SciShow Tangents - Turtles

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's 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, Sari Riley! Hello! And just a guy I met one time, Sam Schultz! I'm gonna have to win an award. That's starting to make me feel bad. I want the bullets or-

Starting point is 00:00:34 You've been doing great on the podcast. Well, that doesn't mean barely next to nothing, does it? I mean, you're beating the Forbes 30 under 30 education luminary, so I'm washed up. Yeah, Sari's very impressive and you were beating her. Okay. Okay. All right. I like this now. Speaking of the bank, I don't know. Not actually. How much money do you have in your bank account? Oh God. Actually, I wanted to ask you guys if you feel old yet.

Starting point is 00:01:03 Yeah. I'm starting to just fall apart. You feel physically old. In little ways. Some days my back just hurts. Not often, but sometimes. It just hurts. And I don't really know why exactly. It started for me when I was in high school.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Full unexplainable neck pain. Yeah, sometimes when I play video games too long now, the old clicker finger hurts from my gaming. You can't even play video games like you do this too. I can't even play. When I play video games too long, my hand starts falling asleep. Something about the grip is not ergonomic enough anymore for me where I could just go

Starting point is 00:01:38 for hours and now I need to stretch. I need to have my adaptive grip. You know what else is kind of sick too Sometimes I'm like, I don't really feel like playing video games. What is wrong with me? Oh Yeah, that happened to me a long time ago I'm like like why would I do that? I could just lie down Yeah Exactly. Sometimes it used to be that I'd like fall asleep on my arm and it would like and I wake up with a numb hand Now sometimes I just wake up with a numb hand. Oh, I guess it's like nothing happened

Starting point is 00:02:07 I was just laying on my back because your blood instead of being like I'm gonna pump It's gonna say I'm gonna take a nap too, but then there's the part I don't know. You probably have this experience too where you're like Oh my gosh the thing that happened when I was a child was a very long time ago or Somebody texts you on Twitter or you like reach out to them on Twitter because you're like I need a comment about About inflation for a video that I'm using and you work at a think tank and I was curious what your thoughts would be in

Starting point is 00:02:33 They're like, oh my gosh, I watched you when I was a teenager Horrible that's horrible. I'm a director at the Roosevelt Institute Yeah, when young people are more successful than you, that really, really sucks. Yeah. And that happens to me a lot. One thing that's going around Twitter lately is how old all the cast of Cheers is, which goes around every now and then. And it's like, so I'm like, Frazier was like 27.

Starting point is 00:02:59 It's like, what have I done? No Frazier. And I'm almost 10 years older than that. And he was also balding at the time. So I do, I do I do Drink water like I don't think people before us drank water very much. So that must have been the problem They're getting shriveled wasn't all the cigarettes and just being in the elements They didn't have houses back then. Yeah in the 80s in the late 80s

Starting point is 00:03:21 Hadn't invented a house yet. They had to be at the bar all the time. They only had that bar to go to. They had the bar. Do you feel old? Yes, Sam. Yes, obviously. I ask you because you two are much younger than me. Okay, so, Zari, do you feel old? I do.

Starting point is 00:03:34 I think I've always felt a little old because adults would tell me that I was an old soul. That's what you tell to little like neurodivergent kids who are a little sad and work too hard. You're like, oh, you're such an old soul. But I do feel old, I think in part because my day job is at the place where I went to college and I manage the team of admissions bloggers that I was once on. So I have the seri equivalent of, I don't have Hank Green levels of fame, but I have this one environment specific fame where people know who I am. They're like,

Starting point is 00:04:11 oh yeah, when I was growing up and dreamed of going to MIT, I read your blogs and now I'm here. Like, oh, that's nice. You were born after 2000. And you're a full grown adult who's off to college and doing your life. So I do feel quite old. But I know that I'm young also because someone talked about something that happened in 1990. And they were like, some of you in this room, like most of you in this room were around for that. And I was like, thanks, Terry.

Starting point is 00:04:36 That's great. You really helped me out. I know that I'm young too, because I know that Hank is older than me. Yeah, it's what I just am like at the age where I do think, you know, I'm not really that young and nobody would really say you're young. It's yeah, I'm past it. I mean, old people sometimes will be like, you're so young. And I'm like, yeah, I get that you think that very old person.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Well, here I'll say You're both so young. You're podcasting. Only young people dare to do this medium. Poor podcast. How old is he? He's of podcasting age. Yeah, that doesn't mean young anymore, Sherry. That means you're about 40.

Starting point is 00:05:19 Every week we get together here on SciShow Tangents to try to delight each other with science facts and also try to stay on topic while failing at staying on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for these fake points called Hank Bucks that I award willy-nilly and sometimes forget exist. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with a traditional science poem. This week is from me. Five turtles on a row on a log on the pond.

