RecSciPod S01E10 full transcript
Timestamps:
- 0:00 Intro
- 2:49 Scientist quotes quiz
- 16:42 Penis size study
- 28:04 Bird brain study
- 35:51 What did you learn today, outro
Intro
Tirth: Do you want to get started with the real business of the hour?
Lu: Okay. Welcome everybody to the 10th episode of Recreational Science. Can you believe it? We made it to 10.
Tirth: Wow. I thought you said this was going to be the last episode. We should go out with a bang, huh?
Lu: Tirth, don’t interrupt the introduction, please.
Tirth: That’s right. Sorry.
Lu: Recreational Science. Getting back to it…The podcast where we explore creativity in science by examining some of the funniest, wackiest, and most provocative studies ever done. I’m Lu.
Tirth: And I’m Tirth.
Lu: [singing] Listeners, we can show you the world. Shining, shimmering, splendid. Tell us, listeners… Now, on the advice of counsel, we will have to skip forward through most of this… We can open your eyes… Tirth, get ready, it’s a duet… take you wonder… Oh, new world. A new fantast… only dreaming.
Tirth: [singing] Let it go. Let it go. This is the wrong song?
Lu: Dang it Tirth!
Tirth: I don’t even know what song this is.
Lu: What the hell, man?
Tirth: I don’t know what song this is.
Lu: We practiced this for like five hours.
Tirth: What can I say?
Lu: You just made me look like an idiot in front of our…No, no. Wait, do you seriously not know what that song is from?
Tirth: No, I have no idea.
Lu: Oh, my God. Oh my God.
Tirth: No joke, man. No joke.
Lu: This is the movie about your people, okay? Aladdin. Your people.
Tirth: I see. They… He’s not my people.
Lu: Please, please. It’s okay.
Tirth: Hey, it sounded good, though. Good job.
Lu: You don’t know a “Whole new world”?
Tirth: No, I’m not…
Lu: You’re gonna get a lot of hate mail. We’re gonna get a lot of hate mail. Listeners, listeners, if you got hate mail for Tirth, please email him at…what is it? [bleep]gmail.com? Is that right?
Tirth: I’m gonna have to change my email address…
Lu: No, no, no. Please send all the hate mail directly to him.
Tirth: Bring it on. I’ve not seen a single Disney movie, okay?
Lu: Is that right?
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: What about Lion King?
Tirth: I’ve not seen it.
Lu: No way. Frozen?
Tirth: No.
Lu: I think you were singing Frozen.
Tirth: Yes, I was. But I mean, it’s hard not to know some of these things, right? They permeate our culture.
Lu: But you’ve never seen a single Disney movie.
Tirth: I don’t think so.
Lu: That’s very impressive.
Tirth: Hey, when you guys were wasting your time on these frivolous activities, I was solving differential equations.
Lu: Uh-huh. I’m sure that’s true.
Tirth: It is true.
Lu: It is.
Scientist quotes quiz
Lu: Tirth, given that this is our 10th episode – this is a big episode – to prepare for this episode, I did a little market research.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: I wanted to see what people were saying about our podcast. Looking for ways to improve.
Tirth: Yeah. Makes sense.
Lu: And people are saying very good things. They say I’m as funny as Conan O’Brien.
Tirth: Oh, wow.
Lu: And as smart as Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Tirth: Oh, wow. High praise.
Lu: They also mentioned you.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: They say you’re as funny as Andy Richter.
Tirth: Oh, he’s very funny. Conan called him one of the funniest people he knows.
Lu: Is that right?
Tirth: And he said “Andy Richter has saved me a million times or more in my 30 year time on late night TV.”
Lu: Well, that’s very high praise.
Tirth: Very high praise.
Lu: As funny as Andy Richter. They also say you’re as smart as Andy Richter.
Tirth: He’s pretty smart, man. He’s pretty smart. He’s very quick.
Lu: Well, so the other thing people are saying, which got me a little concerned, is that we never talk about famous scientists, right? We only talk about silly stuff. Where are all the studies done by Galileo or Albert Einstein, right?
Tirth: So we’re talking about that level of fame.
Lu: Yeah, yeah.
Tirth: Like generational…
Lu: The greatest scientists.
Tirth: Okay, I see.
