This is Connecticut Public Radio n.p.r. And n.p.r. H.d. One merit and 90.5 The b.p. K t n w p k t h d one Norwich at 89 point one. F.m. Stamford at 88.5 that you are Southampton at 91.3 and npr dot org Good afternoon you're listening to Connecticut Public Radio I'm David De Roche the time is 1 o'clock at Science Friday is next. Wales or giants of the scene but they 1st started out on land so how did they make this change I'm Ira Flatow and this is Science Friday. While seem to defy logic they are the largest creatures on Earth 10000 times bigger than their earliest ancestors some species can put on 100 pounds a day and they started out on land over 100000000 years ago paleontologist Nick pioneers and tell the story of where whales came from and where they're going it takes us on a travelogue of whale evolution and Radio Labs Molly web series here to talk about the microscopic world of new embryos and how a literal March of tiny cells to term is the fate of future generations all coming up after the break so stay with us. Ly from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying President Donald Trump is pledging his eternal support as he put it for the families of the 5 capital because that staffers who were killed in a mass shooting yesterday in Annapolis Maryland N.P.R.'s Scott Horsley reports President tribe spoke about the attack during a White House event marking 6 months since the passage of the g.o.p. Tax cut he voiced sympathy for those who lost loved ones and called the deadly attack horrific this attack shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief journalists like all Americans should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job Police say the suspect in the shooting had a long history of harassing reporters at the newspaper he'd sued the paper for defamation but the lawsuit was tossed out Scott Horsley n.p.r. News the White House. More than one and a half 1000000 people who hold Citi Group credit cards can expect $335000000.00 in refunds u.s. Regulators are ordering the bank to reimburse city customers who may have been paying too high an interest Citi Group disclose months ago it used a flawed methodology in determining who is eligible for an interest rate reduction as required under federal law Citi Group was spared a penalty because it chose to self report in Iowa critics of the state's new voter id law say recent data from the state's primary election shows the requirement could disenfranchise voters in the future I will Public Radio's Clay Masters reports the secretary of state there says the numbers show the election went smoothly last year in Iowa with full control of state government Republicans passed a voter id law the June 5th primary here was the 1st statewide test as part of a gradual rollout voters without I.D.'s this year are being allowed to sign an oath attesting they are who they say they are data obtained by The Associated Press shows nearly one percent of the electorate in the 10 counties with the largest turnout did not show identification during the primary the voters either did not have it or chose in protest not to show it the a.c.l.u. Of Iowa says the findings demonstrate the best and easiest path to protect voting rights is to keep the oath in place next year the option of signing an oath will go away for n.p.r. News I'm clean asters in Des Moines Canada is releasing its list of American made products that it will hit with tariffs in retaliation for the troubled ministrations tariffs on steel and aluminum imports Dan carbon check reports it out it was response will be made dollar for dollar to the tune of $16600000000.00 among the u.s. Products to be hit by retaliatory tariffs or steel of aluminum motorboats whiskies chocolate toiletries and household items in addition to the finalist cabinet ministers will outline auto was financial support for Canadian steel and aluminum companies impacted by Washington's tariffs the Canadian measures go into effect on Sunday that staying carbon check reporting this is n.p.r. News. A teenager at the center of a heated Medical and Religious debate over brain death has died N.P.R.'s catchall reports on the controversy just make math became the center of a debate over brain death and 2013 she had surgery on her tonsils after complications our doctors said she had irreversible brain damage a corner even issued a death certificate but MacMath family didn't agree she was dead her mother Nighy low Wingfield brought the fight over whether her daughter was dead to court Winfield cited religious beliefs and the fact that McMath's toes and fingers still wiggled and judge extended life support eventually Winfield moved her daughter to New Jersey a state that accommodates religions that don't recognize brain death one of the family's ongoing lawsuits now would rescind the 2013 death certificate and issue a new certificate with the day the family says she really died June 22nd cat chow n.p.r. News Washington the board overseeing Puerto Rico's finances says it plans to eliminate a $25000000.00 scholarship fund for the u.s. Commonwealth largest public university that's part of the new austerity measures a financially distressed island is adopting today the board said it would also do away with a $50000000.00 annual fund for towns and cities and beginning the next fiscal year no Christmas bonuses for government workers what are eco had long been confronted with severe financial troubles but the island wide destruction from Hurricane money last year especially the power grid pull the island deeper into crisis I'm Lakshmi saying n.p.r. News in Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the Pew Charitable Trusts celebrating 70 years of serving the public learn more at Pew Trust's dot org slash 70 and their crazy Foundation dot org. Support for Connecticut Public Radio comes from our listeners and from Connecticut magazine each month Connecticut's original lifestyle magazine offers information about issues personalities events and entertainment on the web at Connecticut Mag dot com. This is Science Friday I'm Ira Flatow a bit later in the hour why the land animal most closely related to the whale is a hippo talking about whales it's kind of interesting but 1st this week astronomers got some bad news the launch date for the long awaited James Webb Space Telescope is being delayed again the launch is now planned for no whirling around then March of 2021 Joining me to talk about that and other shorts selected short subjects in science the Soviet Bushwick senior editor at Popular Science Welcome back so thanks for having Let's talk so what's this time what's the problem this time with the delay so. With