Starting point is 00:05:47 Five turtle friends with a long-lasting bond. Balanced in the row on the log on the pond, in the warm of the air, in the shade of a frond. One turtle on the pond swimming up to the log. Sniffing at the friends like a sniff-sniffy dog. No room, said the turtles on the log on the pond, and the sniff sniffy turtle took his time to respond. But the log looked so good, and I'd like to rest. So the sniff sniffy turtle put the log to the test. One turtle foot, and the log swayed slightly. The other five turtles held on tightly. Another foot up, and the log swayed more. Stop! That's enough, you silly old boar!

Starting point is 00:06:22 A log turtle staggered and scooched to the fore, but that only made the log sway more. A turtle slipped off and dropped in the water, and the log started rolling like a teeter totter. Another dropped off as the log rolled back, and the turtle in the water stuck his claw in a crack. The balance perturbed by that one little blip had oscillated into a full log flip, and the turtle in the water had his claw in the crack, and the log flipped him up onto the log flipped him up onto the logs back one turtle by himself on a log in the pond in the warm of the air in the shade of a frond. Wow is that a meme video? It is a meme video. Yeah, it's just a video of a frog just completely ruining a bunch of frogs day turtle Hank turtle come on. Oh, sorry

Starting point is 00:07:08 I kept when I was writing that poem. I kept putting in frog because I've read with log Yeah, that's right, and they're kind of similar creatures in a few ways. That was great. That is another one That should be a kid's book. I think that I get I guess this is this is the life of a dad Is that all the poems you read are about little blue trucks. So it just gets right in there, huh? Yeah. So the topic for the day is not logs, but turtles. I like turtles. I like turtles.

Starting point is 00:07:55 It's another name. I like turtles. Zari, what's a turtle? I love an animal definition because we do know them better than many other words. Turns out a lot of scientists do a lot of work to define animals at least a little bit precisely. So turtles are kind of reptile. So reptiles include the turtles, the crocodilians, so like crocodiles,

Starting point is 00:08:14 alligators, lizards and snakes, and then the two otara. Those are like the four main groups of reptiles. And turtles are in the order testudinis. Testudinis. Test means, test means shell is a thing that I know. Yes. Testudinis is based on the Latin word testudo, which means tortoise, and testa means like the shell of a shellfish. Or the Latin testum meant like an earthen pot. So basically a shell.

Starting point is 00:08:45 Oh, little shell pot. It does not relate to testicles though, as far as I can tell. I was just Googling that. I was like. That's what the tapping was that you heard just then. In what way is my testicle like a tortoise? I gave up a little bit because I was like, I can't,

Starting point is 00:09:02 all of the etymology of turtle words seems very confusing. So there's like testa shell, testicle is a different kind of test that, I don't know where it, I think it comes from like a testimony kind of test. Oh, I swear on my nut. Yeah. Which is weird because I guess, like if you put a testicle just shape wise like next to a turtle shell they're both kind of like as opposed to like a testimony like that seems like a very abstract thing.

Starting point is 00:09:31 As opposed to anything else in the whole world I suppose. Yeah. Nothing makes sense but turtles are the things that are evolved from the turtle ancestor. That's usually how animal groups work. Yes. I thought the turtle ancestor was like a known thing that you were saying, I don't know it. Yeah, there was a guy. His ribs fused together. So instead of our ribs, which are kind of separate, his ribs fused together and then became an outside rib instead. So turtle shells are just a big hollow chamber and their shoulder blades are actually inside their ribs, which is very weird migration of bones. And the shells,

Starting point is 00:10:07 but I think there are lots of theories as to why it evolved. We're not entirely sure, but they did get pushed in that direction. There are two main groups of turtles. There are the hidden necked turtles and the side neck turtles, which kind of describe how they tuck their heads into their shells. So the side neck turtles, I think are often snake neck, longer neck, and they kind of like fold it in towards their leg. They like grab their head and put it, they put it in, like get in your head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they squish it in. And the hidden neck turtles are like you turtle your neck in, like you squish it in.

Starting point is 00:10:43 And that's the one I usually see. I usually see those turtles, the squished neck turtles. Those are the cartoon turtles, I feel like. And those are like freshwater turtles, snapping turtles, sea turtles, even the turtles that can't squoosh their heads into their neck, like they've lost that ability because their shells are too flat or don't have space. I think they're generally categorized in that hidden net turtles. And that's all about, I don't know, they're ectotherms. So they change their heat based on their environment and a lot of different words. So like tortoise or terrapins or sea turtles, those are all turtles, technically. They're all turtles.

Starting point is 00:11:22 What's the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? and you're like, it's like a square and a rectangle Yeah, that's a lot of the articles you get when you search turtle science. Just a lot of people saying same thing That's one of the biggest turtle facts there is I have a question for Sam. Yeah, is Bowser a turtle? He's kind of a dragon e turtle, but he's a turtle. He's the king of the Koopas and the Koopas are turtles I think just because a turtle breathes fire doesn't make him not a turtle. I think that's right. I think you're right. He has a shell. Is there anything, like there's nothing that has a shell that is a lizard and isn't a turtle, right? I think yes, you're correct. Because otherwise the other shells are like other sea creatures, like crabs.