Lu: So I think they’re right. We need to talk about the big names a little bit more.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: Pay homage to the greats of science. So I developed a quiz for you Tirth. I have here a list of quotes by famous scientists. I want to see if you can name the scientists who said these quotes.
Tirth: By the way, are they alive or dead or is it a mix?
Lu: It’s a mix.
Tirth: Are these all real quotes or are some of them?
Lu: Look, I got these from reputable sources.
Tirth: All right.
Lu: Like the history of science society, good publications like Scientific America, Seventeen magazine, and to help you out, I’m going to give you three lifelines.
Tirth: Okay. So basically they’re passes, right?
Lu: No, no, no, no. Please, please. I don’t do the same joke more than once, please.
Tirth: I see.
Lu: If you know anything about me, it’s I do the same joke only once.
Tirth: I know a lot about you.
Lu: So three lifelines: the first lifeline is, tell me the year this quote was said. The second lifeline is, tell me the field of the scientist. And the third lifeline is, translate the quote into English.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: You ready?
Tirth: I see. Yes, I’m ready.
Lu: The first quote, which famous scientist said the following: “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”?
Tirth: This is a very, very famous quote. It has adorned the walls of, I think, many libraries and high schools and other places. This was Isaac Newton.
Lu: That’s correct.
Tirth: Newton was very vindictive. He held a lot of scientific grudges his entire lifetime, like him and Leibniz had beef. There was this other scientist, Robert Hooke, I think.
Lu: Robert Hooke, that’s right.
Tirth: Yeah, and he was a hunchback. And him and Newton didn’t get along. And some people speculate that when he said shoulders of giants, he literally meant he was standing on the shoulder of Robert Hooke.
Lu: This quote came from a letter that Newton wrote to Robert Hooke.
Tirth: Oh, yeah, there you go.
Lu: That’s where that comes from.
Tirth: Yeah, so that’s where that speculation comes from. There’s like a backhanded sort of thing.
LuL Very sassy man, that Newton.
Tirth: Yeah, he was.
Lu: All right, here’s another quote: “I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people.” Remember you have some lifelines.
Tirth: I know I do. I’m just trying to think.
Lu: Happy to translate this into English for you.
Tirth: Please. So this is what’s interesting about this quote to me. The reason I pause is there’s not many famous scientists who are also outwardly very humble and modest and self-deprecating.
Lu: This person is not very humble either. He’s not known for being humble.
Tirth: Okay. So this may be one of those like humble brag.
Lu: Well, I guess sometimes he is humble. He’s known for being a great teacher. That’s one hint. That’s a freebie.
Tirth: I mean, Richard Feynman was known for being a good teacher. He was not very humble. There were some times when he would say, we don’t know things. So I don’t think that’s him. I hate to use any of my lifelines this early, but I’ll ask you the field of science.
Lu: Physics.
Tirth: Okay. I shouldn’t have wasted that lifeline. I’m going to say this is Paul Dirac.
Lu: No, you had it right. I mean, it is Richard Feynman, actually.
Tirth: It’s actually Richard Feynman?
Lu: Yeah. He said this in 1983 in the Fun to Imagine TV series, which you can find on YouTube. I encourage people to go and watch that on YouTube. Fun to Imagine. It’s a great, great series.
Tirth: I mean, he died in like 80, he died in 88. So this was pretty close near the end. I mean, he got like cancer and stuff. So maybe he was more humble and wise in his later years.
Lu: Wiser. Yeah. But it’s one of my favorite quotes by him because he was trying to teach the public and trying to encourage the public to get into science and to think about science.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Okay. Here’s another quote. “Epper si muove.”
Tirth: Can you repeat the sentence, please?
Lu: Epper si muove.
Tirth: Epper si muove?
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: I’m trying not to use my lifeline. I’m trying to see if I can…
Lu: You should probably use it. “Epper si muove.”
Tirth: What language is that? Is that French? Is that Italian? All right. Fine. Translate it for me.
Lu: Wise choice.
Tirth: Okay, go ahead.
Lu: This is the only one you can use. In English, it means “and yet it moves.”
Tirth: George Costanza said this.
Lu: Who is he quoting? It is not George Costanza.
Tirth: I know it’s not, but he did say this. So you’re not going to tell me which language this came from?
