Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Amy Barton.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about helium Alligators.
Yeah, it's just like I threw two words together.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it totally is.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: I had a flip book. I was like, I need. I need two nouns. Bam.
Yeah. No. Have you. Have you ever sucked down a bit of helium from a balloon?
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Yes, but not very often because the insurance risk assessor inside me knows that it kills brain cells.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Just so you know.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So be cautious, people.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: But if you are cautious and you take a hit, you know, your voice usually gets kind of croaky and squeaky.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Because the helium is interfering with the vibrations and.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Well, okay, so I was not thinking about helium until I came across a 2020 Ig Nobel.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, we're going back to those Ig Nobels. They're like, we want to make you laugh and then make you think it's science that's a little weird and a little wacky. Well, this one nails both of those.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Excellent.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: So there's more than one IG Nobel given every year. This was in acoustics, proving that our vocal cords aren't any more special than most critters. With the award being won by Dr. Stefan Reber and Dr. Takeshi Nishimura and three other colleagues. The paper. Okay, you are never going to guess what the title of this paper is.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: There's so many good ones.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: I'm not a Chinese alligator in heliocs format frequencies in a crocodilian.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: No, I don't know that I actually knew that crocodilian was a word.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Right. So crocodilians are your crocodiles. Your alligators, they're all the long, scaly boys that like to, you know, swim around in the water. They wanted to know if alligators made noises with resonance or if they were like frogs who just puff up their throat and make a sound. Okay, so.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's a good question and a dangerous question to study.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Because you can't ask an alligator just to take a hit off of a balloon.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: So if they don't. If they're like a frog, it wouldn't do anything.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Yes. So let me go down to that information because I can answer that. Yes. Because when frogs. When frogs puff up their throat and. And. And do their croak sound, they are.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Making a. Oh, it's akin to a burp.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yes, it's a sound. It's not resonance. So this is. This is really. This is really kind of wacky because Resonance to vocalize. So sound waves, they travel through the air depending on the size of the wave. Long waves, low tones, short, higher. For humans, the bones in our face and the cavities in our skull, they are hit by the sound waves that we make with our vocal cords. Right. So you use your vocal cord and it bounces around in your head and you can resonate and make sounds. Singers specifically are really interested in changing how they shape their face, like when. Or their mouth when they're singing. Right. To affect the resonant sound. So you could have something sneezly, or you could have something that's lower.
I watched the YouTube video where a gal was talking about technical stuff that I. I did not get at all. But her voice did sound different.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like when someone who sings on Broadway or does opera tries to sing popular music, and their. Their faces literally just can't do it. Yes. It is the funniest thing. They're trying so hard to relax and be cool, and their body cannot make those sounds 100%.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: And so one of the things that Dr. Reber and his team wondered is if this mechanism for how. Because alligators do a thing called bellowing. It almost sounds, like you said, for the frogs, like a burp. It does have a very kind of sound to it. And they wanted to know if that's if. Well, one, if they were actually resonating or if they're just making a sound. And then two, like humans or birds, if helium might affect their vocalizations in the same way. Because they figured if helium affects the vocalizations, then they do have resonance that they're making noise with. And so back to the alligator, this little Chinese alligator. They said, okay, we want to see if helium affects her, so we're going to stuff her in a box and see if it does.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: A hot box. I do applaud them for finding a non invasive, minimally traumatizing way to test this.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's super non invasive. So they made a small aquarium. It almost looked like a couple. It looked like a. Over large plastic Tupperware container, but sturdier. And they put the alligator in. She's floating in water. And alligators, what they do is they'll float up to the top, they'll take a breath, and then they sit, sink down for a little while. So, yeah, she. They put her in, she'd float up, she'd take a breath, and then they would raise the water level to push the air out. And then they would put helox, which is helium and oxygen. And we actually use this for treatments on different things with people. But it's got enough helium in it that it will. It will affect your vocal sound. But it's not so much helium that you're not getting enough oxygen, right?
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: So they put this heliox in, and then they lower the water level so that that whole upper area is filled with the gas. She comes up to the top, she takes some breaths, and then they played recordings that would agitate her into bellowing.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Okay. I'm so curious.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: It does work. It does work.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Is it a cute little squeaky bellow?