Starting point is 00:12:02 Is there a turtle that you'd be like, that's a turtle? Cause it doesn't really have a shell, more a little lizard style. I mean, a little bit, snapping turtles kind of like, you're like, whoa, that looks like a alligator. Yeah, sure. And that's a Bowser, basically it looks like a snapping turtle. Great question, Sari, by the way.

Starting point is 00:12:16 So like Bowser is then related to all of the Koopas. Yeah, he's their dad. Can Bowser take off his shell? Cause other Koopas, you knock them out of their shells. And they have their little, uh, their little short shirt on. Yeah. I just don't think anybody's ever kicked his ass hard enough that he came out of his shell, but I bet he could do it.

Starting point is 00:12:34 I'm looking at pictures of Bowser without a shell right now, and I feel like I shouldn't be. I think you Googled Bowser no shell sexy instead of Bowser no shell informative. I didn't, but now I want to. It just looks like he shouldn't. No-Shell sexy Didn't but I want to It just looks like he shouldn't it shouldn't be happening. It's a it's an upsetting. It's very sad. Oh interesting Here's a distinction I've never really thought of that you can see Bowser's crotch when he has a shell on it is not covered by his shell His shells just an individual thing on his back. Yeah, it's something that he appears to be wearing It doesn't seem to go over his whole body,

Starting point is 00:13:05 so he does just look really weird without it. It was like a backpack. It's not real. He's not a turtle. He's faking it. He's not a turtle. He's faking it. New SciShow Tangents, lore just dropped! Bowser's faking it. Koopas are the real turtles. We gotta watch the Super Mario Brothers movie and figure out what the heck Bowser is.

Starting point is 00:13:22 I wanna do that one next. I like that idea. We need a new milestone. Yeah, that's right. The word turtle, I guess we talked about testidonies, but the word turtle, the first time it appeared in the English language, in Old English, was in relation to turtle dove, which is very cute. And that was usually related to like a term of endearment.

Starting point is 00:13:43 So a turtle was like, I don't know, a turtle dove. I shall be, the quote from 1440 is, I shall be turtle in your absence. Or from 1865 is, I am a solitary turtle, dove, not reptile, just now, my wife being at rugby. So it was like a turtle was a cutie thing. A little cute lonely guy or something? I am a solitary turtle. I'm pining for my wife, I'm a turtle. I'm was a cutie thing. A little cute lonely guy or something. I'm a solitary turtle.

Starting point is 00:14:06 I'm pining for my wife. I'm a turtle. I'm just a sad little turtle. Is this was this in reference to a turtle, a reptile turtle? It was in reference to a turtle dove. And then we were like, you know, it looks like, you know what those turtles look like with the shells and the beaks and the and the scales doves. It was, I think, a mishearing is what they think of. So the word tortoise was originally

Starting point is 00:14:32 what people called turtles, the animal, like the reptile. And then in French, it was called I think kind of like a Spanish Tortuga and English allegedly English sailors Misheard the French word for turtle and then we're like, oh, I we have a word called turtle So you call that turtle and then it shifted In English this says turtle was like an onomatopoeia of a dove cooing Oh could be the original turtle dove like they were like That's my best impression of a dove cooing. Oh, it could be the original turtle dove. Like they were like, That's my best impression of a turtle dove. That was pretty good. Oh, thank you. That actually means a lot to me.

Starting point is 00:15:11 Right. Now that we know what a turtle is, it's time for the quiz portion of our show. Would you guys like to play a game? Would you like to play a game? Yeah. I would love to play a game. We might sometimes think of turtles as slow, but they are also enduring,

Starting point is 00:15:29 like in the fossils that they've left behind. Still, uncovering and interpreting their remains can be a strange endeavor. The following are three stories of the lessons we've learned from turtle fossils. Well, two of them are lies, and only one of them is true. Can you tell me which one it is? We'll do our best. Yeah. Yeah, you're gonna try. Story number one! Green sea turtles are known to migrate to a particular seagrass meadow

Starting point is 00:15:54 along the coast of Egypt, and a group of scientists who were visiting their preferred spot to witness the turtles in action when they found something surprising along the coast fossilized green sea turtle poop that was about a thousand years old, showing that these turtles have been making this particular migration for at least a millennia. But it might not be that one. It might be story number two. One of the challenges of uncovering fossils is being able to figure out exactly what conditions they were buried in, like their original burial depth.

Starting point is 00:16:24 Luckily, there are turtle shells to help. Paleontologists digging up a site in Colorado realized that they could look at how flat turtle shells are at the site to estimate how deep they were originally buried, creating what they called the Turtle Compaction Index in the process. Or it might be story number three. In the 1960s, a fisherman in Maine found a fossil of a turtle rib cage that eventually wound up in the archives of a local museum until five years ago when a botanist visiting the museum accidentally stumbled upon the shell and realized it was not a turtle. After all, it was the rare fossil of an extinct plant from the Miocene epoch. So it might be a pile of fossilized poop revealing a 2000-year-old feasting site for green turtles,

Starting point is 00:17:10 or paleontologists developing a measurement based on the flattening of fossilized turtle shells to figure out how old burial sites are, or a surprise discovery reveals that a turtle shell fossil is actually a rare fossilized plant. I don't think poop's gonna last in the ocean long enough to get fossilized. I think a guy's gonna eat that poop. You think somebody's gonna eat that poop? Somebody's definitely eating the poop in the ocean. No doubt about it to me.

