Pantone-Deaf, Naked Mole Rat Perfume, a Berry of Many Names  🔗 **Source:** [Pantone-Deaf, Naked Mole Rat Perfume, a Berry of Many Names](https://share.snipd.com/episode/7fa6dd21-14ab-4121-91e9-bdb69d4a4ba0) ## Highlights - **How One Bird Artist Standardized Color** - Robert Ridgway was a self-taught bird artist who, frustrated by vague color descriptions, created a color dictionary to standardize bird color names. - Ridgway and his wife Julia hand-mixed and painted original swatches for Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists (1886) and later expanded to 1,115 colors in 1912. Transcript: Liz Clayton Fuller My tease today is birds are the reason the company Pantone exists. Wow. I'm intrigued. Rachel Feltman Can't wait to hear more. My tease is you probably already know that I'm obsessed with naked mole rats. Who is it? Now I'm going to talk about how they get their way by being stinky. Alexis Nikole Nelson Oh my god that's inspirational. I was going to say that's aspirational. Rachel Feltman Every new thing I learned about the naked mole rat impresses me more and makes me want to emulate them more. Alexis Nikole Nelson Alexis, what is your tease? My tease is the greatest fruit you've never heard of has like 5 million names. And we all know how language works. When something has 5 million names, it's gotta be good. Yeah, absolutely. Or at least important. Rachel Feltman It's so funny. It may turn out to be just our last episode. But if not, a few episodes ago, we were talking to Greg Jenner from the show You're Dead to Me. And as an aside, you know, it came up that he's really interested in how some cities have just like one name. And that like, that's what everyone calls it. And some cities have many, many names in different languages and sort of, you know, the various historical and geopolitical things that go into making that the case. And now I'm like, you know, if it's good and fiscally important, maybe it's got more names. Maybe it's got more names. Alexis Nikole Nelson Maybe there's a little theory to throw into a past tidbit. Rachel Feltman Well, yeah, let's get started. Liz, why don't you kick us off with birds in Pantone? I'm so excited. Liz Clayton Fuller Yes. So this is kind of a thread that I pulled on because I'm, here's a little backstory. I'm working on my federal duck stamp competition painting entry right now. Rachel Feltman Oh, so important to me. Oh, I'm already rooting for you. I hope you win. Alexis Nikole Nelson Do we get to know what, do we get to know what ducks you're depicting? You do. Liz Clayton Fuller I actually have it right here, which is not helpful for the listeners, but I'll give you just a little a little beautiful so that's my guy this year so he is for the listeners a blue-winged Teal and i was thinking about bird names and the color teal and the name teal and I was like where like what is the origin of teal like what what does that word actually mean and interestingly Enough the color teal is named after the Eurasian teal which is a bird so Eurasian teal came first and they have this beautiful stripe of teal on their head that was so iconic that they Named a color after it which is just like again goals like naked mole rat stinky goals being so beautiful a whole color gets named after you oh my god so i tried to look into if there were Any other colors named after birds as sort of directly as that and the answer was like, not really. Like there's like Robin's egg blue, which like, you know, it's very descriptive, but isn't the same as like, wow, there's this perfect color and it's the, you know, now this is the name Of the color. But as I was kind of pulling on that thread, I learned that because of the beauty and the color of birds, this guy, this ornithologist back in the day, Robert Ridgway. Okay. So a little backstory on Robert, quick lore on Robert. He was the oldest of 10 children. Dang. Wow. Yup. And so as an eldest as well, I understand why he became like a weird bird artist. Same, same. It is our job to be the weirdo of the family. Yes, absolutely. Yes, it's our job. And we must carry that torch with pride. So he had all these siblings and his parents encouraged him to draw. And his aunt, whose name was Fanny Gunn. This is not really related to anything, but I just was like, it's a great name. And I need to share that. Rachel Feltman Fanny gets your gun. Liz Clayton Fuller Yeah, Fanny Gunn. I feel sort of disappointed that my kid is already like two and I did not name her Fanny Gunn, but that's okay. Someone else who's listening can take that name and run with it. So they were all big supporters of his art. And when he was 13, which this is like the cutest thing I've ever heard, he did a beautiful, detailed, full-color drawing of some birds that he saw. And he didn't know what they were. So he sent them in the mail to the commissioner of patents and was basically like, sir, do you know what these birds are? Which, like, I'm just saying the internet could never ai could never like the idea of seeing a bird doing a painting of it putting it in the mail and like waiting and wondering to know what Bird it is like i feel like we all kind of need something like that in our lives we need less immediate access to the information we need to earn it a little bit i do have a running bit with Rachel Feltman My good friend ryan f mandelbaum who is a bird a bird person yes uh i frequently send them pictures of actual birds out in the world being like what's this bird um and our i've always described Our text communication as data in nature so like we never know yeah we never know how long it's going to take to get a reply you know what what the syntax will be but then i also have a running Bit where i send things that are very clearly not birds we sent a recording of my child shrieking like a seagull i said ryan what's this bird so i really, I feel like a really warm kinship To this little boy ascending a bird painting. Liz Clayton Fuller Yes. As, you know what, I'm realizing that I'm, I'm the commissioner of patents for my friends. Like they say, me the birds. That's me. That's a beautiful thing. Alexis Nikole Nelson And I also love that he was like the commissioner of patents. He has to recognize a lot of things. Right. I read that a couple times and I was like, okay. And I'm like, did we put patents on birds and I missed it? I think he was just like, this guy must know a lot. Liz Clayton Fuller So I'm going to reach out to him, which is amazing. So the commissioner of patents actually very sort of started the snowball for Robert Ridgeway because he forwarded his letter to Spencer Fullerton Baird of the Smithsonian Institute, Of course. And so Baird sees the art and he's like, oh my God, this is like really good. Holy crap. And so he writes him back and he's like, dude, ([Time 0:05:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f06b241-f148-4942-820f-7684326582da)) - **Bird Color Naming Led To