Lu: I think it’s Italian. I didn’t look it up. It’s either Italian or Latin.
Tirth: It sounds like Italian. I guess it could be Latin because it was the lingua franca of science back then. So there’s a few thoughts. OK, the first thought in my mind is that this Galileo, because he formed the very first sort of formulation of mechanics before Newton did it as Galilean mechanics. Remote possibility is that this could be Johannes Kepler because he talked about planets, but I don’t think so. So I think I’m going to go with Galileo.
Lu: Very good. Good job. Galileo Galilei, he said this in 1633. This was after he was forced to recant his claim that the earth moves around the sun by the church. Basically, he’s saying, yeah, the facts are the facts. Good. Here’s another one: “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”
Tirth: It almost sounds like FDR, the president: “The only thing the fear is fear itself.” This is, actually, a very profound quote. I have not directly encountered this before. A little surprising.
Lu: It is. It’s not – I wouldn’t say it’s one of the more famous quotes, but it’s a good quote, which is why I included it.
Tirth: Yeah, this is actually a – very, in fact, out of most of the quotes we’ve talked about today, this one’s probably deeper than most of them.
Lu: Very deep. Yeah. Relevant to today for sure. You have, let me tell you the lifelines you have left. You actually only have one, huh?
Tirth: Just the year. I mean, I know this is from the 20th century. I’m pretty sure this is from the 20th century.
Lu: I actually don’t know the year.
Tirth: Yo, in that case, you gotta give me, you gotta let me use one of the other lifelines.
Lu: I’ll give you one of the other lifelines back.
Tirth: Okay. So field.
Lu: Okay. This is a big hint. Physics and chemistry.
Tirth: Oh, I mean, okay. So when you put it that way, my mind goes to a few people. First is Marie Curie.
She’s the – I think the only person who won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Physics.
Lu: In two scientific Nobel categories. Yeah.
Tirth: Correct. Disciplines. Because you have Linus Pauling who won in Peace and in Chemistry. And there’s this other guy, Bardeen. He won it twice in Physics.
Lu: Oh, okay.
Tirth: Which is pretty insane. One of them was for the transistor and the other one was for what’s called the BCS theory of superconductivity. It’s pretty insane. Anyway, I’m going to say it’s Marie Curie.
Lu: It is. Yep. Madame Marie Curie. That’s correct. I don’t know when she said this. I couldn’t find the source for it. Could potentially be a misattribution. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I like the quote.
Tirth: It could be from one of her Nobel lectures maybe. I don’t know.
Lu: Could be. Okay. So the next set of quotes, I got from ChatGPT.
Tirth: Ah, yes.
Lu: I’m going to give you all of your lifelines back, okay?
Tirth: So it’s still the same task? I’m supposed to name the scientist.
Lu: Yeah. Name the scientist.
Tirth: So the premise here is that ChatGPT said this scientist could have said this.
Lu: They did say it, please. They did. ChatGPT is very smart.
Tirth: Oh yeah. Of course. It wouldn’t lie.
Lu: The first quote from ChatGPT is, “I am writing a book on evolution. The beginning isn’t great, but it gets better over time.” Which scientist said that?
Tirth: Okay. Yeah. So evolution… The first name that comes to mind is, of course, Charles Darwin. Absolutely legendary scientist. Paradigm shifting theory. So I’m going to say Charles Darwin.
Lu: That’s correct. Good job. He said this in 1858, aboard the SS Beagle. Good scientist. All right. According to ChatGPT, which famous scientist said the following? “You know what kind of computer sings the best? Adele.” Who said that? Which famous scientist? Very famous scientist.
Tirth: Okay. I just remembered I have my three lifelines left.
Lu: You have three lifelines, yeah.
Tirth: So, I’m trying to think if I should ask for the year or the field, because the year has to be modern. It’s a joke about Adele and Dell computers. If ChatGPT is being chronologically accurate, then we’re talking basically 2000s.
Lu: Well, great scientists are often ahead of their time.
Tirth: Right, right, of course. OK, so I’ll ask for the field.
Lu: Computer science.
Tirth: Sure, sure. Computer science is interesting because as a field, it really came into its own in the 50s. Von Neumann was one of the first people to formalize computer architecture and stuff like that. I don’t know. I’m going to say Von Neumann.