with all the delays this was originally scheduled to go up sometime between 20072011 now being pushed back you know a decade from that original optimistic view they've had NASA has had an independent review board look into just what's going on and they've implemented a lot of their suggestions but as a result of of testing out and trying to fix the problems they've realized that they're actually going to be a year later than they thought they were last time they had delays they do things wrong and made names to it what with the delays of bad they've been pointed a few different things including excessive optimism and yeah just simple simply dealing with such a complex system but Shimon air is another big one so there's been incidents where some fasteners were not installed properly and so during testing screws came loose and then they had to go back in and tighten the screws and reinstall the fasteners or just situations where the excessive optimism is just where they just thought they would be able to do it and didn't take their estimate to keep excessive optimism as a new kind of phrase for me. So why is the Hubble so you know as a successor to the Hubble Why is this so important this is going to be able to look back to when stars and galaxies were just forming like very soon after the Big Bang . So peering back into the history of the soul not just the solar system but of the universe and we can learn so much about how the universe formed especially in those early days when everything was a lot more volatile and that's just a really exciting time to look at It'll also be able to look at the mysteries of planets and to look at exoplanets in more detail because it's going to be a very powerful you know what 3800 exoplanets Yeah it's going to exciting avenue for us to explore our let's move on to the f.d.a. Approving a new type of drug this week yes the f.d.a. Has approved the 1st type of drug based on marijuana so this is a drug called a pill x. It's going to be used to treat 2 specific forms of epilepsy and it's it's not it's not entirely going to be ready for market yet 1st the Da has to re classify c.b.d. Or Kennedy all which is the substance it's based on so this is still classified as something without medical value by the Da so they will they're probably going to be reclassifying in the next couple months before this can go but then so you're as you say all the people who are waiting for this it's not going to happen any time tomorrow or the next rate they're going to have to wait a little bit longer for this to become available but one of the one of the forms of epilepsy exposed to treat is called Dr a syndrome and there's no other medication on the market right now so this could be enormously helpful in trials it's reduced the frequency of seizures by about 40 percent I don't know so it's going to change the conversation about medical marijuana I magine Yeah absolutely I think right now people sort of administer and measure their own dosages for medical marijuana and this is it's been distilled to an oil with a very specific dosage you know there's missing times you would want to take it so it sort of becomes regulated and brought into the official pharmaceutical market so this is a big. Difference from I think the way that medical marijuana is currently perceived now look at big business involved absolutely all change the comforts of home priests. That was going through the news about the biologists have found a nursery from manta rays mantra manta rays so these are these really large rays they can have a wingspan of about 23 feet and they're these incredible animals but we know very little about their early lives and researchers have never seen mantis give birth in the wild they don't really know how they develop and so this discovery of a nursery in the Gulf of Mexico is super exciting because they can look at the the natural life cycle of these animals there's no way of tourists are going I mean no you have to you have to travel a long distance to get here this is a place where scientists are focusing it's a marine preserve and they're hoping to study these very young so when they're young the manta rays are only about 7 feet across and they're kind of puny with their hosts is very lucky and it's exactly the same into standard elsewhere in biology New Yorkers got a bit of a treat this week oh let's let's take a listen. Musky and like damp but just stinks like a rotten there was no good said no such thing my voice smelled roadkill once before in the sticks actually what it's called is like seriously was that bad I got right up there and it just smelled like dirty diapers What Were They Thinking about they are talking about a lovely corpse flower Yeah so corpse flowers they spend about a decade building up to get ready to to bloom and when they do the result smells like as people were describing like of rotting meat like corpses like sweaty socks there's lots of great descriptions for it it's a very exciting moment and I think I recognise some Science Friday staff member was actually one up they think they think the train up there and there we had a scientist showing them around and they said and how big was the smell was so. To say you know we opened the door in the morning and 3 of our own staff people threw up because it accumulated overnight so bad it was really kind of cool I prefer to observe it through the radio that's were different get close to the radio I mean we humans don't like it but carrion beetles love this smell so the hole is there right right the reason these these flowers release this terrible smell so they can draw these carrion beetles and they come and they they gather pollen from the flower and next time they wander off they could go pollinate other flowers and this is the question of how this reproduces I don't know thank you so good for them and let lastly the important question of how weakly a t. Rex is tongue is what's the burning issue well if you look at dinosaurs in fiction you know often that you know you'll see them with these long wag Alito on the sort of like a lizard tongue and so researchers decided you know let's let's see for once and for all what their tongues really would have been like so they looked at the hyoid bone of fossils the hyoid is a bone that kind of anchors the tongue in place and then they were comparing fossils to the hyoid of birds and of tiles and they found that dinosaur are probably closer to Crocodile crocodile ones than anything else and crocodiles have these kind of short stubby tongue not nothing that you would see waggling out as a dinosaur rulers so they've I'm graveled this this tongue mystery you know lizard like