Starting point is 00:17:36 That's true. I guess you hear a lot of like watery fossil graves are in lakes. Zan settles on them. Oh yeah, that's a good point. But there are some seaside maybe, I don't know are in lakes. Sand settles on them. There are some seaside maybe, I don't know, inlets, inlets, fossil cliffs. I just don't, I don't know. Poop that close to water?

Starting point is 00:17:54 It's dissolving. Maybe they poop somewhere else, and then it got there later. Tumbled down. I suppose that sea turtles do go out of the water every now and then, don't they? You're right, it must be tricky to find sea animal poop fossils. Those guys love eating poop. That means no.

Starting point is 00:18:12 The flattened turtle shells, I'm just trying to picture it. Are they like, they get squooshed down over time? Yeah, so like the layers build up on top of it and then it gets more and more pressure, I guess, gets put on the turtle shells. And then like all the inside of the turtle have rotted away. And so it gets easy to get squished. Squish like a little...

Starting point is 00:18:32 It's a guess. I just can't imagine a rock getting thinner because the rocks... I can't squish a rock and get it make it thinner. And so my brain can't comprehend it, but it feels like the logic makes sense. Yeah. I feel I don't know, like it's built up. Can it get squished while it's not a rock? I actually don't really know how fossils work. And like how much how much of the structure in a fossil is the structure of the thing? It was fossilized out of but would it retain maybe structure of the thing it was fossilized out of, but would it retain maybe

Starting point is 00:19:06 some of the... I don't know. I feel like we don't hear about like a femur getting flatter, but also shells have that air inside them. Yeah. And with dinosaurs, they're always like this. Like they're all squished, you know? So they're squished.

Starting point is 00:19:23 They're not in their 3D style. And then a turtle shell that turned out to be a plant. Classic mistake. Classic mistake. You, I look at a fossil with my dumb brain. I don't know what anything is. People are like, Oh, see that fish. See that trilobite. Some of the, like the clearer shapes, I guess, like if it is a full fish skeleton, sure. But everything else... Yeah, the person telling you that went to college to learn how to... Yeah, I remember I saw recently,

Starting point is 00:19:51 there was fossilized cloaca of a dinosaur there. They were like, it's the soft tissue of the cloaca. And I was looking at it and I was like, if you say so, that's a slightly darker rock to me. That's quite a big statement to make too. The dinosaur's b-hole. I was like, if you say so, like that is like slightly darker rock to me. That's quite a big statement to me, too. The dinosaur is a be whole. Was it is? Yeah, no, they're certain it was a big news. They're sure. That dinosaur be whole.

Starting point is 00:20:13 I kind of remember that. Yeah. Oh, OK. Well, I'm ready to make my decision, Sari. How about you? Oh, do you know it? This is you go first. It sounds like you know it. OK, I'm going to say that I'm going to say the flattening of the shells. I was so skeptical. I'm going to second guess myself and say that. I don't know it, but I know what it's not.

Starting point is 00:20:33 And I'm also going to say the flattening of the shells. Interesting, interesting. Two guesses for the flattening of the shells. Well, to understand what conditions are like when a fossil is buried, scientists need to be able to figure out the original burial depth of a site. There are some techniques that can help you estimate that depth. Like you got the color of fossilized pollen, apparently is one way they do it. But they can only work under specific conditions. And so you're always looking for new

Starting point is 00:21:00 ways to do it. Scientists studying fossils in Coral Bluffs, Colorado, which had an abundance of turtle fossils, there was also an abundance of research on how turtle shells crack under pressure. So the team started comparing the compaction of shells from the site as well as others, and then taking their knowledge of the kind of pressure required to crack a turtle shell and combining that with information about the sediments at the site, they were able to estimate how deep the turtle shells were when they cracked a particular way. And at this site, they found that the turtles had been buried under a waterway and then eventually under silt that was around 17 to 1800 feet deep. It was wild.

Starting point is 00:21:37 That's a lot. Okay. And then something wears away and exposes that, is that what? Yeah. Okay. I get it now. But Sarah, you're right. It is a classic story of confused fossilization because around 50 years ago, a Colombian priest named Padre Gustavo Jertes

Starting point is 00:21:54 collected two fossils and identified them as a plant. But more recently, a scientist was skeptical. The shape wasn't quite right. And the paleontologist identified the bones as coming from the upper shell of a turtle, a marine turtle, and a particularly young turtle that was less than a year old. Fossils of young turtles can be really hard to find because their shells are made of a thin bone that doesn't usually endure. Easy to squash those guys.