Pantone** - Ridgway's color nomenclature for birds directly inspired modern commercial color systems, including Pantone, via later printers and color standardizers. - Lawrence Herbert referenced older guides like Ridgway's when he built Pantone after buying a printing company in 1962. Transcript: Liz Clayton Fuller But in the beginning, so this is 1886, by the way. I don't think I've given you a timeline yet, but this is where we are. So in 1886, he created and published a Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, which categorized 186 colors alongside diagrams of birds. By the way, you can look at this book on the Internet, on the Smithsonian's website. I have. I recommend you do. It's really delightful. It's so much fun to look at so the initial book that he made he and his wife julia painted these huge pages of each color so every one of the 186 colors he wanted to categorize he and Julia Mixed the colors and painted these huge sheets of it and then cut it into perfect little rectangles and put original swatches of the colors in each of the original books. I think there were like 500 books, which is a huge number for a book in 1886. And each of them has these original little swatches of color. And in the books, you can literally see the paint strokes. Like it is a beautiful thing. And not only can you see the paint strokes, also each color has a name and lists the colors used to mix the color so it's like he really he went all the way in um he said no one is messing up their Bird pages moving forward yeah you have no excuse no one is ever not going to be able to identify a purple finch again like he's like i made this mistake and no one else ever will. So in the original book, you know, it's this beautiful work of art. It's absolutely incredible. And he puts it out. People love it. And he says, you know what? That's actually not enough. I'm going to make another book. Good. 1912 he self-published an expanded version for broader audience and it was called color standards and color nomenclature and that one included so the first one was 186 colors this One includes 1115 colors how were him and julia's hands after this? At this point, he and Julia are not doing the paintings themselves because they have access to like chemical color mixing and printing. Yes, they said, everyone needs to know about more colors, but like we can't be painting 1,115 sheets of paper and cutting them up into little bits. So that book is also available to view online. It's gorgeous. And a lot of the colors are actually named after birds like warbler green and J blue and things like that. So here's a quick, here's a quick side note for me to get to talk about bird color. As I'm talking about, you know, the, the colors that were inspired by birds, J blue in the book is this like beautiful blue, right? But you all may or may not know listeners and my fellow podcasters, blue jay feathers are not actually blue. No, they are not. No, they are not. So most color in nature comes from pigments that absorb and reflect light, but blue jay feathers create their color through structural tricks. It's called structural color. Lots of birds have this as a part of their sort of like color display. And structural color is microscopic layers and air pockets in the features that scatter blue light back to your eyes and let the rest of the light go through. So you can see a blue jay feather. There's actually, I've watched, I watched a guy and like, don't do this at home. Don't watch a guy. Don't watch it. Don't ever watch a guy. Never watch a guy. Never do that again. Guy watching, done. Bird watching, in. Yes, exactly. That's true. That's my personal new goal for life. Never watch a man on the internet again, period. So if you look at a blue jay feather, sort of like, you know, on the blue jay, you're like, wow, that's blue. Alexis Nikole Nelson But if you take it off of the blue jay which like don't do that that's the part to not do don't do that actually corvids are so good at remembering that blue jays don't be so they'll never Forget and they're gonna tell their whole family also the migratory bird act of 1912 is no joke leave them alone that's my alexis that's literally the topic i talked about last time i Liz Clayton Fuller Was on this podcast. Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. I was like, you cannot have bird feathers. I know you want to, but you can't. Alexis Nikole Nelson Don't do it. Liz, we need to be friends because I literally have to bring up the Migratory Bird Act of 1912 at least once a week. Yes, it happens constantly. Liz Clayton Fuller Yes. People will text me not only pictures of birds but then they're holding a feather and i'm like babe put that down that's not yours we gotta talk about them exactly yes yes exactly so i'm Sure this i'm sure this internet man had permission to do this. I don't know. He had a blue jay feather. He's showing how it looks blue in certain light, but when the light passes through it, it looks brown. And then he puts it in a mortar and pestle, and he grinds it up. Yum. And that destroys the structure, which makes structural color. Wow. So it's just brown. It just becomes totally brown. So anywho, bird color. That is, that's crazy cool. Alexis Nikole Nelson If anyone out here is still science fair age and is trying to take home that blue ribbon. Wow. Excellent idea. True. Liz Clayton Fuller Absolutely. Alexis Nikole Nelson Yeah. You can even compare it if you, I don know maybe ask a museum near you if they have like a zoo maybe or a zoo yeah love that love that yeah don't steal feathers from jays no they'll tell all Of the other jays about you and they gossip yes yeah and then they'll tell the crows like oh god family then it'll be a whole problem. Exactly. Exactly. You'll be having to wear a mask every day of your life. Liz Clayton Fuller Then the government's going to get involved. My referee Burdack. Like, you know, listen, just don't do it to yourself. Don't do it. Okay. So that's my sidebar on J Blue, but we're going to fast forward to the 1950s. Okay. So printers and advertisers are facing sort of the similar color quandary that Ridgeway went through, right? Ridgeway, Ridgeway. And they're like, how do we create colors that ([Time 0:14:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/591e0d3d-c416-4354-8979-292b94a3c24f)) - **Blue Jay Blue Is Structural Not Pigment** - Some bird blues, like the blue jay's, aren't pigment-based but arise from microscopic feather structure that scatters blue light. - Grinding a blue jay feather destroys that structure and turns it brown, demonstrating structural color versus pigment. Transcript: Liz Clayton Fuller So here's a quick, here's a quick side note for me to get to talk about bird color. As I'm talking about, you know, the, the colors that were inspired by birds, J blue in the book is this like beautiful blue, right? But you all may or may not know listeners and my fellow