Lu: No, this is the father of computer science. Who’s the father?
Tirth: Babbage.
Lu: Alan Turing.
Tirth: Oh, shit.
Lu: Alan Turing, father of computer science, ahead of his time in many ways, said this in 1940. Very good scientist. Here’s the next quote. According to ChatGPT, which famous scientist said the following? “People don’t think the universe be like it is, but it do.” It’s a very famous quote, very famous quote by this very famous scientist.
Tirth: I mean, Einstein comes to mind. Stephen Hawking comes to mind. I mean, even like Newton comes to mind. Let me ask you the year.
Lu: 2014.
Tirth: Okay, I see. I see. 2014. People don’t think the universe…
Lu: Via Twitter.
Tirth: I see. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Lu: Neil deGrasse Tyson, that’s correct.
Tirth: Did he actually say this though?
Lu: It’s possible. It’s possible. I’ve seen posters of this quote with a picture of Neil deGrasse Tyson looking at the cosmos. Alright. Next quote. This one’s a little tricky, but listen carefully. “Fighting for the truth is like marrying your cousin. Everybody wants to do it, but very few have the guts to.”
Tirth: So I’ll say this, okay? Einstein did marry his cousin.
Lu: That he did.
Tirth: His second marriage was with his cousin.
Lu: Yes.
Tirth: They did not have any kids, as far as I recall.
Lu: They dared not to.
Tirth: So I think this is maybe, I think this is Einstein.
Lu: That’s correct. He said this in 1919 during his wedding to Elsa.
Tirth: Wow.
Lu: They were maternal first cousins and also paternal second cousins.
Tirth: I didn’t know that. I didn’t know they were cousins in two different ways.
Lu: Yes.
Tirth: That’s wild, man.
Lu: Both of their parents are related.
Tirth: That’s really wild.
Lu: Pretty wild, but he’s right. I mean, he’s very, very right. Everybody wants to fight for the truth, but very few, very few will do it.
Tirth: He walked the walk.
Lu: Like marrying your cousin. Okay, next quote. Final quote: “Bruh, this apple is bussin.” Very famous scientist.
Tirth: Yeah, okay.
Lu: …loved apples.
Tirth: Very famous story about Newton and an apple. Apple fell on his head or fell somewhere. He was home on break from university because there was a plague outbreak. And so he’s like, okay, I’m just going to go back to the countryside. It’s possible the whole thing’s made up. Maybe it is indeed what he said, you know?
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: So this is Isaac, Isaac Newton.
Lu: That’s correct. In 1659, he was 16 years old at the time. Ahead of his time, like all the greats. Good job, Tirth. Good job. You got most of those, I think. I didn’t keep track of your score. Let’s just say you got 50% correct.
Tirth: Such little, little faith in me. Low faith in me, man.
Lu: What do you think? Should we move on to real science?
Tirth: Yeah, let’s do it.
Lu: Let’s do it. Okay.
Size matters…in your pants
Lu: As I was saying, Tirth, I’ve been doing market research to see what people like about our show, what people want to hear more about. And people are saying, you know, we claim at the top of our show that we discuss funny, wacky and provocative studies. You know, they’re saying the studies we’ve been doing are definitely funny and wacky, but where are the provocative studies?
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: They want more provocative studies. Listeners, I hear you. I know what you want and I’m going to deliver. The title of my study today, Tirth, is “Penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness.”
Tirth: There it is. We’ve gone back to our roots from Episode 1.
Lu: This is what the people want, okay?
Tirth: And we’re more than happy to deliver.
Lu: We’re going to deliver. Tirth, I know you have it on very good authority that size doesn’t matter, but let me ask you, what better authority is there than science?
Tirth: There isn’t.
Lu: There isn’t. Exactly. Exactly. Well, maybe the church. Maybe the church. Sometimes you got to recant your claims about penis sizes.
Tirth: And you still say, and yet it moves.
Lu: Yeah, and yet it grows. So my study today asks the age-old question, does size matter? So it’s a study of how penis size affects human male attractiveness to females, to women. Tirth, let me ask you first, how would you approach this question? How would you – you’re a scientist – how would you study this?
Tirth: Oh man. There’s many different avenues. The most obvious one would be you show faces of men to women.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: And then you ask them to rate attractiveness and then you just show dick pics to them.