Starting point is 00:22:18 So that was a weird one to try and pick out. So you were right, it is a very common story but it went the other way. Baby turtle looks like a leaf. Yeah. Baby turtle looks like a leaf. Yeah, baby turtle looks like a leaf. Then, whooshed, is there any truth to the fossilized ocean poop? Yes, green sea turtles have been making that same migration for around 3,000 years, but scientists did not use fossilized poop, or coprolites is what they're called, to figure that out. They actually looked at bronze and iron age sites that were filled with bones from shells of turtles that had been eaten by people. So that's how they figured that out because people had also been at those sites for 3,000 dish years.

Starting point is 00:22:54 Have you ever eaten turtle before? I don't think I have eaten a turtle. Couple southern guys, we probably had the opportunity to eat a turtle had we so wished. Yeah, I kind of picture it like you like hit it on the back and it just opens up with steam. Yeah, maybe there's soup inside of it or something. Alright, it's a tie ball game. We're going to take a quick break and then be back with a fact off. Welcome back, everybody. Get ready for the fact-off.

Starting point is 00:23:37 Our panelists have all brought science facts, both of them, to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks to the person who is going to be the winner. You guys are tied right now. But to decide who goes first, here's a trivia question. Last year, researchers announced that they had developed a robot inspired by turtle hatchlings.

Starting point is 00:23:58 Their initial goal was to build a robot that could travel through sand. So they looked at animals known to dig like worms, but eventually they settled on turtle hatchlings because they have large front fins, which the researchers thought would help to steer the robot and also to help the robot respond to obstacles. The researchers measured the speed of the turtle bot when it was five inches deep in the sand.

Starting point is 00:24:20 Based on their measurement, how far could the robot travel in an hour? I'll take it in feet. Feet, okay. Feet in an hour. Not miles. These baby turtles. They didn't create a turbo turtle robot here. The problem is that baby turtles are really slow, and they're good at it. They're pretty... They've evolved to crawl across sand.

Starting point is 00:24:46 You have turtle experience, right, Sari? I did, in high school, that was like one of the school trips that I got to go on. I went to Costa Rica and we did a bunch of like conservation biology for a week. So we dug like frog ponds and we gathered like while turtles were laying eggs, we like laid in the sand and then collected them so that poachers wouldn't get them. Oh, that's very cool and good. Lay in the sand. I do think I saw some baby turtles because then

Starting point is 00:25:15 they hatch. They let them hatch and then like let them out to sea. They look very cute, but they do go pretty fast. Like you put them on the beach and then they like point toward the sea and scuttle along. Yeah. Yeah. Like you put them on the beach and then they like point toward the sea and scuttle along. Yeah. Yeah. Don't help them. That's what's the big Florida tip. They don't need your help.

Starting point is 00:25:31 Do not help the baby turtles. They, that will not be helpful for them. But I do like, part of me wants to be like, man, there's all those bad guys out there. I just want to chuck them as far out as I can get them. Just pick them up and throw them out there. I could throw a baby turtle so far. Yeah. Tiny, tiny guys.

Starting point is 00:25:46 Uh, I'm gonna say 100. 100 feet. Like far, but not too far, like slower than a baby turtle. Yeah, like almost as far as I could throw a baby turtle. Yeah. I really have no idea. So I will say 150. The answer is 13. Oh, no, that was not. Make better robots, guys. Apparently that is similar though to how fast worms and clams can travel through sand. So there's something that feels advantageous, like we did a good job. When I get to give the scientists, I don't know, some support. This robot goes as fast as a worm. Thought they could go so much faster than that. That's not a cool thing to say. To be fair, it's faster than I could move

Starting point is 00:26:31 if I was buried five inches deep in the sand. If you if you buried me like one human like distance down, if you buried me a full six feet down in the sand, that's where I stay forever. Yeah, that's called my grave. Yeah. All right. That means that Sari gets to go first. So I feel like one of the weird turtle facts that gets brought up a lot and is very appropriate to tangents is this idea of cloacal respiration. Basically, that a couple species of freshwater turtles

Starting point is 00:27:06 in Australia can breathe through their butts. Yeah, now if that's news to you, that's because you're normal. But for us, this is like everyday information that turtles suck water into their butts and get oxygen that way. Yes, and I'll get into a little bit of how. And specifically, there are little skin structures

Starting point is 00:27:23 in their cloaca where oxygen from the water can diffuse into their blood vessels and carbon dioxide can diffuse out. And they pump water into their cloacal cavities, do this gas exchange, and then pump it back out. And importantly, not all turtles can do this, not even all aquatic turtles. So that's a misconception. A lot of people say like all turtles can breathe through their butts. It's like a couple in Australia. Did you know that people can kind of breathe through our butts? I feel like I've heard that before. If you put like oxygenated water or just...

Starting point is 00:27:52 Yeah, they're like put like hyper oxygenated fluid into people's rectum sometimes where they've like done research on this to like in situations where it's hard to ventilate people's lungs. They're like, what if we did it a different way? It is good. I have tested that out. like in situations where it's hard to ventilate people's lungs. They're like, what if we did it a different way? Is that I have tested that out. That's how David Blaine stays underwater so long. But well, is it really? Maybe.