podcasters, blue jay feathers are not actually blue. No, they are not. No, they are not. So most color in nature comes from pigments that absorb and reflect light, but blue jay feathers create their color through structural tricks. It's called structural color. Lots of birds have this as a part of their sort of like color display. And structural color is microscopic layers and air pockets in the features that scatter blue light back to your eyes and let the rest of the light go through. So you can see a blue jay feather. There's actually, I've watched, I watched a guy and like, don't do this at home. Don't watch a guy. Don't watch it. Don't ever watch a guy. Never watch a guy. Never do that again. Guy watching, done. Bird watching, in. Yes, exactly. That's true. That's my personal new goal for life. Never watch a man on the internet again, period. So if you look at a blue jay feather, sort of like, you know, on the blue jay, you're like, wow, that's blue. Alexis Nikole Nelson But if you take it off of the blue jay which like don't do that that's the part to not do don't do that actually corvids are so good at remembering that blue jays don't be so they'll never Forget and they're gonna tell their whole family also the migratory bird act of 1912 is no joke leave them alone that's my alexis that's literally the topic i talked about last time i Liz Clayton Fuller Was on this podcast. Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. I was like, you cannot have bird feathers. I know you want to, but you can't. Alexis Nikole Nelson Don't do it. Liz, we need to be friends because I literally have to bring up the Migratory Bird Act of 1912 at least once a week. Yes, it happens constantly. Liz Clayton Fuller Yes. People will text me not only pictures of birds but then they're holding a feather and i'm like babe put that down that's not yours we gotta talk about them exactly yes yes exactly so i'm Sure this i'm sure this internet man had permission to do this. I don't know. He had a blue jay feather. He's showing how it looks blue in certain light, but when the light passes through it, it looks brown. And then he puts it in a mortar and pestle, and he grinds it up. Yum. And that destroys the structure, which makes structural color. Wow. So it's just brown. It just becomes totally brown. So anywho, bird color. That is, that's crazy cool. Alexis Nikole Nelson If anyone out here is still science fair age and is trying to take home that blue ribbon. Wow. Excellent idea. True. ([Time 0:17:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3639f42b-40d2-4734-a3da-385664035747)) - **Color Of The Year Can Be Political** - Pantone's 2024 Color of the Year Cloud Dancer (white) drew criticism for tone-deaf cultural connotations amid political contexts. - Liz and the hosts discuss how color choices for 'color of the year' can carry political meaning beyond design trends. Transcript: Liz Clayton Fuller Okay. So printers and advertisers are facing sort of the similar color quandary that Ridgeway went through, right? Ridgeway, Ridgeway. And they're like, how do we create colors that are consistent and unique and distinct? We need a system. So essentially, recognizing an unmet need, this guy named Lawrence Herbert bought out the printing company where he was working in 1962, and created the company Pantone from that. And he referenced all of these older color guides, including Robert Ridgway's, to sort of establish a color system that was ultimately inspired by the beauty of birds. And we can't really talk about Pantone today without mentioning the color of the year this year, which is white. It's called Cloud Dancer, but like that's bulls**t. Alexis Nikole Nelson Yeah. I had Sky Dancers as a kid and they didn't look like that. Liz Clayton Fuller No, they did not. They were way cooler and more colorful. They were way cooler. Just letting them rip and oh man. Oh my God. Yeah. And so many hair tangles. Oh God, yes. Absolutely. Yes. But yes, so Cloud Dancer, you know, everything is political and it's impossible to separate the color choice for the color of the year from the like broader cultural context that we Are living in and experiencing with a rise of white nationalism and our government being loudly supportive of that. So at best, it's insanely tone deaf and at worst, it's sinister. So not a good color of the year this year, Pantone. Tone deaf. Tone deaf. Tone deaf. Yes. Yes. Tone deaf. Indeed. Yes. It goes right to the top. Yep. Right to the top. ([Time 0:20:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dda0f7ef-758a-49be-984a-e796acc606fc)) - **Naked Mole Rats Break Mammal Rules** - Naked mole rats are abnormal mammals: they are poikilothermic, resist low oxygen, lack typical pain sensitivity, and are studied for cancer resistance and aging. - Rachel highlights their communal snuggling, oxygen tolerance (5% for hours), low pain response, and research interest in longevity and cancer resistance. Transcript: Rachel Feltman Okay, we're back. And so I'm going to talk about how naked mole rat queens, which again, queens. Yes, queen. Listeners already know I'm obsessed with how they use smell to get their way. Now, just in case you missed the like full ode to naked mole rats I did apparently many years ago. That was scary when I look back at how long ago that was. Or if you need a refresher, let's like briefly talk about why the naked mole rat is proof that if there is a god, she loves us. And there's also like a real freak. Liz Clayton Fuller Yes. Rachel Feltman I love them. And they're nasty and weird. So naked mole rats, heterocephalous glaber, are the only mammals whose body can't regulate a steady internal temperature. Their temperature regulation has a lot more in common with cold-blooded animals like reptiles than it does with other rodents and that's why you often see them kind of squirming around In big squishy pasty piles they do a lot of snuggling to stay warm when they're not engaged in bloody dynastic feuds which i will get into in a bit I was going to compare them to anemic people Alexis Nikole Nelson Like myself, but then we got to bloody dynastic feuds. And so we've taken a slight diversion. Rachel Feltman Slight. But you know, just some other things about how bizarre they are. There was a study published a few years ago that showed that naked more rats can survive oxygen levels that would be this is a fatal to humans and fatal to laboratory mice and probably To everyone else oh my god they put them at five percent oxygen which is less than the atmosphere at the top of mount everest and they thought they would show some signs of distress within 15 minutes but an hour later they were fine. And then five hours later, this is a quote from an article in PopSci back in 2017. After five hours, we were convinced that 5% oxygen is not a problem for these guys. So we decided to call it a night, go home and have dinner. And when they put them in a container with zero