Lu: Very good, yeah. That’s more or less what they did. This study was published in a very appropriate journal. Can you guess the name of the journal?
Tirth: PNAS, baby.
Lu: P-NAS Yeah, that’s correct. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, P-NAS. Very good. It’s from a group from Canada and Australia.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: Let me just point out that all the authors are men.
Tirth: Of course, they are. Of course.
Lu: Or at least they have traditionally male names.
Tirth: Yeah. I mean, a single female would have been like, hey, what are we doing here?
Lu: And I know where you’re going to ask Tirth. And the answer is yes. One of the authors is named Richard.
Tirth: Is he the first or last author?
Lu: He’s in the middle. He’s in the middle. I think they just snuck him in there because of his name. Can you guess what his last name is? What’s Richard’s last name?
Tirth: Okay. Long.
Lu: Peters. Richard Peters. Richard Peters.
Tirth: Okay. Yeah.
Lu: This man is living up to his name. Good for him. Good for him. Richard Peters. Studying penis sizes.
Tirth: Maybe he’s a hired hand. He lends his name to any studies about penises.
Lu: Yeah. So the way they approach this question in the study is – this is I think sort of where you were trying to circumnavigate around – which is you can’t just ask women, hey, do you prefer bigger penises?
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: There’s a lot of problems with that. People will self-censor. They might not want to admit that they like a certain size or whatever.
Tirth: Yeah. Yeah. Very common.
Lu: You can’t just do that. You can’t just take a survey. What they did was they projected life size, computer generated male figures, nude male figures onto a wall in front of the women and asked them to rate the attractiveness of the nude, computer generated male figure. There were three variables that they manipulated. The first one, of course, is penis size. Second one is height. And the third one is shoulder to hip ratio. Each of the three variables has seven possible values for a total of seven times seven times seven, 343 different combinations.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: So they recruited 105 women. These are heterosexual women from Australia. And each of them were shown 53 of the figures. They were asked to rate the figures on their attractiveness.
Tirth: So, okay, let’s pause here.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: They’re projecting a life-sized computer-generated naked image on a wall.
Lu: Of a man. A bald man, hairless. So you can see everything.
Tirth: Okay. This is a freaky image, man.
Lu: It is. I’m looking at it now. I’m not going to show.
Tirth: It reminds me of Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen.
Lu: Basically it looks like Dr. Manhattan. It looks basically just like Dr. Manhattan.
Tirth: Okay. Got it. Go ahead.
Lu: Okay. So what did they find? Well, Tirth, they found that individually, each of the three variables, penis size, shoulder to hip ratio, and height all positively correlated with attractiveness.
Tirth: Individually?
Lu: Individually, yeah.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: As you probably can imagine. Shoulder to hip ratio was by far the most predictive factor of attractiveness. It predicted 80% of the variance in attractiveness.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: The effect of height and penis were much lower. Height accounted for 6.1% of the variance.
Tirth: That’s it?
Lu: Yeah, that’s it. And penis size was 5.1%. I think that’s good news for you, Tirth, for all men, really. Because shoulder to hip ratio is something you can actually control, unlike the other two, right? You can go to the gym, broaden your shoulders a little bit.
Tirth: Uh-huh. I already have really broad shoulders. Look at this.
Lu: Please, Tirth, don’t embarrass yourself.
Tirth: Hey, let me ask you, what is the range of the heights they used?
Lu: That’s a good question. So all of these were based on a survey of Italian men. So these were based on the natural variance in Italian men’s height.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: All the other factors are also based on the Italian men’s variables.
Tirth: I don’t know what that means.
Lu: It’s unclear. It’s unclear.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: So here’s something interesting. Greater penis length, like I was saying, did correlate with attractiveness, but not linearly.
Tirth: Oh, okay.
Lu: Above a certain cutoff, larger size did not really increase attractiveness as much. And that cutoff size is 7.6 centimeters or three inches.
Tirth: Three inches?
Lu: Well, again, so one thing I should have said probably, this is all flaccid. Three inches. Yeah. Tirth, I know that’s very disappointing to you.
Tirth: How so?
Lu: I’ll let you interpret that.
Tirth: Why don’t you spell it out? Why don’t you spell it out?
