Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I am here, sir, and that makes this stuff you should know. Indeed, the Friday versions been while on the Friday, it is Friday, isn't it? Are we shouting out to Kiva? First thing? I think we definitely should, dudes and do debts. We have surpassed half a million bucks as a team in micro loans to Kiva dot org. And that was our goal was to hit it in May, and darn it all if we didn't do it. We totally did it, and we started our team October ten, two nine, and but by the next October we'd already passed our two fifty dollar goal, and then we wanted to get to five hundred thousand in May. I didn't think it was possible. We totally did. It's possible because of people like Glenn and Sonja who helm the team for us. There are de facto captains. It's because of people like Blake this guy who came in and UM basically put sixteen lemons I think on his credit card because he said he was sick of us being so close to half a million dollars but not quite there. Um. And everybody who's a member on our team who's contributed anything, well at least five bucks. Yeah, we're number three on all of Cuba in the number of team members, ahead of Team Obama in Australia and Europe. We're just so proud of you. We're very proud of everybody, and it's just cool. And I guess Glenn and Sonia will probably help us figure out the next goal, which I guess will be a million bucks. I would say we I'd say a million why not, let's do it. Might take a year from now, but I ain't going anywhere. We'll find out. Let's do it, okay, So our goal now is to lend a million dollars on Cuba through our stuff. You should know team Let's go, guys, all right, way to go. Everybody eat a cupcake, that's right, a good one too. And if you want to know about CIVA and you don't know about our team, you can find that at k I D A dot org slash team or is it teams team team slash stuff. You should know you can join up at the team and just make one little lousy loan and you can get your money back and then you can pull it out if you want, but you're probably gonna want to reinvest it, which is kind of cool. And you know what before you do, before you sign up um, or if you just recently signed up, you should read our two part blog post on CIVA and how we feel about Cuba because it's not a perfect system. Um and after a while everyone inevitably runs up against the flaws and it and talks about quitting and all that and um, so we wrote a couple of posts on it so you could sort whis why we land at s Y s k um and uh, that will bring it up on the blogs, right yeah, And just you know, what I've learned is just like regular loans, micro loans are no different. There are people that get in trouble and should not have borrowed what they borrowed. And it's even sadder I think that people borrow you know, six hundred bucks and can't for that, and so there are there are some downsides, but we found not only that there are also tons of predators out there lending to people at horrible rates. But we believe in Kiva and we found that there are many, many more positive associations. So agreed, Moving on, Moving on, dude, um So also probably wouldn't hurt to go listen to our micro Lending How micro Lending Works podcasts where we first discovered Cuba. That's right, um So, Chuck, We're going to talk about something that has absolutely nothing to do with CIVA as far as I know. Okay, I think you're right. Um let's talk first about Australia. Uh, Australia is this awesome little all natural laboratory, a giant Petrie dish if you will. Just from childhood, I've always been amazed that it's a country and a continent. My hats always gone off to Australia. So to all of our peeps down in Australia, Chuck, take off your hand. Okay, there you get You're supposed to say, ohit oit oi, yes, just pretend I just did. Um and Uh. The reason being is because at one point the the continents all formed a super continent, Pangaea, some of the other continents. Um kind of stuck together a little more. Australia went off by itself, as Australians do. It went off to do its own thing, that's right. And um, there were animals in existence about sixty million years ago when it broke off. Um that we're living on Australia. Yeah. I pictured the little crack forming and then separating and literally animals looking at their little species brethren going by. That's a that's a really good way to look at it too, because it's not like these cracks happened like you know this this species lives over here and this species lives over there, right, I mean that's pretty much exactly how it happened. I mean not that quickly, maybe using time and last photography, but um, essentially that gave that gave rise to related species evolving in in completely different parts of the world, that's right. So Australia gave us some freak shows like koala, bears, kangaroos, wombats, Tasmanian devils that are really different than other animals and other parts of the world exactly. Um, but it also gave us a little something called the flying falangists. I've never heard of this, Okay, the flying falangists looks it's a it's a rodent, has a tail that has a tiny head just covered in fur. It'll give you some sort of pestilent disease if you eat it raw. Yeah. Um. But it also has this weird little um bit of in that were tracks, except when it's jumping from tree to tree, it spreads its arms and legs out yep, spread eagle, and this flap of skin in between its arm and say it's ribs and then its legs and it's so say buttocks. This skin flaps out to allow it to glide. It's like it's like those flying dudes that you see now, the skydivers that they basically wear a little flying suits. Yeah, wingsuit yeah, wings Those things are awesome. It's pretty cool, um and way dangerous. So this is like the original. This is the o G of that. Yeah. I think it was based on that flying flanges. It sounds like, again, a total freak show until you remember, oh yeah, North America has flying squirrels that are the exact same thing. And I had a pet one. I think I mentioned that before you did, didn't you. Okay, So if you go back far enough on the family tree, you're going to find that both of these animals ancestors were living on Australia and elsewhere in the world at the time. That's right. Okay, so when they when they split off, when Australia broke off, um, this this animal's habitat was disrupted, and so you had two members of the same species living on different parts of the world but evolving completely differently. Right. So they've gotten to the point now where the flying squirrel and the flying flanges they're not the same animal. They're different species because they can't engage in successful reproduction any longer. But they still both evolved independently these flaps, which are just totally odd. That's what's called parallel evolution, right, That's right. And um, the flying flanges and flying squirrel are far from the only species that are no longer related, that are no longer the same species that have