oxygen, they did pass out after five minutes. But then they're like, okay, yeah, it's a long time. And then they're like, okay, put them them back to normal and they like popped popped back up a few seconds later there were five how so that's sinister yeah i was like the ethics give me Pause but i love what we learned from it yes yes absolutely it is the kind of animal study that you're like oh and why which we you know we're not going to dig too deep into that today but um The the ability itself has something of a sinister edge to it i would say why you need that naked bull rats i honestly i kind of feel like i mean they do live underground and i also they do Like get into these smugly cold-blooded piles i'm like maybe they just like need to be able to deal with being like if you're in the bottom of the pile yeah you're not getting a lot of oxygen Yeah you know scientists something to think about i don't know they also don't seem to experience pain in the way that we understand it. They don't react to injuries that it seems like they should react to. They also don't they don't like seem to have the instinct to treat an injured area as if it's like sensitive. They don't baby it. You know, in other words, they they're just like, whatever. So maybe they're like bloody dynastic feuds are just like fun time yeah maybe that's just a pillow fight for them maybe to them it's like totally chill until one of them is dead and then They're like i missed this part of kim possible i mean this was tumbling a lot didn't didn't tell us all this no yeah yeah yeah basically of any mammals that that had been studied as of you Know when when i last looked it up and i think probably still they have the least sensitive pain receptors yeah so there's all of that they also they they get studied a lot for both aging Research and cancer research because they're basically impervious to cancer in a way that is very unusual for mammals and then also they you know there's some research on whether they Sort they like age in the way that we would expect mammals to age they do definitely like age and die they're not like the freaky immortal deli fish guys but it's like there's maybe some Interesting stuff going on with them i wouldn't be surprised. Someone find their total mirrors at the end of their genes. Yeah. Alexis Nikole Nelson What's going on? Rachel Feltman There's sort of like, there are very few things you could tell me scientists have discovered about naked bull rats that I wouldn't at least be tempted to believe. Right. They're just very weird. Alexis Nikole Nelson It's giving that's what peak performance looks like. Rachel Feltman Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I'm'm sorry that's just like they really are like you know i'm saying all the time both on weirdest thing and like in my book and you know whatever like like humans are not the pinnacle Of anything like evolution is not carrying carrying us to a goal it's just what we are it's stuff is happening and some of us are surviving yeah and that's that's continuing to happen And those things are compounding and i feel like naked mole rats are one of those things where it's like unfortunately this might be the pinnacle of evolution yes you can't tell me they're Alexis Nikole Nelson Not doing really well for themselves that's kind of amazing maybe i want to be a naked mole rat. Liz Clayton Fuller Yeah, I'm kind of like humans. We're sort of like working towards a self-destruction situation, and naked mole rats are just down here like chilling, not feeling pain, being stinky, cuddling. Rachel Feltman Yeah. All the good things about life. Liz Clayton Fuller Surviving in low oxygen levels. Rachel Feltman They're on my vision board. ([Time 0:27:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f95f61b8-f5cd-47b7-9e78-568d7d15aa39)) - **Mole Rat Colonies Are Eusocial Like Insects** - Naked mole rats are one of only two eusocial mammals; colonies have strict hierarchies with a single breeding queen and rank-correlated roles. - Roles range from workers/foragers to soldiers, and dominance can be tested by simple tunnel encounters that reveal rank. Transcript: Rachel Feltman So they're what scientists call eusocial animals. That literally translates to good or true social. The highest level of sociality basically adults live in groups and care for their young cooperatively and only certain individuals produce those young ants and bees are more famous Examples because eusociality is mostly seen among insects it's that sort of like super organized hive or colony uh where you've you've got like ranks of individuals and it all seems To just sort of like happen that way and like they they're programmed to like have that society and they interrelate to each other in that very complex way that seems to be like a well-oiled Machine we're all amazing yeah exactly and there are only two mammalian species that are considered truly eusocial both of them are mole rat the other one is the demarland mole rat which Looks a lot like a naked mole rat except not naked um the clothes the clothes mole rat the clothes mole rat little outfits yeah little top hat so honestly if you thought that the skin folds Were the thing that made the naked mole rat look kind of terrifying um you should take a look at the demarlin mole rat because they're very different but like those beady little eyes and Giant incisors on like a weirdly skinny hamster also unsettling. Oh, my. They're not. I'm looking. They're still not cute. And I'm learning. Yeah. Wow. I was really taken aback at how still freaky they look with hair. Oh, more freaky. Liz Clayton Fuller Because it's like it makes less sense. Like when you're naked, you like yeah you should look like that yeah yeah i just kind of have a top hat they have a little white spot on their head that's true i love how with the way their Rachel Feltman Teeth are oriented they always look like they are mid scream yes oh yeah that's a part of it um but yeah so so there are these weird eusocial mammals a very bizarre thing um which obviously Fascinates scientists to know and um yeah i kind of love him he's kind of growing on me yeah oh i mean same as like i also kind of love naked mole rats even though objectively they're really Horrifying looking and i'm sure given enough time the clothed will also grow its way into my heart yeah they're organized in a hierarchy that's like loosely correlated with their size You've got your like workers and foragers you know sort of the equivalent of those like worker bees yeah shout out to foragers it's important work they're the base of the pyramid exactly Everyone's got to eat yeah yeah you gotta eat yeah and then they've got some more like like soldiers in the middle and then the socially speaking the highest ranked are this sorry and Then socially speaking that the higher ranks you know there's the breeding male and then there's the queen who is the the only breeding female similar to uh what you would see in a bee Colony and yeah one thing one thing that i just learned in prepping for this which is fascinating and hilarious to me is that you can their ranks are so defined that you can actually sort Them using a very simple dominance test you just put two of them and have them meet in a tunnel and then whichever one yields you know is the lower range of the pair oh my god they're just Like oh pardon me i guess if they're the same rank maybe they just do the thing where they like step to either side of the hallway repeatedly. Yeah. Alexis Nikole Nelson And then they're in a dance battle. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Liz Clayton Fuller I'm envisioning them with like tiny arms, like yielding like a you. Rachel Feltman Similar to Queen Bee's, you know, the most dominant mole rat lady is basically competes for that role and then has the right to bear the colonies young while everyone else does everything Else. Alexis Nikole Nelson Honestly, I'd be like, let her. Yeah. Go off, Queen. Yes. Rachel Feltman And yeah, this can result in some very bloody dynastic battles. Back in 2018, the Smithsonian National Zoo actually had a long drawn out battle for queendom. There's a quote from Decius back then of a zookeeper saying, yeah, they've been fighting and killing each other. They have mole rat wars. We're hoping things will calm down a little now. Did they like put up like a screen like dynastic battle happening come back later and i think they probably did like honestly i think they did oh my god because yeah their adult brood i'm Like actually crying i am laughing their adult brood went from 17 to 13 over the course of a few months because there was so much fighting um giving like watership down yes yeah absolutely Alexis Nikole Nelson This is all it's feeling it's giving lord of the flies like if we're gonna be isolated in here we gotta figure some things out yeah yeah And so like back in 2018, when when this happened Rachel Feltman At the zoo, it played out in the way that zookeepers and researchers had grown to expect it to play out, which is that the females who are kind of like largest and seemed most likely to become Queen, like fought with each other quite a bit. Also like started trying to get pregnant the fastest. And the unsurprisingly, the biggest lady won. And so back when I did my deep dive on naked mole rats back in like 2018 or whatever it was, which is anyway, scientists knew that non-breeding females in the colonies like were infertile. ([Time 0:33:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/964f50a1-9820-477b-ba5d-17b3730c35d7)) - **Queen Mole Rats Use A Scented Birth Control** - The queen enforces exclusive breeding by emitting a volatile chemical (isopropyl myristate) that suppresses fertility in other females. - Experiments using absorbed odor swabs and mass spectrometry found the compound peaked at queen ovulation and blocked pregnancies when sprayed in cages. Transcript: Rachel Feltman Yeah to figure this out i know i love it and the research is is really fascinating so they they analyzed 351 i think naked mole rats a bunch of different ages ranks reproductive states Just a swath of naked mole rat culture and they they held little absorbent plastic tubes near them for half an hour each so that they could like waft their odors. As one does. As one does. Yeah, as one does. Yeah, as one does. I really am. I can't wait for like Alchemia to release their milk and milk rat scent. But they put those through a mass spectrometer. They found about 100 distinct chemical compounds. Not surprising that scent is very important to them because they are blind and very good at smelling stuff. They have 1,200 olfactory receptor genes, which is, I think mice only have about a thousand and humans only have a few hundred. So they're very smelly guys. And so that wasn't surprising. But they did find that there was a common thread where queens all had this chemical isopropyl myrostate, which was basically undetectable in other naked mole rats. And it seemed to peak during ovulation. So they were like, hmm, this does seem to probably be related to reproduction. Also, fun fact from new scientists reporting on this, which I will link to at popside.com/weird. This compound is generally considered odorless from human perspectives but the researchers think that maybe is not the case it's used as a solvent and moisturizer in a lot of cosmetics And the study author said that some of his colleagues who shared lab space swore they could smell it when it was present in the lab so it might just be that it's like subtle and some people Can't smell it. But now that it's present in so many products, maybe some people have learned to recognize it. TBD has not been studied yet. But yes, naked mole rats can definitely smell it. They show that it activated cells that respond to smell and stimulated their little olfactory bulbs. Liz Clayton Fuller And it's so wild to think that like using your lotion if you like went to the mole rat colony you just make all the lady mole rats infertile immediately yeah honestly i'm the queen yes you Rachel Feltman Can make yourself smell like a naked mole rat queen every day like i might buy that yeah if that was the way it was being marketed unfortunately i think they would have me yeah i'm kind of Bought in where's that kickstarter yeah i'm i'm opening a tab to start it right after this call yes i'm gonna be your first supporters thank you so in testing how they reacted to it first They found that it did seem to be dependent on rank. They used a T-shaped maze and they placed the smelly queen molecule on one side. And when they put like quite high ranking females on the other, the ones that could theoretically become queen if a queen were to be, know deposed she avoided it so they were like oh maybe They have an instinct to like avoid the queen because they're sort of you know her potential competitors whereas you know other other animals in the colony are like i'm beneath her notice I don't have to worry don't worry about me yeah just passing through and then when they sprayed it in cages basically they took non-breeding females and you know took them out of the colony Put them in cages with males and when they sprayed those cages with this compound there were no pregnancies and in the cages where they did not spray this compound almost all the females Got pregnant so it does seem to be that the presence of this chemical you know helps to send the message that nobody else needs to be making babies cut that out yeah yeah it's amazing yeah Liz Clayton Fuller And they have birth control like, yeah, like patch for. Yeah. Rachel Feltman She's got you covered. Yeah. They found it boost levels of prolactin, which reduces fertility and lowered progesterone, which promotes fertility. And so another part of the experiment, they decided to remove the queen, which would usually lead to like one of