tongue coming out of a t. Rex now no which obviously I'm kind of thankful for that's pretty scary. Wait for the remake of the movie's over you know Soviet Bushwick senior editor at Popular Science now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is your if you don't you know it Louis Public Radio One of the radio news local science stories of national import where and when you choose a steak there are a lot of factors to consider right you know like yours medium or rare t. Bone a rib eye but long before that steak gets to your plate farmers and ranchers are making decisions of their own and increasingly in the. Beef cattle world these decisions are being shaped by genetic testing with farmers selecting specific traits that they hope to see in future generations of cannel Joining me now is a Chrystopher who studies Harvard Harvest Public Media reporter a k b i n Columbia Missouri welcome to the program Hey thanks for having me so tell us about this new way what sorts of genetic traits are beef producers looking for right there's a lot there's a lot they're looking at one of the biggest ones is birth weight or waning weight things that farmers depend on they want to know how quickly the cattle are going to grow they're also looking at how. How they're rabbis are developing how much Marbling is in there in their meat so there's a variety of things that are looking at Wow And how does this work is there a case as you say there's is there a catalog I know I can choose my cattle but I can basically this I would stake I want to grow as Actually you look at your herd you look at whether whatever its weaknesses and then you can throw lect the things that want that can help strengthen your herd whether you want to have cows that are growth grow a lot faster or have higher feet efficiency and those traits can get incorporated into your genetic pool in your herd and strengthen that and ultimately help save farmers a lot of input costs so what's the what's been the drive behind this right so actually a couple years ago in 2012 there was a big drought that took out a lot of the cattle inventory in the u.s. So people been trying to build back their herds and since then genetic testing is also progressed and this is a much more predictable way to to pick and select what you want in your herd not having to spend a ton of money trying to figure out if your cow is going to be better at eating grain versus hay versus grass whatever it might be it takes a lot of the gamble out for farmers so you can put in a low. More money on the front end to get your cow genetically tested so you know what more those traits are going to be like and predictability is the science myth mature enough to really know how well you know yours but you're spending your money on this now how well is how successful you're going to be right you can't rely completely on this just yet it's still just one tool in the toolbox as the cliche goes but it is becoming more important because there are more traits that are big that are getting tested so there's more d.n.a. Markers that scientists are looking at to help select for different types of traits that we don't look at right now that could help farmers be even more specific and precise with what they're looking to add to their to their to their herd you know so I'm reminded when we hear horses you know champion horses they go out to stud they're bred because a they run really fast this is the next step it sounds like you're not you're not just looking at the you know the total horse or the total coward to the beef cattle here you're looking at a specific trait I want to T.-Bone steak I'm going to breed this for free t. Bone steak exactly exactly us actually are going to be able to choose what type of meat I mean I'm sure they'll be of the all around perfect. General cow if you will but there will be ones that have specific. Traits that are better for you know I try to purses a rabbi Yeah so this is a big business I mean there must be international interest in this there is a lot you know we have developing economies in China and India and with those growing middle classes we have more people interested in buying beef so a lot of interest is coming from overseas and that's driving a lot of the uptake in beef across the world and mostly with American genetics so in 2017 I think it was $170000000.00 worth of ball theme and was actually sold export it out of the u.s. That's triple and twin the past 20 years so American genetics and n.b.c. . We are getting to target all over the world well speaking of butchering forgive me for birth butchering your name Christopher Christopher who's 3rd is a Harvest Public Media reporter at the k.v.i.a. In Columbia thanks for taking time to be with us today we have a story about before genetic testing on our Web site at Science Friday dot com slash bowls we're going to talk about whales when we come back so stay with us. Plato This is Science Friday from w. N.y.c. Studios on the Next Radio Lab what would the world look like without the skeeters totally awesome from mosquitoes that suck the Lone Star to it's like something from alien takes that latch Oh goodness me hey you know if it could those freaky little insects actually be doing us a favor. They are the resistance fighters on behalf of the rain forest that's on the Next Radio Lab. Join us Saturday afternoon at 3. Well doing time in a federal prison Jeff Smith met some of the most promising entrepreneurs ever encountered so when Jeff got out he decided to tap into that hidden genius there's not a single concept that you learned out of Harvard Business School that you could learn inside federal prison that story next time Ted Radio Hour from n.p.r. . Listen Sunday afternoon at 4. This is Science Friday I'm Ira Flatow with a holiday weekend coming up maybe you're going to do a little whale watching that on your agenda because you know it's very exciting people love to go watch for whales because they have been just sick and on inspiring animals and some of the largest creatures on Earth reaching up to 150 tons and listen to this they can they take in a living room size volume of water in one gulp they can dive thousands of feet into the ocean while holding their breath all the way down but all of these details also make their existence improbable according to my next guest because whales after all are mammals like us and they evolved from a 4 legged dog like animal that roamed around on the land so how did all this happen big by Ensign Chase is the story of whale evolution in his new book he's the author of spying on whales the past present and future of Earth's most awesome creatures He's also the