Lu: Well, because, you know, when you’re above three inches, it doesn’t really add that much to attractiveness.
Tirth: Oh, okay. I see. I see.
Lu: So you have a lot of wasted, wasted real estate.
Tirth: Okay, thank you.
Lu: Yeah. Here’s another interesting finding, which is that greater penis size was associated with attractiveness, much more for taller men and men with larger shoulder to hip ratio.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: Which is interesting – so for the smaller guys, for the men with less than ideal shoulder to hip ratio, penis size doesn’t matter as much.
Tirth: Doesn’t apply to me. I’ve got great shoulders to hip ratio.
Lu: So what does this mean? I’m not a woman, but this is what I think it means for women. Thinking from the perspective of a woman.
Tirth: Please speak for them.
Lu: I think if you’re a woman and you’re dating, say, Captain America Steve Rogers, you want him to have a big penis. He’s tall, very large shoulder to hip ratio. But if you’re dating the little guy Steve Rogers, pre-serum Steve Rogers, you don’t want him to have a big penis.
Tirth: No, right.
Lu: It’s not something you want to see.
Tirth: Out of proportion.
Lu: Is that accurate? You think?
Tirth: Yeah, I think that’s very accurate. You know, the same thing – staying in the universe – the same thing can apply to Paul Rudd, the normal size guy and the little ant sized dude.
Lu: You don’t want his penis to stay the same size when he shrinks.
Tirth: No, no, definitely not.
Lu: You want it to be all proportional. And that’s exactly what they think is going on. So, they mentioned in the discussion something about the – you know – the Ebbinghaus-Titchener effect. That’s that optical illusion where you have a circle surrounded by five large circles. That middle circle is going to look smaller than the same size circle surrounded by smaller circles, right? It’s like a proportional thing.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: So, they also collected some stats about the women, including age, height and weight, and they correlated how important the three different male traits were to them. So, the height of the women did correlate with how important height was to them. So, the taller women valued height a lot more than the shorter women, which makes sense. And then also, they mentioned for women that were “heavier than expected” for their weight, these women showed a stronger preference for larger penis size.
Tirth: I see. Well, so what does that mean? They’re using a BMI metric? What does that mean?
Lu: It’s unclear. That’s the quote I was given. “Heavier than expected for their weight.”
Tirth: “Heavier than expected.”
Lu: Yes.
Tirth: It’s very judgy of them.
Lu: The age of the women did not matter much in terms of how important the three traits were to them for attractiveness. Also, apparently, they asked the women about birth control and the stage of the menstrual cycle they’re on. Those also did not affect how important the three male traits were to them.
Tirth: Okay. Yeah.
Lu: Also, here’s the final bit. This is also – I found very interesting. They looked at how long it took the women to rate each figure. And what they found was that the women took longer to give a rating when the figures had larger penises.
Tirth: You think they got lost in mentally calculating how long their figure is?
Lu: It’s possible. Yeah.
Tirth: You know when they say, so-and-so got lost in his eyes, instead of the eyes, they got lost…
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: That’s too good, man.
Lu: But also, they took longer to give a rating when the rating was high. So maybe that’s the confound.
Tirth: Yeah. They’re just mesmerized.
Lu: Mesmerized by the beauty…
Tirth: Under a spell…
Lu: …of a computer generated man in front of them – Dr. Manhattan. Which actually does lead me to my criticism of the paper. We talk about this a lot with psychology studies. You don’t want the participants to know what you’re testing for.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: This is why you can’t just ask them directly, hey, do you prefer… does size matter?
Tirth: Yeah. It’s going to affect…
Lu: So the fact that the woman took longer to answer when the penises were bigger, sort of suggests that on some level, they kind of realized there is a change. And they might actually figure it out. “Hey, the penis looks bigger here.” Maybe that’s where they’re testing. And maybe that affected them, right?
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Maybe. Maybe. So I think potentially a different way to do this would be to flash each of the images for a certain amount of seconds. So you get the woman to not spend so much…
Tirth: First reaction.
Lu: Exactly. You want to get their reaction to like the gestalt. You don’t want them to overthink. Any other thoughts, Tirth? I know you probably have a lot of criticisms for this paper.
Tirth: No, no. Listen, why would I? You keep – listen man, out with it. You keep hinting things, just out with it. Let’s hear. Why do you think I would have issues with this?