Starting point is 00:28:18 We don't know for sure. Yeah, that's true. We don't know for sure. He's doing something. So David Blaine or other freshwater turtles can also do other underwater breathing through their skin like frogs or through what are called bucofaryngeal structures, which is a fancy way to say the cells in their back of their mouth, not quite throat area. But the core of my fact off is not butt breathing. I thought it would be a good intro. I'm here to talk about its opposite lesser known cousin, mouth pissing. Oh, the Chinese soft shelled turtle doesn't just use its buccopharyngeal region to do gas exchange. It also excretes urea, which is the waste product

Starting point is 00:28:57 that gets eliminated in pee. Like its kidneys are connected to its mouth. No separate. It does kidneys, but the kidneys do a bad job and its mouth does a good job. It's got another way of doing it. It's got a better way of doing it for it specifically. Another. I don't know about the better. Well, I'll tell you how it's better. Because researchers wanted to figure out why it was better.

Starting point is 00:29:21 And in an October 2012 paper, they bought some turtles from a market. I couldn't find the number of specimens. They just went on and got some turtles and tested them in two conditions. First, they submerged the whole turtles in water for six days and then measured the chemical content of that water. So like how much did they pee presumably out of their cloacas? And then they kept the turtles restrained on land for six days with a puddle to dunk their heads into because these turtles, when they walk around on land, dunk their heads pretty regularly. And these turtles dunk their heads for around 20 to 100 minutes at a go.

Starting point is 00:29:58 So not a short time. This is in and out. And they were definitely like sucking in and spitting out water while their heads were underwater. So the researchers measured that puddle water too. And what they found is that the mouth urea excretion was around 15 to 49 times greater than the cloacal urea excretion, while ammonia amounts were about the same. So like some components of urine were greater, that urea, but ammonia about the same. With some additional experiments, they found that there's a special kind of protein transporter in those buco-pharyngeal structures that allows them to eliminate waste this way instead of just through their kidneys.

Starting point is 00:30:37 For the why, they suggest that peeing out urea means the turtles have to drink a lot of water, which is harder to do where these turtles live. Because Chinese soft-shelled turtles live in combination salt and fresh water. They live in brackish marshes and swamps. And so drinking that kind of water means that you have to have all these other glands going on to balance your salts. So instead of drinking water and then having to process that and pee it out, they just sort of like rinse the urea out of their mouths and form pee that way instead of, or in addition to in the clots.

Starting point is 00:31:09 How do they get the urea out of their blood? What's happening? I think that's those protein transporters, like in the back of their throat, that tissue that does oxygen transport with the blood also does salt transport, like urea transport into their saliva. It's like collecting and they're washing it out

Starting point is 00:31:28 of their mouths, is that what it is? It's just sort of like always, it's like saliva almost. It's just sort of always entering into their mouths and then they're always washing it out. And they're sticking their head in puddles and washing it out. And I think that's why, because you don't stick your head in puddles to pee.

Starting point is 00:31:42 It's true, it's true. I just like, I wonder why like, like, kidneys are complex. It's weird to create a whole basically a whole new kidney in your face. But I guess I guess you got to do what you got to do. Where is a turtle's butt? Is it just up in there? I think a cloaca is usually like under the tail. Okay. You'd think it would be sometimes maybe on the tail somewhere I was just looking at Bowser's. It's right where you'd expect it to be

Starting point is 00:32:12 Bowser no-shell, where is but dear Google Bowser butthole All right, all right a man mouth-pissing is great.ari. That's oh, that's oh, that's a pretty pretty Standard winner in fact you kind of fleshed it out a little bit with the butt breathing thing that didn't really have that one should do What they think that it does a smoke screen? I have the same structure some some breathe through their butt some breathe through their throats some pee I just threw their butts some through their throat Some breathe through their throats, some pee out of their mouth. Some piss through their butts,

Starting point is 00:32:43 some piss through their throats. I'm so close. Yeah. All right, you ready for me to go now? Yeah, hit me Sam. One of the most beautiful and harrowing events in the natural world is sea turtle nesting. Every summer, sea turtles pull themselves out of the water

Starting point is 00:32:58 onto the beaches they were born on, crawl up the sand past the high tide water level, and use their flippers to dig a hole in which they lay their eggs. The turtles then cover their eggs in the sand and waddle back out to sea. Something about that sand that's important to keep in mind is that it is good at retaining heat. Remember that. It makes it a great place for incubating eggs. And something interesting about the development of baby sea turtles is that the temperature of the sand they're buried in influences their sex. So consistently colder sand tends to make more males and consistently warmer sand tends to make

Starting point is 00:33:31 more females and sand that is a little bit of both makes a little bit of both. So sea turtles have this elegant birthing cycle deeply tied to the delicate ecosystem that they occupy. But you know isn't really conducive to elegant birthing cycles and delicate ecosystems? Us human beings, baby. We hate that stuff. Everything changing a bunch. Yeah. So obviously global climate change causes unusual temperatures at sea turtle nesting grounds, which is already thought to be messing up the ratio of male to female turtles. But there's another invisible, insidious byproduct of human civilization, one that I've talked about a couple of times before, lurking on the beaches of the world and fucking up sea turtles lives.