those bloody scrambles for succession we talked about. But they sprayed this chemical so that from an olfactory point of view, she was still there and everyone hung out very peacefully until they stopped the spray. And then they were like, you know, open season. Liz Clayton Fuller Yeah. It's me now. ([Time 0:40:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/69cee1f9-a06a-4022-a04b-f28c7889dfd5)) - **Test Social Control By Applying Queen Scent** - Use olfactory signals to manipulate social behavior experimentally by applying queen-associated compounds to cages or maze arms. - In the study, spraying the compound prevented pregnancies and kept colonies peaceful even after queen removal until the scent stopped. Transcript: Rachel Feltman In testing how they reacted to it first they found that it did seem to be dependent on rank. They used a T-shaped maze and they placed the smelly queen molecule on one side. And when they put like quite high ranking females on the other, the ones that could theoretically become queen if a queen were to be, know deposed she avoided it so they were like oh maybe They have an instinct to like avoid the queen because they're sort of you know her potential competitors whereas you know other other animals in the colony are like i'm beneath her notice I don't have to worry don't worry about me yeah just passing through and then when they sprayed it in cages basically they took non-breeding females and you know took them out of the colony Put them in cages with males and when they sprayed those cages with this compound there were no pregnancies and in the cages where they did not spray this compound almost all the females Got pregnant so it does seem to be that the presence of this chemical you know helps to send the message that nobody else needs to be making babies cut that out yeah yeah it's amazing yeah Liz Clayton Fuller And they have birth control like, yeah, like patch for. Yeah. Rachel Feltman She's got you covered. Yeah. They found it boost levels of prolactin, which reduces fertility and lowered progesterone, which promotes fertility. And so another part of the experiment, they decided to remove the queen, which would usually lead to like one of those bloody scrambles for succession we talked about. But they sprayed this chemical so that from an olfactory point of view, she was still there and everyone hung out very peacefully until they stopped the spray. ([Time 0:43:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/94069a4a-9bbd-462b-a128-1525ecdd3b11)) - **Stress Can Make Mole Rats Share Reproduction** - Naked mole rat colonies can switch reproductive strategies under long-term environmental stress, allowing multiple daughters to breed transiently. - Under artificially induced sustained stress, several daughters bred with overlapping pregnancies until one outcompeted the others and resumed a single-queen structure. Transcript: Rachel Feltman And they found that scent signature is also really important for peasants and commoners different colonies carry different like bouquets of chemical compounds sure different stinky Yeah different stinky and when mole rats from different colonies were put together they spent an average of 40 seconds sniffing each other and to suss each other out they're like who The hell are you? Yeah. And if they decided they were strangers, if they smelled strange, they would, in fact, usually try to kill each other. Liz Clayton Fuller Oh, God. Rachel Feltman Yeah, but disabling their sounds of smell also disabled their violent xenophobia, which must be nice. Is that the secret? Alexis Nikole Nelson I was going to say, is there something here? I know. Rachel Feltman I'm feeling like we're inching up to something applicable uh not today but maybe one day to spray the violent xenophobes with just a spray bottle like a bad cat exactly yes but yeah one One other thing before i'm done talking about making little rats unfortunately for today and another recent study basically with asking you know okay so we know that they have these Very violent turnovers not surprising that they're up for that given that they like don't feel pain but basically asking the question like okay so this is a stable evolutionary strategy For them because, you know, in this colony mindset, they're all investing in this one very controlled group of offspring. So it's like very stable for them as opposed to resources being scattered around. Like it can't always be the the most stable option to have just one person doing all the reproduction and like do they have any mechanisms for things going a different way and so this study Speaking of vaguely sinister animal research um they basically induced a man on the internet? Liz Clayton Fuller Always. Alexis Nikole Nelson Always. Rachel Feltman But they basically induced temporarily artificial environmental stressors on a colony, like, you know, relentless, slow burn apocalypse scenario. And under those very specific conditions where it was like there is generational environmental strife here things are not good they saw that when they move them to a new location and That was like the final straw the queen was like not reproducing well anymore instead of a bloody fight several of her daughters started breeding and even had some overlapping pregnancies Without violence and then one of them just kind of inched ahead and was like reproducing more. She became queen and the others like gradually stopped reproducing and fell back into these other roles. So while this was a very, you know, artificially induced situation, it was still just like they didn't tell them to do this. It was the natural behavior of the naked mole rats. So it does indicate that they they have the versatility to be more chill if that's what's good for the sake of the survival of the colony. But they'd rather not. They'd rather not be chill. Alexis Nikole Nelson They'd be like, no, we're duking it out. Let's go. Only if they have to be. Yeah. ([Time 0:45:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ed13f6bf-b4c5-48fe-a4f4-b19369a31708)) - **One Fruit With Many Regional Names** - Alexis Nikole Nelson describes the Amalanchier genus fruit, commonly called Juneberry or Serviceberry, and how regional names vary widely across North America. - Names include Juneberry, Serviceberry, Saskatoon (Canada), Sarvis (SE Ohio/Appalachia), and the Cree-derived Saskatoon place-name origin. Transcript: Rachel Feltman And tell me about this fruit, this berry, Alexa. Who is this? I want to know more. Alexis Nikole Nelson I mean, it's not quite as exciting as crushed bird feathers or the political bloody squabbles of one naked mole rat. But I am here to talk about one of my favorite fruits that you, unless you're Canadian, probably haven't heard of. Shout out to Canada. And the craziest thing about it is it is probably growing very close to you because people love using it as a street tree. That is going to be the fruits of