Lu: Because you’re a good scientist.
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: Very good scientist.
Tirth: We’ve already addressed them with these criticisms. It’s okay.
Lu: Okay. You sure?
Tirth: I’m sure.
Lu: Well, then Tirth, I turn it over to you.
Size matters…inside your head
Tirth: All right, Lu. Today’s paper is about a subject matter that I don’t know if it’s super near and dear to my heart, but it’s something that I think about every now and then. So I was quite gratified and surprised to find that there’s some research done in this area.
Lu: Oh, okay. You’re not referring to my paper.
Tirth: No, no, no. My paper.
Lu: Got it. Got it. Okay.
Tirth: I mean, okay, I’ve also pondered the issues raised by your paper too.
Lu: I know.
Tirth: Okay. So the title of my study is, “Brain size in birds is related to traffic accidents.”
Lu: Oh, traffic accidents in birds or humans?
Tirth: They clarify it’s actually in birds. Birds hitting, getting killed by cars.
Lu: Oh, I see. Okay.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: That makes sense.
Tirth: This was published in the year 2017. The journal is called the Royal Society Open Science.
Lu: Oh, good journal.
Tirth: Great journal. Great journal. And the people on here are from Denmark and France. There’s only two people.
Lu: Oh, good.
Tirth: So let me ask you this. Let’s say you’re a world renowned taxidermist and conservationist.
Lu: Yeah, that’s not hard for me to imagine because, you know, I was….
Tirth: Oh, right. Because you – that’s what you do in your free time.
Lu: …an ecology major back in college.
Tirth: No, you weren’t.
Lu: I was, please.
Tirth: Did you go bird watching?
Lu: Yeah, at the local zoo.
Tirth: At the local zoo. Very nice. So what they’re trying to study here is basically they’ve noticed perhaps a quarter of a billion birds are killed by traffic annually across the world.
Lu: That’s interesting. Like they’re just flying into like windshields of cars…?
Tirth: Yeah. Right. Right.
Lu: I’ve never had that happen to me.
Tirth: Me neither. Me neither. But apparently the number is very high.
Lu: I didn’t know birds flew that low.
Tirth: Or maybe they’re hanging out on the road, like eating, like, you know, pigeons do that sometimes. The car just hits them.
Lu: And you assume they’ll fly out of the way. But sometimes they don’t.
Tirth: Sometimes they don’t. So that’s the first thing…They’re like this is surprising because birds have been shown to learn speed limits. They say that birds have also learned to know traffic patterns.
Lu: So they learn to read the speed limit sign.
Tirth: Yeah, they’re very smart birds. Some of these birds are very smart.
Lu: Birds are smart, I agree.
Tirth: Like those ducks we talked about a few episodes ago. They’ve also noticed that some birds like crows can switch traffic lanes and things like that. So they’re pretty dynamic, they’re pretty adaptive. So they wanted to know, like, why is this happening in birds? You know, is this like…
Lu: Given that they’re so smart, why are they getting killed by cars?
Tirth: How some of them are so smart, how are they getting killed by cars? And there’s a related idea where people are… They’ve noticed before that there’s a relationship between brain size and getting shot by hunters.
Lu: In birds?
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: So I’m assuming all of these are negative correlations.
Tirth: Yes, yes. So basically the smaller your brain, the more likely you are going to be shot by a hunter.
Lu: Or killed by a car…
Tirth: And so that’s exactly what they’re asking. Is this true for car accidents also?
Lu: I see.
Tirth: So here’s what they did, okay? They collected like almost 3500 dead birds over a period of like 45 years. This is where the taxidermist, the taxidermist man, he collected 3500 birds. I think this is his specialty. And I guess he’s able to identify based on autopsies how a bird died. So I want to make it clear, right? There’s 3500 birds, they’re dead birds of all sorts of different causes. So some of them got hit by cars. Some of them were shot by hunters. Some of them, I guess, just died of old age, I don’t know. Okay, and he’s somehow he’s able to classify them. They broke them down into two buckets: birds that got hit by cars and died and birds that died of all other causes.
Lu: Okay, okay, he’s pretty – he’s able to pretty reliably tell whether a bird got hit by car or the bird like flew into a wall?
