The next paper will be called dog urine.

Does not protect acorns against predation by the wood mouse. So I had to put them in all the kinds of different pee there is out there. Yeah. I know that there is like a, there's a place where you can go and to buy pee. Yeah. Big jugs of stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure how they collect it because... It's usually like deer pee, isn't it? No, I think you can buy predator pee to scare deer away. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

I was talking to a person who works at a zoo about this, and they have a problem of the human wildlife interactions of various kinds, and they want to get certain animals to not go to certain places, and so they like acquire giant, but they're expensive. It's expensive to buy like a jug of coyote pee. Yeah I'm seeing bobcat urine right here so maybe maybe they just don't know about this in Spain we have to send them some some good American urine. Yeah it's at predatorpeastore.com. Yep that's what I'm reading too. How do we collect the pee? Coyote pee. Oh it is?

Yeah, how do they do it? They just go to game farms, zoos, and preserves. Okay. And the urine is collected via floor collection drains in pens and cages. Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So basically, you just set a little container

in your cat's litter box and get some water repellent. Yeah, cats might be good. Cats got stinky pee that's gonna smell like a predator. little container in your cat's litter box and get some water repelling. Yeah, cats might be good. Cats got stinky pee that's gonna smell like a predator. We're really solving problems today. There's a lot of cats out there. And look, I don't love the cat situation right now as it is. I'm not a huge fan of scooping the litter.

So if there was a way for the pee to just go to some kind of centralized vessel in my home, and then I could sell it via predatorp.com, make the world a better place, get some little mice to screw off and not eat seeds. You can get a plumbed cat box that would, the city could collect all the cat pee. Awesome piss.com, join the awesome piss club. It's not what it sounds like.

Guess which piss of the month you get today. Join the awesome piss club. It's not what it sounds like Guess which piss of the month you get Get a different piss every month. Wow, you can buy bat pee bat pee No, never mind you pick what animal you want to stay away And then it tells you what kind of pee in here to get rid of bats you need guess what you need What eats a bat what eats a bat? Guess what you need? What eats a bat? What eats a bat? A bobcat? A coyote? A raccoon? Yeah, maybe they just don't like each other. Wait, can we just play this game for the rest of the episode? Yeah, okay, do another one Sam. Do another.

No, we gotta play it next time. We gotta play a game next time. That game is called a claim to life. How do you keep like what pee scares away this animal? That's a good name for a game Hank It's called it's called piss games. Okay. I want to do one more What would you use to get it to keep a dog away a mountain lion bear bear got it in one Hank? It's bear pee. That's the pee for you That's the name of the game. What's the P for you? Could it be, wait, could it be called, give me a P? No.

No, it can't be called that. Sorry. So I have to choose between a hybrid bots wild oat fruits that walk plus human made capsules, a cyborg way to plant seeds, or human urine not protecting acorns. A mutation by a wooden mouse. One of these is a study that any one of us can do, and one of these is about human urine and acorns. I see, but sometimes it's great to have a study that anyone can do.

I think I might pee on seeds all the time now to see what happens. I think Ceri's gonna run away with this one. I just like that we're trying to solve problems in weird ways. Though I guess that is also the research we're doing that with. That's bullshit, because that's what I just said.

I looked at it doing its little corkscrew dance and it made me uncomfortable. And I felt like I should give it the points. And now it's time to ask the science Couch where we've got a question for our Couch of Finely Honed Scientific Minds. At Moony Riot on Twitter asked, I'm gonna read it like they wrote it, what is an heirloom seed? Why are they so special? I mean, I guess the idea is that there was a moment when we sort of like all kind of

standardized on some specific seeds and they selected for specific traits that were maybe like extra good for being in a grocery store, traveling long distances, holding up for a long time, rather than being like as delicious as possible, which is what you would do if it was just being grown in your garden. You didn't have to think about all those other things. But then we realized, oh, we do still have some of those old seeds hanging out at grandma's house and she can pass them down to me like it's an heirloom. And so there are like the wider, more diverse variety of seeds that we once had that then we stopped having because we all like kind of specialized on specific seeds there for a little while.

Is that right? Yeah, kind of, kind of. Okay, what I miss. I would say, so you have the broad strokes of it. There are a couple things that distinguish heirloom seeds from not heirloom seeds that we've kind of slotted them into categories. And from what I can tell,

it's kind of an arbitrary classification. We just kind of like collectively started calling some seeds heirloom seeds and some seeds not. The things that separate heirloom seeds from not heirloom seeds are heirloom seeds are old. How old may you ask? 1951-ish, it seems like. Who decided that? That's the cutoff, that seems right. When grandma was doing her gardening. But specifically that date is from before the first hybrid vegetables were produced

by like hand pollinating and intentionally hybridizing plants. So you take two plants of trait, that have traits that you kind of like and then you hybridize them intentionally. And so an heirloom seed is one that existed, a plant that existed before we started intentionally breeding seeds through hand pollination in that way. But of course, this is kind of wobbly because you-

