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The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.
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FACT: This experiment was so cruel that people now call it “the forbidden experiment”
By Dr. Danielle Bainbridge
Throughout history language deprivation experiments have (rightfully) gotten the name “the forbidden experiment” because of the cruelty involved in testing their subjects. An article from Slate traces a brief history of these experiments, starting with Pharaoh Psamtik I around 600 BC.
According to ancient historian Herodotus, Psamtik I gave two newborns to a shepherd who was instructed not to speak to them. The idea was to see what kind of language the children would speak without any external influences.
A similar experiment was supposedly conducted in the 13th century by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, but in the Chronicle of Salimbene, it is noted that the children, “…could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.” In other words, the study subjects died.
In the 20th century, cases of neglected and abused children resulted in unintentional replications of these experiments, such as Genie from California in 1970, Oxana in Ukraine in the 1980s, and a young boy named John in Uganda in the 1990s. Despite the cruelties of the past, it’s clear to us today why this experiment should not and cannot be replicated on living subjects. But it can teach us a lot about the questions that preoccupied ancient humans.
For what it’s worth, humans seem to be remarkably resilient and resourceful when it comes to finding ways to communicate with one another. Just look at the kids who developed their own sign language!
FACT: Some frogs are so sticky and annoying that it saves them from predators
By Sara Kiley Watson
How does a frog get out of a sticky situation? Gluing their predator’s mouth shut. Or, at least that’s the way it works for the Dyscophus guineti—a cute little orange frog that only lives in Madagascar and loves some swampy, marshy climes. A study came out in July in Nature Communications that unpacks the science of this sticky little tomato frog, which emits a thick, viscous, glue-like substance when provoked.
We’ve all heard about creatures like the famed poison dart frog that use their mucus as a medium to poison their predators—but poison can be imperfect. A small predator that takes on a poison dart frog is probably doomed from the get-go. If a big predator happens to take on a bufo toad, which creates a less potent poison in its moment of terror, it might not feel those less-than-pleasant or even deadly side effects until it’s too late for the frog in question to escape. Glue, however, works right away—making it impossible for a predator like a snake to swallow the sticky frog, and distracting it for long enough to allow prey to escape.
How this tactic evolved—and how many creatures have this unique escape route baked into their genetics—is still a mystery. But scientists are getting into the thick of it, even if that means risking getting their fingers glued together by a less-than-happy frog specimen.
FACT: People used to think that thunderstorms turned milk sour
By Rachel Feltman
On June 12, 1858, Scientific American published a letter to the editor called “Lightning and Milk” written by John Dean Caton. It opened as follows: “Messrs. Editors—It may not be generally understood by scientific men, but it is well known to dairy men and housewives that a violent thunderstorm turns sweet into sour milk.”
According to Atlas Obscura, this was a widely-held truth in Europe and North America. Back in the late 1600s, a Flemish alchemist wrote that “At the time when it thunders, Beer, Milk, etc. turn sower [sour] in the Cellars. The Thunder doth everywhere introduce corruption and putrefaction.” (Wow, does that last sentence go hard!)
There were different theories about this. Noah Webster, the dictionary dude, thought maybe it had to do with the drop in barometric pressure. Other folks thought maybe the lightning created ozone or another kind of gas that might make milk go sour. Other people thought it was the electricity itself.
I get into the experiments people did around sour milk and thunderstorms in this week’s episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. But what I find really interesting about the thunderstorms-turning-milk-sour thing is that it’s been really sticky. Just a few weeks ago, someone posted on the subreddit r/AskFoodHistorians asking what the heck their Swedish grandmother was talking about when she said that filmjolk formed or got ruined (like, too curdled) if a thunderstorm got too bad. The mod was like, “food historians are not the right people to ask about what happens to dairy in a thunderstorm! Keep this discussion to historical beliefs about the subject,” and nevertheless lots of people spitballed on what might be happening, up to and including speculation on how thunderstorms might change cow behavior and therefore change their milk. Four years ago, someone posted in r/AskUK saying “my anecdotal evidence suggests it does but every time I look into it the jury still seems to be out” and responded to someone giving the literal scientific explanation with “ha! Clever answer”
Anyway, sorry to tease this out: someone actually cracked it in 1891. Just absolutely high on the new advances in our understanding of microbiology, Aaron L. Treadwell decided to compare the effects of an electric charge on pasteurized vs unsterilized milk. He found that pasteurized milk was way less likely to curdle in a simulated lightning storm than raw dairy was, and very sensibly concluded that whatever was happening had to do with bacterial growth, not some transformation entirely connected to the electricity. He correctly deduced that “favorable conditions of the atmosphere” led to rapid bacterial growth. As a 1927 guide to dairy production from the University of Wisconsin very poetically put it: “A thick, sultry atmosphere usually precedes thunder showers and provides favorable conditions for the growth of milk-souring bacteria.”
Check out this week’s episode for a whole bunch of barely-related funky dairy facts.