curator of fossil marine mammals at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington d.c. Welcome to Science Friday Hi Ira Happy to be here thank you a great book as a terrific read I learned so much from from this book. You said that you've never had a he never been a whale hugger so to speak that that why you know why that whales aren't your destiny How did you get involved in it. So is I think for a lot of people how they get interested in different kinds of science is that as a chronicle of happenstance and unique opportunities I was always interested in evolution and as I was attracted to fossils and certainly the big skeletons of dinosaurs that you see in museums I just thought the material evidence for evolution was really compelling and I had the right opportunities the right time especially in college that exposed me to knowing a bit more about the fossil record whales and that got me really. Cited about knowing about evolution through this kind of vehicle Wales and I just kind of kept with it. Because there was was there like a Jurassic Park moment where you saw some things that I want to do that you know there well I think not for me at least it was small moments one was finding a dead dolphin on a beach once on a college ecology field trip and watching it decay was actually fascinating for me I mean I didn't love it but it was still it made me start thinking about how did the remains of organisms enter the fossil record how do we get fossils in the 1st place and then I was also fortunate to also get to do some real research on c.t. Scans of fossil skulls belonging to whales to try to understand how their brains evolved through time well speaking of course some of the more fascinating creatures to study in terms of their behavior which is really sophisticated Our number 844724255 if you'd like to talk about whales and there's a lot to talk about before 7 to 4 to 5 you can also tweet us at the Science Friday . You know it it's so fascinating the history of whales because as you write in your board the whale started out evolutionarily speaking a sort of like big dogs I'm land right right right how do you get from there to there right so if we look at let's just take d.n.a. Assume we don't know anything about the fossil record and we just try to figure out who are whales most related to Among all the species mammals on the planet if we go with our observations and recognize that whales are mammals in the 1st place and I'd say that you know it's they're hardly like the mammals that we see on a daily basis you have to watch them for more than a few minutes to recognize that they breathe air that they nurse their young. And so once you realize that then if you look at their d.n.a. They're most closely related to even talk. Host mammals so cows deer pigs camels whales are really different from their nearest relatives and what that tells us is that there had to have been a lot of evolutionary change in their history and that's what the way that we know about that directly is through their early evolutionary history that's in the fossil record source fortunate to actually have these fossils early on that show us how they transformed from land ancestry into something a bit more Quantic and started on their big start out with you know living by the shore and then their feet legs changed because they were getting you know more spending more and more time in the water what happened right that's so we see this in if we look at the family tree of whales and if we include all the fossil relatives especially for the earliest whales and these are if you look at these fossils and you can actually go walk into the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum in the ocean hall we have this great exhibit of whale evolution and you can see what some of these earliest whales look like they have a pulse as that is tightly sutured to the backbone they have weight bearing limbs they have a skull that looks more like the skull of a land mammal than it does like any kind of whale that we see today and through time as we go up in the rock sequence again in younger and time we're fortunate in having found fossils that show us the transformations that happen as we get into whales that evolved more and more to life in the water than life on land now why that is potentially 18 different reasons why that could be and some of them are testable some of them aren't the fossil record is really hard to bear on those why questions but the how questions that's something that we definitely know for the early evolutionary history of whales Jack is one what is the motivation motivating factor you know what drives a somebody to leave the shore or with an ant. You know take up residence on the ocean there's a writer reasons you might want to escape predators maybe there's more resources that you alone can. Can pursue in the in the water remember the setting to which is really important at that time and there's the earliest whales only come from a specific part of the world this is what is now India Pakistan but 40 to 50000000 years ago over 50000000 years ago this part of the world was more like an island archipelago in an equity Tauriel Sea So that's the kind of setting that we see the 1st we had and how the 1st earliest whales would have lived a year you're talking about a time right after the dinosaurs died out. Did did did did Dad was that a catalyst for them to evolve. Yes so that the earth the oldest whale on the planet that we know of is some 53000000 years old and that's over 10000000 years after the and Cretaceous mass extinction that wiped out all the dinosaurs that didn't evolve into birds. So there's 10 you know roughly 10000000 years when we in the oceans there weren't the large marine predators that there were during the Cretaceous So these reptiles like Moses ores and if the sores and plesiosaurs. You would not have wanted to go on a scuba trip in the Cretaceous ocean but you know so this is relatively empty there's sharks and sea turtles so in some ways yes that there there was a vacancy in the. In the e.c. Notions you're right that whales did not undo 300000000 years of terrestrial modifications Instead the story is far more interesting please explain what you meant by that right so if we if we recognize that whales had tress trail ancestry so they had ancestors that once lived on land. Adapting to life. In the water isn't just about magically evolving gills there's constraints and evolution but there's also opportunities so what we see from the fossil record tells us slowly. Episodically these changes that happen in the skeletal system and what we infer happens to it to their ecology from