Starting point is 00:34:11 Can you guess what it is? On beaches? Why it's microplastics. Great job. Oh no, no, not that. In 2018, a study was published in which researchers sampled the sand at 17 sea turtle nesting sites around the Mediterranean and found something not very good. Lots of microplastics.

Starting point is 00:34:32 So 5,300 particles per cubic meter of sand. That's how many microplastics was in it, to be precise. The second worst amount of microplastic contamination ever recorded on a beach. And the first worst at the time was a beach in South China. And unlike that beach in China, some of these beaches were really far away from people and manufacturing centers. So like not places where people were just throwing their water bottles and stuff like that. So the first conclusion is that you can't really escape microplastics because they're in the ocean and they're spreading all over the place. Their second conclusion was that all that microplastic can't be good for sea turtles,

Starting point is 00:35:07 but that was kind of the end of the paper. They're like, we don't really know how. Just can't be good. It doesn't really seem like this would be good for turtles. Yeah, well, we don't have time to think about that right now. But in 2023, another study picked it up from there and concluded that all that microplastic is indeed not good for sea turtles. In this study, researchers made sand microplastic is indeed not good for sea turtles in this study researchers made sand Microplastic mixes containing from 5% to 30% plastic and monitored the temperature

Starting point is 00:35:31 So as I said sand holds heat well, but some types of plastic hold heat even better so all the micro plastic containing sand was warmer than the control sand and the 30% micro plastic mix warmer than the control sand and the 30% microplastic mix was 0.58 Celsius warmer. The microplastic samples also tended not to lose heat overnight so they just kept being hot forever. So fortunately 30% microplastic works out to 9.8 million particles per cubic meter of sand and the Mediterranean beaches that were the second highest ever were 5,300 particles per cubic meter. So we're hypothetically a pretty far way off from

Starting point is 00:36:10 that level of contamination. But since the sand temperature is tied to the sex of baby turtles and microplastics make sand consistently warmer, the big concern now is that even just a little bit of contamination could skew the male female ratio in a disastrous way that could get worse potentially way faster. Right, and it's going the wrong way. So we're already doing a bunch of things to make the sand warmer and then it was like, ah, now the sand's going to be even warmer.

Starting point is 00:36:34 Yeah, not so good. So between sea turtles and hermit crabs, humans and the microplastics that we make are really doing a number on cute shell-bound beach-dwelling guys. You just brought up hermit crabs because it's your thing. It's my thing. Well, because I talked recently about how they make hermit crabs stupid. You remember that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And also the ocean is just shooting microplastics out at people who live along

Starting point is 00:36:57 beach communities and they inhale it and have like really high microplastic levels. So stay away from the ocean, everybody. That's right. Like, look, you shouldn't have built a house there anyway. That's not where that's not a good idea. That's a dangerous spot. That's where the fish live. Let the fish live there. This is good that we are doing research on this. I did not see it coming. You said in the beginning you were like, pay attention to the part where it matters how good sand is holding on to heat. And I was like, I will pay attention. And then I forgot it by the end. And then I was like, Oh, my plastics makes the sand a better insulator. Yeah, it's

Starting point is 00:37:36 baking the guys in there. So what are we going to do everybody about plastic? This is one of my things that I do not I do not have a lot of faith in our ability to handle this well. No, it's so helpful and useful. Imagine people going back to wooden crates and glass and stuff like that. I mean, yeah. Plastic also saves a ton of stuff. It's really good at preventing food waste, which is very important. It's good at moving vaccines or like it's good at good stuff. But what it but it's also good at stuff that we do not need it to do. Yeah, at getting really tiny and getting inside of everything forever. Yeah, there was that like fairly long period of time where we just put microplastics in like

Starting point is 00:38:18 every beauty product to make it look cool and silky and shiny. To help scrub us better. Oh boy. Now I have to choose between Chinese softshelled turtles basically peeing out of their mouths or microplastics, potentially messing with sea turtle sex ratios. Two extraordinarily good facts. I will say those are great.

Starting point is 00:38:38 Like those were both those are both straight up. Like those should be science videos that we should make. But you can get mouth pissing is always going to win with a shoe. They're not even shooting a stream of piss out of their mouth or anything. That's not kind of a garbage. Yeah, they're just bargling the pits. I guess that's pretty good. OK, yeah.

Starting point is 00:39:02 Don't kiss a turtle. Yeah. Don't drink pond water. That Yeah, don't drink pond water. That's another don't drink pond water. No, that's their pee and that's really high up. And now it is time for Ask the Science Couch, where we've got a listener question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds at Bell five, seven, three, four on YouTube asks turtles don't have vocal cords. How do they communicate?

Starting point is 00:39:23 How do we find out how they communicate? I feel like this question could apply to many different creatures. Is that not true? Yes, first of all, I don't know the answer to this question. I'm gonna make two guesses one I bet turtles do make sounds but but like sometimes and to pee Yes, that's that tends to be that a lot of animals communicate through pee for some reason. Smells, some smell. I'm thinking about pee.