Because we've been doing that for a long time, right? Like we were breeding plants in lots of ways. We started doing agriculture and we started selecting for plants and we influenced the genetics of plants in that way. But that is the other criteria of heirloom seeds, which is that they are open pollinated, which is a way to describe that these plants either pollinate themselves or cross pollinate by wind or insects, and you just kind of let them go. And some of these plants like beans or lettuce or peas

and tomatoes are self-pollinating. So if you plant, for example, an heirloom tomato seed, it will pollinate itself as a plant. And so you can be pretty sure or positive that the seeds that you extract from those tomatoes are still stably that kind of tomato. There are some heirloom seeds that are like pumpkins or squash that can hybridize between different varieties naturally through open pollination. And so even though that would technically be an heirloom seed,

people kind of keep them away from their heirloom seed collections because they don't even want accidentally cross pollinated hybrids as part of an heirloom seed collection. You want to know exactly what you're getting pretty much when you're planting an heirloom seed. And this has kind of gotten popular, I think, just as more people have taken up gardening, they're interested in heirloom seeds in contrast to hybrid plants that are crossed specifically for specific traits with carefully chosen characteristics. Whereas heirloom seeds, often people describe them as like,

they're more flavorful, but they're also harder to grow because they're not bred intentionally to be disease resistant or pest resistant or whatnot. Gotcha. So some people grow heirloom seeds like a status symbol is what I'm getting at of like, one, heirloom tomatoes are yummy. So you could grow heirloom seeds because you think they're tasty. Some people grow them because they're like, I think this is better than hybrid seeds.

And there's a misunderstanding that hybrid seeds are genetically modified in some way and like what those terms mean. There aren't any seeds at the grocery store or at a garden shop that you as a backyard gardener can get that are genetically modified in a lab. They just don't exist. Hybrid seeds are all still two plants pollinating each other. It's just a human coming together and saying,

now kiss, now make babies to the plants as opposed to the wind and the insects doing that. And then the third kind of category of heirloom seeds are like generations. Like you get it from your grandma, a lot of indigenous cultures or agrarian societies pass down seeds just as part of an agricultural tradition. And that's where a lot of heirloom seed varieties have been preserved through those lineages and now through seed libraries and other institutions that have cropped up around it. But a lot of the like quote unquote original heirloom seeds

are the oldest ones that go hundreds of thousands of years back are just communities of people that have been growing the same stuff for a while and passing that down, which is kind of nice. That is not what I thought. Okay. I love heirloom tomatoes so much. I had one yesterday.

They're pretty good. I had a giant one from the store that cost like $8 for one tomato. I feel like heirloom tomatoes are maybe the heirloom seed that people have most contact with and I didn't even realize it was a whole class of things. I just thought it was like, oh, you got tomatoes and they got heirloom tomatoes and that's it. But you can have heirloom squash or beans or corn or whatever.

And now for our listeners on Patreon, we are answering a bonus science couch question. Sam, what do we got? At Tanookus on Twitter and Lukealook on Discord asked, can a seed sprout slash grow inside a digestive system? If you wanna hear that answer to that question as well as enjoy all new episodes totally ad free, head over to our Patreon.

That's patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents. At our $8 a month tier, you can get new ad free and extended shenanigans as we answer a bonus Science Couch question every episode. You'll also get to join our private Discord server and maybe also get some goodies in the future. And also our previous goodies that we've already made.

Our patrons are the best and we are very grateful for their support of the show. If you want to ask the Science Couch a question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents or check out our YouTube community tab where we will send out the topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to at Walker Wizards PJ on Twitter at Mnavv on Instagram and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that. You can go to patreon.com slash SciShowTangents to become a patron and get access to those things that we just talked about, like our extended app free episodes and our Discord. Shout out to patron Les Aker for their support.

Second you can leave us a review wherever you listen, which is very helpful and it helps us know what you think about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Jess Stempert.

Our associate producer is Eve Schmidt. Our editor is Seth Glicksman. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio. Our editorial assistants are Deboki Chakravarti and Alex Billo. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Nicole Swing and me, Hank Green., and of course we could not make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing.

The volcanic island Surtsey formed off the coast of Iceland from underwater eruptions that lasted from 1963 to 1967. Tourists have never been allowed there to keep the environment as pristine as possible. So researchers can study how all kinds of life colonize a new land mass. In 1969, a botanist was called to help identify a mysterious five-inch tall plant on the lava. He nudged away some rocks to find a peculiar pile, quote, this is a quote, a peculiar pile, which was very soft. Can you guess what it was?

It was human poop. Oh, great. After that discovery, he quickly realized that this was a tomato plant that had grown from a seed in somebody's lunch. And the scientists on the island got a firm reminder to take all their waste with them, even their poop, which I would also I would say, especially your poop. That's the first one. On the hierarchy. That's like what waste means. poop. That's the first one. On the hierarchy. That's like what waste means. Yeah. We came up with it for poop.

Well, now we have that answer to that question at least. That's true, Hank. The seed can indeed germinate after passing through the digestive system of you. I was wrong. I'm a big enough man to admit when I was wrong. God, I love a tomato. Would you eat, would you eat this one,

the forbidden tomato? Would you eat a poop tomato? Yeah. Would I eat a poop tomato? A tomato that grew out of poop? Yeah. Yeah. You need to wash it first, though. Yeah. I wash it. I eat tomato first. You don't ever know where they're coming out of. Yeah. They could all be poop tomatoes for all I know. I don't know how people make tomatoes. I think we need to come up with a new class of seed. In addition to heirloom seed, hybrid seed,

it's like seeds that I ate and then pooped in my own garden. Oh. What's that seed? Yeah. Oh. This is the seed that grandma pooped out. Grandma. Grandma was always doing stuff like that.

You got to stop dumping in the garden. Grandma just digs a hole and poops and we see what grows. And that's dinner. That's an heirloom seed, Sarri. I like this. That's an heirloom seed. That's an heirloom.