Tirth: So that’s the claim they’re making. And I actually looked this guy up on his website. There’s a long list of accolades. He’s not just a taxidermist. He’s a conservationist, so he’s pretty famous. And then the question they asked is, is there a relationship between brain size and the likelihood of dying by getting hit by a car?
Lu: Right, okay, so they’re asking out of the 3,500 birds that did die by car accidents, do they have smaller brains than the rest?
Tirth: Compared to the birds that died of other causes.
Lu: …other causes, yes. Got it, got it.
Tirth: Obviously, this is in all birds, right? Birds come in different sizes, which would mean that their brains must be different sizes. So you can’t just go on and just use just brain weight or brain size. So they came up with a metric. They’re calling it residual brain mass. What this basically means is, if you’re a bird, what is the normal expected brain mass for your overall body mass?
Lu: And so when people usually, when scientists usually compare like brain size in between species, this is sort of the metric they use, right? It’s all relative to body size.
Tirth: Yeah, it has to be. Especially if you’re comparing across different species. And yes, based on what we’ve already talked about, and based on what I’ve told you about negative correlation between brain size and getting shot, what do you think the result was?
Lu: Well, so let me let me get this study straight. This is a retrospective postmortem study.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Okay. So I guess I guess the birds with smaller brains are more likely…
Tirth: Yep. Yeah. For each unit of increase in brain mass, you are 30% less likely to get hit by a car and die.
Lu: Wow.
Tirth: And then the traffic-killed birds typically have brains that are roughly 15 to 25% smaller than survivors with the same body mass.
Lu: Okay. I have one criticism, which is there’s really no denominator, right? Meaning like they don’t look at the prevalence of the species of birds, for instance, in the setting that they acquired the birds from. For instance, like maybe the birds that were killed by car traffic were more prevalent along road side, right? Than birds that died in the woods or whatever. And maybe birds that hang out by road sides have smaller brains for body size for another reason.
Tirth: Another reason, right, right, right.
Lu: So I think controlling for species will control for this like prevalence thing.
Tirth: Yeah, I think what they would probably say – I think this is a very valid point. I think their argument would still be, hey, our method is very powerful because we’re comparing brain size to body size. And not just that. Remember, they have this metric, residual brain mass, right? So that’s like, how much is your brain mass deviating from one from what one would expect?
Lu: Hmm…
Tirth: But yes, I agree with you. I think it’s more powerful when you’re comparing – like they could pick like a smarter bird, but they could say, we’re just going to look at crows that got hit by cars, right?
Lu: Mhm.
Tirth: They’re thought to be some of the smartest birds out there, smarter than some humans, maybe.
Lu: Oh, okay. So I guess the take home point from this is dumber birds are more likely to be killed by traffic.
Tirth: Yes, yes.
Lu: Because they can’t judge the speed limit…
Tirth: The speed and the direction of the cars. They can’t react fast enough.
Lu: They can’t read the speed limit sign. They can’t tell how fast the cars are.
Tirth: That’s right. That’s right.
Lu: Got it.
Tirth: Yeah. The other thing they want us to know is that these findings suggest that birds learn the behavior of car drivers, and then if their brain is smaller, they can’t learn the behavior as well. Because it’s a rapidly moving object and they don’t have enough processing power.
Lu: I see, good. Okay. Good stuff Tirth.
Tirth: Oh, thank you.
What did you learn today?
Lu: I guess that brings us to the end of another episode. Tirth, what did you learn today?
Tirth: Lu, I learned today that Dr. Manhattan and Steve Rogers are the pinnacle of male, you know, male species.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: And we should all just give up and become monks.
Lu: That’s true. You learned that today?
Tirth: Yeah. Until now, I had held out hope that I had a chance. What did you learn today?
Lu: I learned that the chicken crossed the road to participate in a study on brain size and the likelihood of getting hit by a car.
Tirth: These chickens are so noble. They contributed to microbiology knowledge, you know, by getting inoculated. Very noble creatures.
Lu: Very noble. All right, guys. Thanks for listening to another episode of Recreational Science.
Tirth: Listeners, if you like listening to us, please give us five stars, a good rating and tell a friend.
Lu: Give us a five star review on whatever app you choose to listen to our podcast on. That would be really helpful. All right, until next time, guys. Bye bye.
Tirth: Bye.