Starting point is 00:39:48 That kind of smell. Because of the mouth peeing. Sarai, am I right on either of those? So they do make sounds. There is a lot of, I guess a lack of evidence or a lack of formal scientific evidence, so people writing in papers about turtles making noises. And specifically, there's a difference in scientific literature between vocalization, so can you make noise, and then using that vocalization for communication purposes.

Starting point is 00:40:16 Are you trying to send a message to something else? And so for a while, I think people were like, turtles don't make noise. Turtles are silent little guys. And then there was a wave of research that people were paying attention to the noises that turtles made. I think the most dramatic example or the most popular example that you probably didn't know you were hearing turtle noises is apparently in Jurassic Park, the velociraptor noises, the clicking, the, I don't know, it's like barking when they

Starting point is 00:40:50 go into the kitchen. Those are turtle sex noises. Yeah, so it's kind of like, I don't know, barking, squeaking-ish, that kind of noise. And the way that turtles make that noise, I couldn't, the question started out with turtles don't have vocal cords. Reptiles do make a variety of noises and they have similar bits in their noise making process. So like releasing air from the lungs,

Starting point is 00:41:26 which goes through the larynx, which is like the voice box, and then passes the glottis, which is like the stopper up there. And some reptiles do have vocal cords or fold-like structures. And I think turtles have some sort of tracheal membrane, which is basically a vocal cord, just like a flap of muscle in there.

Starting point is 00:41:44 But we think that turtle sounds are through like throat wiggles called Goulart pumping, which is a very funny word, or just like extrusion of air from the lungs, like hisses. And so that's like, do turtles make noise? Yes. And we have now we have like lots of recordings, we have hundreds of hours of recordings of turtles making noise. Yes. We have now we have like lots of recordings. We have hundreds of hours of recordings of turtles making noise. There's whole podcasts. There's like, there's my turtle, my turtle and me. Three turtle brothers stuck on a log. It's great. And they push one of them pushes them off. Yeah, the other ones off. And that's the same the same thing every episode. And then recently, more recently, I think like 2022, but depending on where you are

Starting point is 00:42:26 in the world, like there are groups of researchers who are trying to research, do turtles make sounds to communicate in addition to body language, in addition to other things. I couldn't find specifically P, but I'm sure all animals communication. It's like chemicals. It doesn't look like there's a lot of P involved in turtle communication. Yes. Makes sense. But body language for turtles, like touch, physical touch, are you bumping into someone else? Are you not? But there's also evidence of sound. So one researcher was looking at the Araw turtle, which is a giant South American river turtle. It's very flat. And giant South American river turtle. It's very flat. And there are these like quiet, low-pitched noises that the turtles like chirp at their eggs and embryos chirp at each other to kind of coordinate that hatching and digging up to the surface. So there's some sort of like

Starting point is 00:43:18 vocal communication to say like, let's go guys, let's go. Yeah, I don't know. So that's called like parental care vocalizations. And there could be others. There could be others of like turtles chirping to each other. I don't know if, and like the jury's out for like the sex sounds or whatnot. Are they just making sounds because they're exerting themselves or is that like having a communication purpose?

Starting point is 00:43:43 Hard to have evidence of that. I know something turtles say. What do they say? Cowabunga dude, pizza time. The mutant ninja turtles do communicate. They got vocal cords when they were mutated by the ooze though. They got full human vocal cords.

Starting point is 00:44:01 How did they get them? Don't ask questions. It's not a pretty story. You don't want to know. If you want to ask your question to the Science Couch, follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll send out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to at Philippe M. Rigon on Twitter, locally sourced Beanpie on Discord, and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you else who asks us your questions for this episode.

Starting point is 00:44:25 If you like this show and want to help us out, it's easy to do that. You can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents. Shout out to patron Les Aker for their support. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's super helpful and it helps us know what you like 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.

Starting point is 00:44:44 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 assistant is Debucky Truck-Rivardi. Our sound designer is Joseph Poonamettish. Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney, 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 lightened. ["The Fire and the Mines"] But, one more thing. Part of studying sea turtles is of course studying their poop.

Starting point is 00:45:33 But as Sam said, it can be hard to collect samples before the water washes the poop away or some other guy eats it or doesn't turn into a rock. So in October 2015, researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia came up with their own budget solution, turning secondhand shirts into a stylish swimsuit that held a not as stylish fecal collector in place over the turtle's tail and cloaca. Oh no.

Starting point is 00:45:58 The pictures are very cute and also exactly what you'd expect when you imagine a turtle in a swimsuit and a diaper. Underwear stuff poop into the poop it's under where to poop into what do you poop Sam. Straight into the ocean with the mic. Oh they do look so cute their little that is a cute little swim. Also I thought this was going to be a full-size turtle, but this is a baby. There's a big guy at the very bottom.

Starting point is 00:46:26 Oh, there's a big guy at the bottom and he looks humiliated and he's wearing the same swimsuit Borat wore in the movie Borat. Let him live. Don't put him in Borat.

SciShow Tangents - Turtles

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