the trees in the amylankier genus and you might be saying okay nerd can you give me like the real people name of this fruit? And my answer for you is it's complicated. Amazing. So we, many of us have heard that story where it's like, oh, the Inuit have many words for snow and snowy conditions, because when something is so important, so prevalent in your society, You tend to have a lot of words to describe it. I think that that speaks to how important this fruit is, because without fail, every single time that I talk about it on the internet, I will get a handful of people being like, but you Didn't say that it also goes by this name that my community calls it actually. And I'll be like, yeah, because I don't have 10 minutes, guys. Yes. Because we literally be here five ever. Liz Clayton Fuller Um, actually, it's called this. Alexis Nikole Nelson Actually, no, I get um, actually on those videos more than anything, by the canadians they're just like don't you know it's our opportunity to be better than the americans and you know Liz Clayton Fuller What good for you canada yeah shout out to the canadians who are listening yeah like you already have that canada like do you need this too exactly exactly come on. Alexis Nikole Nelson So I will start with its most basic name, most basic common English name, which is the name that I grew up calling it, which is Juneberry. It is also the name that is the easiest to explain because its berries are ripe in the month of June. Yep. Liz Clayton Fuller I love a name that says what it is. Alexis Nikole Nelson Exactly. Because we don't always get those. Scientists just be naming things after themselves. Oh, my God. Nine times out of ten. Liz Clayton Fuller Birds, prime example of that. Yes. So many birds named after old white dudes and their homies. Alexis Nikole Nelson Wilson Snipe. Who are you, Wilson? Exactly. You are not a snipe. Take your name off of him. His name is Jebben. He doesn't know you. So we have June berries. And so growing up, I'm like, oh, yes, June berries. Makes perfect sense. Start popping them in your mouth around like the first, second week of June. Unfortunately, now as where I live has moved up in growing zones and as we have inched closer to climate calamity. Unfortunately, we now should maybe be calling them end of May berries. But that's really going to be throwing things all up in the air we don't want to confuse people june berries now the first thing that's going to happen if you say june berry to someone who Lives on the western side of the country is they're going to be like that's not that fruit's name its name is service berry and you'll go hmm service berry that's interesting i wonder Why it has that name and a liar will pop up out of nowhere and they don't even know that they're lying and that's that's sometimes the worst kind of liar. And they'll say, it's because when they flower, it's right around the time when the ground has thawed enough after winter to be able to continue funeral services. So you can start putting people in the ground again, which does make me go, all right, when the ground hard froze, I do guess it would be pretty hard to put people in the the ground. True. Liz Clayton Fuller I did just have that exact thought, like, yeah, that seems tough. Alexis Nikole Nelson Yeah. I'm like, oh, dang. I do guess you've got to just let people like chill quite literally until you can be putting them back in the ground. And so for years, I also was a liar. And I parroted this story about this alternate name. And then I met my friend and mentor and also critically acclaimed foraging book writer, Sam Thayer. And he pulled me aside and said, did you know that's wrong? And I said, I did not tell me everything. So service is actually a really bad, like Americanized pronunciation of the genus Sorbus, which is European and is the mountain ash or rowan trees. They are both in the rose family. They both have the little crown butt ends, as many rose family fruits do. And so when people, people, koalimists, got here. They were just like Sorbus Barry. That's who that is. And it just slowly became Service Barry. Just like a game of telephone, essentially. Exactly. Exactly. And we just kept it. We just kept it. And we just have to be okay with that. Service Barry, by and large, is the name that you are going to find for members of the Amalanchier genus in the most places in North America. But then a Canadian will come knocking on your door and say, hey, we have that fruit. And that's not what we call it here. And you'll say, okay, Canadian, tell me your story about the Amalanchier genus. And they will say, oh, that's a Saskatoon, don't you know? And then you'll say, that's not a berry. That's the name of a city. In Saskatchewan, what ([Time 0:52:32](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dd9eb0e3-b2f4-407d-8626-3166e9cf458f)) - **Fruit Names Reveal Local History And Uses** - Etymologies reveal local culture: 'serviceberry' is an Americanized pronunciation of Sorbus, 'Saskatoon' comes from a Cree word, and Amalanchier derives from a Provencal word meaning little apple. - Regional names like Shadbush or Chuckley pear reflect seasonal cues (shad run) or local uses (wood quality) rather than botanical accuracy. Transcript: Alexis Nikole Nelson And he pulled me aside and said, did you know that's wrong? And I said, I did not tell me everything. So service is actually a really bad, like Americanized pronunciation of the genus Sorbus, which is European and is the mountain ash or rowan trees. They are both in the rose family. They both have the little crown butt ends, as many rose family fruits do. And so when people, people, koalimists, got here. They were just like Sorbus Barry. That's who that is. And it just slowly became Service Barry. Just like a game of telephone, essentially. Exactly. Exactly. And we just kept it. We just kept it. And we just have to be okay with that. Service Barry, by and large, is the name that you are going to find for members of the Amalanchier genus in the most places in North America. But then a Canadian will come knocking on your door and say, hey, we have that fruit. And that's not what we call it here. And you'll say, okay, Canadian, tell me your story about the Amalanchier genus. And they will say, oh, that's a Saskatoon, don't you know? And then you'll say, that's not a berry. That's the name of a city. In Saskatchewan, what are you talking about? And they'll say, we literally named the city after the fruit. Liz Clayton Fuller Whoa. Wow. Alexis Nikole Nelson The big apple. The big apple. The big Saskatoon. The big Saskatoon. It comes from a Cree word for the Saskatoon fruit. Nice. It was a very important food stuff for the Cree, usually one of the earlier fruits you'd be getting in the growing season. And it was important enough that, yeah, we just named, we named the city Saskatoon. Amazing. The actual Cree word is much longer, and I will not embarrass