changes to their sensory systems. What that shows us is how exactly limbs transform from weight bearing structures into flippers they start flattening out they stop bearing weight we see their tails become locomotion devices being able to actually power their bodies through the water and then the dramatic changes that happen to their skull I don't know if you've ever seen the skull of a dolphin or a whale but they look nothing like those of the land mammal so we can read a lot of the story of evolution in their skeletons and why does why are some whales so big why that's a great question so with some colleagues we try to address this at least for one group of whales the filter feeding whales baling whales they include some of the largest whales ever blue whales in whales bowhead whales right whales. And that's kind of the 1st amazing point is that those are some of the largest heaviest animals to have ever evolved in the history of life on Earth there are no 200000 pound dinosaurs in the fossil record so we are living in an age of giants that's the 1st peculiar sacked the 2nd is it looks like when you start mapping these traits on an evolutionary tree of an evolutionary family tree these whales we see them all get big at about the same time in that timeframe is relatively recently in their entire geologic history so in the last few 1000000 years well seem to get really really big when we see multiple things happening at once on different branches of the tree of life that tells. About external factors that's telling us something about how the world is influencing their evolutionary history and what my colleagues and I argued was that it probably has something to do with Ice Age seas that changes in how productive Ice Age seas were from millions of years before it fueled a richness and abundance of patchy prey So getting these kinds of aggregations of krill and fish the kind that you see on natural history programs where these big bait balls fish swimming together in a tight school that's a relatively recent chill logic phenomenon and that's what led to the right kinds of setting the stage for whales to take advantage and move beyond just being very large to truly Titanic size classes that's what we think at least the baling whales got so big there of course other kinds of whales sperm whales killer whales they each happen to be the largest members of their individual groups so there's something a bit more complex about what's going on the past few 1000000 years that still hasn't been resolved the number 844724255 we're talking about whales with Nik by uncertain who is author of us spying on whales it's a great it's a great book Nick it's a great 3 let's even go to Manhattan and go to Amy in New York New York hi Amy. Oh hi I think the audio dropped out for Story Of My Life. Yeah. I was wondering Well 2 things One it that I thought I had read. A long time ago that well devolved animal that. When mammals that were like cattle and. I think are 2 different things at one point they came from a. I don't answer to dogs or and another time I would I mean you know and. But I'm wondering if you did what the cattle had thought is true or. Close relations between cattle and hippos Satan. Right thanks for the call Sherry I mean so what I would say is that. We can look at d.n.a. And if we just look at the d.n.a. Relationships of all these mammals that you and you mentioned hippos are the closest living species of mammal to all whales and that's kind of a peculiar thing because hippos live a large part of their life underwater we do have a fossil record for hippos and they show us that they were probably living on land much more so in the past than they do today. But that still doesn't answer exactly who are they most closely related to especially that's true for paleontologists So we've known about the d.n.a. Evidence for these relationships for many decades but paleontologists and know about the extinct branches on the tree of life much better than almost anybody else and so they recognize there's potentially a lot of other candidate relatives out there that are completely extinct that look sure a lot like the earliest whale fossils so this is a debate for many years was what piece of evidence do you believe to do you look at the d.n.a. Evidence and say well that's what it's got to be more there are other and they're not really mutually exclusive and what it took was finding complete skeletons of the earliest whales where ankle bones were preserved intact along with all the other bones in the skeleton so that you knew that the ankles belong to this species for early whale and once that was determined those ankle bones look like they belong to no other group of mammals aside from those of the even toed hoofed mammals to which hippos belong so that that evidence was found on. Almost 20 years ago now 1520 years ago from India Pakistan for the earliest whales shows us that all whales nested within the family tree of even toad mammals which include cows and yours and pigs so any I think you're kind of half right all right whatever will give her a batting average of 505 times. Talking to a nick by Ensign author of us spying on whales on Science Friday from w. N.y.c. Studios. Well you say whales have a culture and that's influenced their development what do you mean by that well if we have a broad definition of culture I'm a paleontologist so I get to get to painted it prod scales here is culture is information that's transmitted between or among individuals. Or through the generations but outside of the body if it's some kind of song for us it's usually written down or or visual but it can also be oral if that information is transferred outside the body through generations across individuals through time and space then it looks like a lot of other species on the planet have culture besides us and there's a lot of studies out there for primates for elephants and also for cetaceans and that's the really crazy thing I think is that you can look at the whale family tree and there is great evidence for culture in bailing whales into swales so humpbacks seem to have songs that have been traded in a social network through time and across the ocean sperm whales seem to have specific dialects that unite their family groups and certainly killer whales to the Pacific Northwest where they've been studied probably the best it's clear that their individual calls create these boundaries between popular among populations that are very very restrictive and those populations haven't into. Bred in over 100000 years so for killer whales at least it seems to be an example of speciation in action before our eyes that stricken in large