[00:05:55] Speaker B: It's not. What was funny is it went from this really deep to kind of a.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: They're in their bored teenage phase.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah. It sounded kind of croaky, a little musty, but it definitely changed the tone, having them breathe this helium mixture.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Oh, but, like, okay, some people. This is not going to be some decorum. My mom wouldn't like to discuss this. But what about, like, I can burp the Alphabet, and I feel like that's a little. Not all of it, just a little bit, but like, that's some resonation and just some air leaving a confined space.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Yes, but the air is leaving, and then it's kind of resonating around in your head. So that is that. It might be that if you took a hit of helium and burped, but when you're saying a letter, you're using the air from the burp to, like, say a. Yeah, so it probably would still. You'd probably burp on a slightly higher pitch. Yeah.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: Well, that's a life goal for me now that I didn't know I had. But what if. What if the alligators are doing the same thing with. It's both. I guess it's fine if it's both.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, and then my question was, like, why. Why even do this?
One of the things that they were hypothesizing is that the bellow that alligators make and both males and females do this might indicate size, and that size difference may affect courtship and territory. The theory being that the bigger the critter, the larger the space to resonate, and so the deeper the sound, it might indicate to other alligators, like, that one's really big. Don't go over there.
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: And so now they know that it does resonate, and so maybe that's what's happening. But then also, they. They want to take it way back, and they're wondering since crocodilians and birds share a common ancestor with Dinosaurs. They also think that dinosaurs might have been using their big heads and their bodies to also bellow. Cause there's a lot of, you know, we don't really know because vocal cords and things like that don't fossilize, Right?
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's like the picture of the dinosaur with the long hair and they're like, you don't know? It could be. We don't know.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we didn't think there were feathers. So it may be that they were bellowing or making noises. Not like Jurassic park, but. Oh, and then an interview. Dr. Reber did say that they hadn't found out yet if alligators notice if they sounded different.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: That's another good question. Yes. If their perception. If they're like, oh, wait, who was that?
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Whoa, that sounded weird. I'm wondering if the change in pitch would make a bigger alligator get beat up for his lunch money. Right?
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And maybe they wouldn't know why.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:43] Speaker A: What is the test of an animal where certain animals pass it and are self aware?
[00:08:48] Speaker B: The mirror test.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yes. I would be alarmed if alligators could pass the mirror test.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Same. Well, and you know, they don't. There's no facial expression that I really, you know, like, you look at a dog, you get some facial expressions. I'm looking at an alligator and I mean, sometimes they can be kind of cute with their little scaly faces.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Hook it up to an eeg. Is that it?
They put the electrodes on their brain, then they do the helium and then they watch the brain activity with and without helium. That's the next grant, as it goes.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: Hey, yeah. I mean, who knows? That could be the next IG Nobel for Animal Perception of Self.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: I kind of wonder if the IG Nobel people, like, they just read all the papers that come in and then they pick the top ones that float up and then they make up categories and just award. Because like, that was amazing. So we're going to make up a category.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: I didn't look into that. But now that you're saying that, don't.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Look into it because then my way could be true.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Do you submit for an IG Nobel?
[00:09:55] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: Or do they find you can nominate anyone, including yourself?
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Okay, I like that.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: Now that's very interesting because one of the two lead people on this paper was like, I was so surprised. And I'm like, dude, you nominated yourself.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: I like that modesty.
They're doing the parade wave. I'm so surprised. I happen to bring my crown today and my sash.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: I licked the stamp with the letter that we said, oh my gosh.
But I also do imagine that there have to be some people in the scientific community who are going, hey, did you see what Bob is doing down in 305? You need to submit his stuff. And so he might not know.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, agreed. That's true. Somebody from University of Advancement or Marketing and Communications is mailing in ignoble applications every year.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. So that's helium alligators. They are not floating through the air like insanely scary balloons. They are just looking like little tiny squeaky toys.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: That's amazing. I'm. Are there videos? You can hear it?
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Yes. And I will have in the show notes there is a little video. You have to kind of scroll down through a paper and it's just a photo of an alligator. And then.
And they're like, that's the without helium. And then eh, eh, eh, that's with helium. And it's like. It's not as exciting as I thought it would be. But the idea is interesting.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah, the concept is fascinating, the whole idea of it. And just the way they figure out, well, we need these pieces of information. How can we find that out? Yep, the conceptual, conceptualization of that is pretty amazing to me.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: The scientific process.
Yeah.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Well folks, there are lots of back episodes with amazing discussion of the scientific process. Both this ignobel episodes, some failed scientific process that we talk about. So check the back catalog wherever you find your podcasts. And of course you can find us on Facebook and Instagram as Brain Junk Podcast and pop into the merch store if you really want to geek out while you listen to Brain Junk in your Brain Junk T shirt with your Tumblr Trace and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know. And I guarantee you will not be bored.