myself or disrespect the Cree language by trying to pronounce the original word. But I implore all of you to do an internet search. Yes. And make yourself smarter and wiser. Now, at this point, you're like, okay, so this fruit's got a lot of names, But I feel like we've gotten them all covered. Wrong. Incorrect. Because then someone from specifically southeastern Ohio will show up and say, actually, I should have shown up before. Because I have to do with the last one. We just call it Sarvis. Rachel Feltman Sar we we just call it sarvis and you'll say oh okay and they're like yeah it's sorbus but wrong the missing link yeah because i was sitting there being like imagining the horrible american Liz Clayton Fuller Accent that had turned sorb sorb service and there it is sarbis sarbis i'm from tennessee and i feel like sarbis sounds like us i mean southeastern ohio we're in the foothills of the appalachian Alexis Nikole Nelson Mountains very much like culturally have things in common more so with Appalachia than the rest of Ohio and so there you have Sarvis which yes is the the Australopithecus missing link Between Sorbus and Serviceberry and so then you'll be like, oh, okay. So that, and then someone from Newfoundland will kick down your door. You don't have a door anymore. And they'll be like, that there is a Chuckly pear. And you'll say, what? So this was the one, I've known all of these other ones for a while chuckley pear was the one that i was like no i actually have to do some deep diving for this one because what in the heck is A chuckle what is a chuckley and it it don't look like a bear it don't look like a pear it looked like a bloob yeah it looked like a bloob but on long stems in bunches so i found out that chuckley Is an old new colloquial term for like strong nazi wood okay which service berries do tend to have they have they have pretty strong wood useful for a lot of different things. And I'm sure that in an area like Newf, where the seasons are shorter, and maybe you're not always getting the big, tall, majestic trees to be cutting things out of, it is a useful plant For more than just the fruit reasons. It is also useful for the wood that it is offering and pear. They're like, it's like a pear. It's, it's really not. Liz Clayton Fuller Have they ever seen a pear? Alexis Nikole Nelson Well, now they are closely related. They are cousins. Pears are also in the Rose family. They also have that cute little like blossom and star butt like apples and like service berries. Liz Clayton Fuller Okay. Alexis Nikole Nelson And if you find some pear species, they do. I mean, the Bradford pear fruits. If we want to talk about a very stinky pear, we want to talk about a pear that everyone wants to fight. Rachel Feltman I looked up wild pear and I'm seeing some, like I can at least understand where this came from. Alexis Nikole Nelson It makes a bit more sense when you're not thinking of the like bodacious. Right, the grocery store pear, the like engineered pear. Yeah, we're not talking about an Anjou. Yeah. We're talking about one of their ancestors. So you're like, oh my gosh, okay, Chuckly pear. Adding that one to the list. I should have been counting. And then someone from New England will be like, that's a sugar plum. Rachel Feltman Sugar plum like the fairy? Exactly. Alexis Nikole Nelson And I'm like, do we need to call Tchaikovsky? Like, what? What are we doing? What's happening? Where did this one come from? And then they're like, oh, it's just because it's sweet. ([Time 0:57:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b7e172a9-76bd-4a07-bfa0-2e7a95937ddb)) - **Plant Serviceberry For Birds And Early Fruit** - Plant Amalanchier as resilient street or backyard trees to provide early-season fruit for people and birds. - Alexis recommends checking iNaturalist for local sightings and expects robins and cedar waxwings to quickly harvest the berries. Transcript: Alexis Nikole Nelson Wow. Which, and I didn't even get to mention this, is absolutely delicious. It's one of my favorite foods. Heck yeah. They like an apple and a blueberry and an almond had a baby because the seeds inside are edible and almondy almond also in the apple also in the rose family yes she does it all yes she really Does it all almonds are just the kernels inside of a pit of a stone fruit. Incredible. Wow. And all of those guys are all related to sweet, sweet Juneberry, one of my favorite snacks. It does happen to have its own chapter in my book with some of my favorite recipes in it. But honestly, usually the issue that we have is the fruit making at home to be cooked into anything because we'll be gathering and we'll be like two for my mouth and one for the jar yes and One for the jar we are planting our own in our backyard to hopefully help mitigate this issue yes and i can't wait to put their name tags on them. Yay. Liz Clayton Fuller I want it to be a little scroll. It's going to be like a string. Yeah. Yes, that you can pull out and it just gives you all of them and a little sentence about why. Rachel Feltman Oh, I love that. Alexis Nikole Nelson So there, a little etymology and yeah, a little botany for your day. Liz Clayton Fuller Also the birds be loving service berries. Alexis Nikole Nelson You got to get your hands on these berries. I always tell people go onto iNaturalist and type in Amalankier into the search bar and be shocked at how many of them are in your area. Rachel Feltman Yes, I bet. Alexis Nikole Nelson People love them as street trees. Rachel Feltman Are very resilient guys yeah no there are for sure some around here and i just you know i'm somebody who pays some attention to things i can forage and that just isn't is it one that i knew I should be eating um i grew up in the part of south jersey that is really appellation and listening to this i was like so shocked that this was not a thing that we ate and talked about but I think it's because i was so deep in blueberry country a lot of pride about blueberries yes but i think that just dominated the conversation yeah yeah if you're close to like the pine Alexis Nikole Nelson Barony areas it's absolutely going to be a blueberry to cranberry conversation for you guys 100 but you do also have a handful of amelanchier species as well nice oh very exciting yeah Liz Clayton Fuller I want to plant one now for me and the birds oh my gosh and you will be duking it out with the birds. Alexis Nikole Nelson The cedar wax wings. Yes. The cedar wax wings will start camping in them like the week before the fruits are fully ripe. I love that. And they'll just be like, listen, we're unemployed. We got all day. Yeah. We got all day. You'll never beat us to all of these. Liz Clayton Fuller And you know what? That's okay with me. Exactly. Me too. Alexis Nikole Nelson I love sharing with the birds. It's always a good time. ([Time 1:09:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ce3958dd-966c-4a72-a4a1-8d2f77748683))