part by the cultural component killer whales could eat salmon or mammals or sharks but there are specific groups they're called Eco types so they're salmon eaters and green mammal leaders and maybe shark eaters we don't really know for the offshore killer whales but it seems that culture really restricts how they interact when I must mean a culture implies that they they able to pass that on from one generation to the next Absolutely this is something that can be documented if you look long enough over time you can photo i.d. These animals from their dorsal fins drop an acoustic probe in the ocean and you can listen to their specific calls in acoustics and record that and that's something that can be identified and logged through time so I think that to me that satisfies the criteria for culture where we're going to take a break and come back and talk lots more with Nick client's an author of spying on whales the past present and future of Earth's most awesome creatures you can read an excerpt from his book on our website at Science Friday dot com slash whale bone Science Friday dot com slash whale bones Mark conversation and tweets will be will take them after the break people want to know what your most magical Well moment discovery in the field was so I think about that and we'll talk about it after the break Nik Stay with us we'll be right back. I'm Ira Flatow this is Science Friday from w. N.y.c. Studios. Support for Science Friday comes from Draper Draper's team of engineers biologists developers physicists and astronauts work together to expand the horizon of what's possible pursuing solutions to the world's challenges Draper engineering possibilities support also comes from the Alfred p. Sloan Foundation working to enhance public understanding of science technology and economics in the modern world and from the high sing Simons foundation unlocking knowledge opportunity and possibilities more at h.s. Foundation dot org And from the Center for Inquiry presenting Skeptical Inquirer for medical quackery to climate change denial Skeptical Inquirer offers the latest in scientific skepticism learn more at c.s.i. C o p dot org. The New York City taxi system was for decades a closed economy and then came to town last year was the 1st time more people were using. Than the city's fabled yellow caps. Lost their lead. A marketplace. On this evening at 630. Highway southward out of the deserts of Iran to the plains of North Dakota this is a classic main street I'm standing on Dakota Avenue every day Morning Edition take . A listen to this rally in the southern city of Kandahar the candidate. With us start tomorrow with Morning Edition from n.p.r. News. This morning from 5. To get public radio calls from the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks where families can soar into summer a mix of history of their own open daily from 10 to 5 through Labor Day visit a dot org for. Calendar of events activities and drop in programs programming from the b.b.c. Brings a global perspective to Connecticut Public Radio listen for top line during Morning Edition and the real story Saturday mornings at 7 support comes from some very bank I'm Ira Flatow this is Science Friday we've been talking with a paleontologist Nick violence and author of the new book spying on whales and if you'd like to call us members 844-724-8255 we're going to be talking more about whales this how Let's just let's go to the phones to Schuyler in Fort Collins Colorado I Schuyler. Or Hi there go ahead. I don't wonder and how do we have you know with Oh. Great I don't know if you water yeah I'm a weird question but no no I you know actually think about that all the time and this is a good time as you can get an answer for you and Nick they Goalby in all this salt water would make me sick wouldn't it yeah I think the solution to that is they don't actually swallow that salt water would be a mistake now they start to get some amount of salt water into their bodies and. What we do know is they get most of their water from their diet from fish from squid from whatever they eat they're somehow able to process that water which gives you a sense you know some are tend to be thirsty imagine if you're if you're an only source of water was the food you ate so that tells us that they have to have certain physiological mechanisms to deal with that and we can look at the shapes of their kidneys they certainly have the same kinds of adaptations shape kind of like a cluster of grapes that's wrapped in a bag that looks a lot like the kidneys from other marine mammals so tells us these solutions for dealing with salt water are held in common but you'll notice I'm not really answering the question because this is the quickly get to the limits of knowledge of how marine mammals are able to make their living they're incredibly logistically challenging to study whether they're whales or seals or sea lions and we don't always get to see what they do for their entire lives because they live remotely whales live 99 percent of their lives underwater so and they're not really great experimental animals either either so. You know we can we can infer some specific things about how they deal with that but this is still part of the mysteries of these animals and there are people who are who believe in the Aquatic Ape theory of people who went right to go show and they came back. They say that we have tear ducts that are vestigial parts of when we were ocean mammals and that whales and dolphins they also have tear ducts at home they get rid of their water that's true well so what any of these. Hypotheses about adaptations telling you how organisms are dealing with any kind of any kind of future they have that special unique you always have to frame that there evolutionary history to understand exactly how they might have. Exactly that trait might have come about so for humans we'd want to look at their nearest relatives and see who among them have tear ducts and who don't and then start clicking through that part of their family tree to really determining what our hypothesis should be about when that might have evolved and when whether truly is unique to humans there are a lot of traits that are unique to humans just as there are with whales but. What I would say is the aquatic ape hypothesis is a is too special of a hypothesis when we have other explanations the 2 just fine where you know here's a tweet from Meg who says What was your most magical whale moment just as I was thinking about this before the break. I've been really fortunate in being able to participate in field work all around the world not just digging up fossil whales but going on tagging boats to tag with suction cup removable tags on living whales and those are all amazing and tremendously exciting moments in my professional career some which I talk about in the book but I'd say that the most special one was discovering the false whale graveyard in the outcome of Chile because that was a surprise because we weren't planning on finding that and how we dealt with that I think is a really. Instructive example of how science works so we were in the outcome of Chile doing fieldwork. Looking for fossil whales and other sea animals they preserve the record of the Hubble current over millions of years and we want to understand how the Hubble current and its fauna had changed through time and had a colleague who kept on telling me about this fossil site that had all these whale skeletons and for a lot of reasons I didn't believe them and that was a mistake until one day when we rolled up to the site which had been uncovered through road expansion along right along the Pan-American Highway and I remember that moment when we rolled up and saw whale skeleton after whale skeleton under these black tarps and we just flip open a black tarp and you see these complete whale skeletons false Well skeletons preserved nose to tip yards away sometimes on top of one another and so that was a little bit terrifying because I don't really wish a whale skeleton on anyone 30 norm is burdens in terms of the logistics of dealing with them how you study them and they want just one or 2 there were dozens and we didn't have much time to come up with some kind of game plan for how we're going to study them and this is where the Smithsonian's 3 d. Digitization lab came in and really provide a technological solution to a scientific need let's talk about the future a little bit. With with climate change the oceans are evolving they're changing and their chemical make up their you know getting more acidic getting more more current are moving in places they haven't been before how is that going to affect the whale right so whales have been around for 50000000 years and they've been in the water for over 40000000 of those years and so they've experienced a lot of changes in the past but what I think is different about what's happening now is that the earth is changing in geologic scales and rates within human lifetimes. I think the best examples the bellwether of the Arctic summer sea ice is at a low in the Arctic and it's been. At a low for the last decade on a decreasing trajectory so if you extrapolate just on a linear basis draw that line down we're looking at no summer sea ice for most of the Arctic in about 1520 years assuming there's no non-linear response to that and so what that means the Arctic Ocean will become a true ocean. And probably for many kinds of whales that mean that's means more productivity more light more food but also means more human activity means the Arctic will become a shipping lane and we know that in urban areas along the coast of the United States ship strike is a major source of mortality for many large species of whales that simply can't get out of the way of a cruise ship or cargo ship equally entanglement in fishing lines is a nother huge source of mortality especially for North Atlantic right whales which have not recovered from over 10 centuries nearly 10 centuries of whaling throughout the North Atlantic so there's kind of this mixed bag of. A future for Wales where there's both human activity and major changes to ecosystems and it's complicated for whales that have the ability to move large distances and have a variety of prey that they can pursue. They probably are going to be adaptable whereas the other species that are in marginal areas so think about River dolphins some species of river dolphins are living right along in rivers right along major urban areas and so human modification to their habitat is a big threat to their continued existence and I'm thinking about the Gandhi's rivet often or now or the Yangtze river dolphin which is probably extinct. Fascinating stuff Nick thank you for taking time to write this book and being a guest on Science Friday Absolutely thanks so much for your read Nick Byers and if you're looking for you know some summer reading this is it Nick Bryant's an author of a new book spying on whales the past present and future of Earth's most awesome creatures and we have an excerpt. On our Web site up on threat Science Friday dot com our celebration of oceans month comes to an end today but you can still read about underwater sub pilots get your fill on corals and kelp and it's all up at our website at Science Friday dot com slash whale bone Science Friday dot com slash whale bones. Now if you want to dial back in the way back machine to this next one I want you to think back to school you're sitting in a sex ed class health class maybe for some of you were movies like this 1 May have been the soundtrack the Fermat of all head by the me. I feel like tiny little big oh yeah we had. The log the life like and the Green Line to think. These organisms are beautiful feet yeah I remember that one and then the next lesson chromosomes write your x. In your y. The formation of an embryo you got to terms like germ cells and gonads Well when I was that worried gonads and a researcher who referred to them as magical organs that sent a regular producer and host Molly Webster on a mission quest to respond fascination with human development x. And y. Embryos and her limited run series it's out now it's called Radio Lab gonads Welcome to Science Friday good to talk to you again Hey Ira How are you you were once and in turn on our show you've got a lot of it. Yes I was thinking oh this is what it was like when I set up other guess you I now want to know if it's a life imitating art Oh yeah let's talk about a few years back you reported the story on the surrogacy donated warms and sperm and that sort of ignited this curiosity for you yeah it was a story about a sort of international circus. Like how folks are trying to create families across borders so is a same sex male couple got eggs and then got surrogate women in India who then moved to Nepal and and created a family and in the middle of reporting that story I realized wow there's a lot going on with how we think about families and how we understand just simple questions like What is a mother or who is a parent or what is a sibling it felt like there were a lot of like open ended definitions all of a sudden and science was changing so much at that time that it felt like an interesting world to stand in you know let's talk about speaking of interesting the 1st episode of this series you ask a bunch of people you do is punch of people on the street what does the word gonads mean p. When all these people we hear on this bit of tape say testicles like gonads has become a slang term for men and I want to play a clip of that Vox Pop because then you ask them this did you know that ladies actually have gonads also. That gonads are both testes and ovaries that it's actually for men and women. Really I did not know that I did not know that did not know that. 90 percent of the people I talked to didn't know that they didn't know it what I thought women and men both gonads culture they've stolen the word invaded male and I think it's time we reclaim this word like as a citizen as a human as a lady as a science lover. I'm taking the word back and that's what you did. Try and do Ira So what is the term gonad then actually me yes so gonad is actually a very serious science term that researchers don't giggle at when you talk to them about it. It means sort of 2 things in this interesting way one is it's just ovaries or testes so men have them and women have them they also use the term gonad when talking about very very very early in development before you have developed either ovary or testes when you're sort of like a bi potential creature and gonads are just starting to develop. I'm Ira Flatow this is Science Friday from w. N.y.c. Studios. Speaking of the b n y c we're talking. Gonads with Molly Webster who is also a producer and host of Radio Lab So your 1st your venture in this venture is a great segment of Radio Lab You talk about the journey of the gonads here early on tell us about that yeah yeah so it's it's the going at sort of develop in in 2 parts you have the actual what I call like the the House of gonads which is the testis or the ovary and that is developing sort of in the center of the embryo but then you have this other part that is the primordial germ cells which are these cells that will ultimately become egg or sperm right there the cells that are. Required for like the survival of the species and those cells don't actually start in the embryo they start out in what we call in what scientists every fur too is like the trash bin of the embryo which is sort of the place where where the actual developing body of an embryo is then connected to the placenta and uterus and so what ends up having to happen is those primordial germ cells need to get to their final resting place right which is which is going to be the organ and so they go on this week's long sort of migration journey against all odds through an embryo that's trying to make them become liver cells and heart cells and lung cells and they try and like eyes on the prize get get to the gonad. And you have a going to make a whole lot of t. Shirts I have a lot of I'm going to slow down that is a point well maybe you can put the x's and y's on there too because I know you have a new episode coming out this week and that question to no idea we were all taught in school which is x. X. Means girl an x. Y. Means boy yeah it's interesting you know one of the things I found out about when I was looking into this is one. That is actually not right I mean you have there are many instances where x x will lead to a boy and x. Y. Will lead to a female and the reason behind that is because it's not so much chromosomes that give us biological sex but genes in fact one very individual important gene called s.r.y. That was discovered in the like 190-9998 is actually this gene that as it floats around in attaches to different chromosomes will drive production towards male and if you don't have that gene you will go generally down a female past so so the chromosomes sort of just like a boat for the gene to hide in or trans yesterday it's interesting one of the things I found out is there's actually. A lot of different genes that are involved in sex and they're not all located on x's and y's they could be I'm making this number up but like chromosome 17 are it's spread out throughout your d.n.a. Ok I'm glad we wound up talking about sex on Friday afternoon they know you've been waiting for years. It's good to have you back. Molly Webster is a producer and host of Radio Lab and that is that there are so to be this weekend going up this week yes yeah we're hoping to get it out for folks on Saturday Ok thank you for taking time to join us Molly Good luck with the show yeah thanks so much Ira Well last thing before we go fry is headed to Hawaii next week we've got 2 great shows for you in Honolulu and on the Big Island July 6th and 7th talking about Hawaii's endangered species what it's like to live on a simulated Mars habitat a way to survey coral reefs from the air so you can get your tickets and info at Science Friday dot com slash y.-e. Science Friday dot com slash going to be there July 6th and 7th childbirth. As there's our director senior producer Christopher entirely out that our producers are Alexa Lim Christy Taylor Katie Hiler Irene Turner's Lucy one and we had technical engineering help from our Rich came and sat or offish friends and of course we're active all week on Facebook Twitter Instagram all the social media you can have your smart speaker even play Science Friday for you if you ask them to do it so have a great and saith 4th of July I'm Ira Flatow in New York. Support for Science Friday comes from fracture creating modern photo decor by printing their customers photos directly on glass a fracture is image frame and mount all in one available in a selection of square and rectangle sizes learn more at fracture Me dot com slash Science Friday support for this program also comes from the Winston Foundation and from Del Mar global trust support for this program also comes from the William k. Bose Jr Foundation Science Friday is produced by the Science Friday Initiative a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the public's access to science and scientific information learn more about their work at Science Friday dot com. This is supported w n y c studios. This week in This American Life Andrew Collins was a crooked cop over 60 cases of his were overturned when the truth came out he got thrown in prison for it turned over a new leaf but the problem is he lives in such a small town and it's hard for him to avoid bumping into people who he totally screwed over as a cop with a glance and I know it's about account. Balance. Was on Saturday afternoon at one. He was 39 and I was 15 he was black and I was brown. And he was a convicted cop killer. I was the president of chess club join us for more true stories told Live this week stories about self-defense sled dogs and death row that's on the Manfredo our n.p.r. . Join us Sunday night at.