evolved similarly, which poses a really big question for biology and evolution. How is this happening? It's right. Well, parallel evolution um. Further defined is when they're related species that have been split. When two different species share these traits, it's morphological similarity kind of neat, huh. And when two completely unrelated species develop this morphological similarity. It's called convergent evolution. And it's kind of hard to tell because we don't know exactly how things were millions of years ago. When sure exactly which one of these uh we're similar back then? But we do know in like the case of the squirrel in the Philanger Philanger, Yeah plane filangists, Philanger, I've been saying philangists, Philanger. Yeah, it's a Philanger, the flying Philanger. What they should is called a squirrel. M. Well, that that that occurred to me. Maybe maybe there isn't such a thing as parallel evolution. Maybe it's all humans. We're just not calling everything the same thing. It's our naming convention. There's problem solved. So one of the reason and it's pretty simple actually, and it makes a lot of sense that parallel evolution can occur is that, um, when you have a similar environment with two species, uh, population pressure is gonna lead to similar traits, Like we gotta survive, So if we live in a similar environment, then we're probably gonna evolve similarly. Like if it's really cold, we're probably gonna have thick fur as you know, different species. Um, it's pretty basic. Another really good example I think that was used with teeth, Yes right, yeah, I know that it's jumping around a little bit, but that's all right. Teeth things we take for granted, they're so ubiquitous. Sharp teeth. Sharp teeth are found in all carnivores. And the reason why is because it's a really good trait. Yeah right, because we can dig into meat. Same thing though, although I can't with my stupid bum tooth. I'm I'm devolving someday again through technology, I hope. So. So, what you're talking about, Chuck is Um with natural selection is that basically, if you imagine dropping an animal into a an environment, so a jungle, right, there are parts of it that are going to allow it to thrive. There are things that are going to make it less likely to thrive. The things that make it likelier to thrive, or the the traits that are going to get passed along from generation to generation. As long as they hang along, hang on long enough to to survive through the reproduction process, then it gets ingrained and boom, you've got yourself a trade well by nature, the the traits that allow it to hang on long enough to reproduce are going to be most successful traits because with reproduction, those are the ones that are going to get passed around the most frequently, and then eventually the one the animals that had more of the traits that didn't allow it to thrive are gonna die out. They're not going to reproduce. So on a long enough time scale, this reproduction will lead to um higher frequency of traits that make an animal fit for its environment. Right, Like the guerrilla, for instance, used to have a large ale with a pin wheel on the end of it, but it was really you know, I didn't really do much for him, so over time it just kind of went away. Right. That's not true, though, is it? No, it's not true. What do you mean? Is it all right? It was making sure? Um? So these changes though, these traits, right, they just kind of seemed to pop up here there, if you're in our current understanding of genetics, same nineteen eighties understanding of genetics, they just kind of pop up out of nowhere. Um. But chuck, if I may digress for a second, please, have we ever explained what came first the chicken or the egg. Yeah, it's been a while though it has, but we have already yeah, but it's been a while. I think it deserves a recap okay, because you actually know the answer, Yes, I do. I can say that the egg came first because the genetic mutation that gives rise to new species, to new animals occurs UH in the zygotic stage of development. Right. So that means a non chicken and a non chicken got together and created as I got that had a mutation that eventually turned it into a chicken. Its jeans were expressed to be a chicken. To the egg came first. The egg came before the chicken. Eventually the egg hatched and you had the first chicken. But the egg came first, all right, Um. But the point of me saying that is that the mutations that appear, these traits that change over time or show up that make an animal more fit for its environment, happened in the reproductive level of zygote, That's right. And the accumulation of those traits, the beneficial traits that make it able to survive UH in a certain place, like a polar bear in the cold, is called an ecological niche. Niche and some people say, we talked about the polar bear before um separating from the Brown Bear and the Black Bear and Evolution in Isolation, which was kind of a companion podcast of this one. Did you write that one, Yeah, I wrote that one. I didn't write this one that this was the grabster. Yeah, that's right, of course. So that's an ecological niche and um animals, like we mentioned the polar bear, that have adapted to live in a cold area. You throw a polar bear out in the savannah of Africa and it's not gonna do too well, right, which brings up another point I think that is there's a lesson in all of this what we're talking about, especially with ecological niches. We especially us being humans at the top of the food chain and the smartest things ever since slight spread um or prairie dogs go ahead, okay, tend to look at evolution as um basically a ladder and we're at the top, baby, right, that's not the case an ecological niches point that point that out. If you if humans okay, great example, if you take a human and put it at the bottom of the Marianna trench, it's not going to thrive, It's going to drown or its heads going to explode. We're not suited for it. So we're not evolved. We're not at the top of evolution. If evolution were a ladder and we were at the top, we'd be suited for any environment. We're not at a good point. So, as a guy named Matt Ridley points out in a book called The Red Queen, Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, um that evolution is not a ladder, it is a treadmill. Yeah. No, animals necessarily better than another more highly evolved. It has to do with adapting to your local environment. That's one of the processes of parallel evolution. Makes sense. We adapt to our local environment or our ecological niche. That's right. That's a very good point. And the reason we're pointing out ecological niche to begin with is because animals are I'm sorry organisms period that have parallel or convergent evolution are usually or more likely to have a similar ecological niche. It's a really really long way of putting that, was it. Yeah. Uh. For instance, you look at um an animal like the wildebeeste or North American cattle, they're actually sort of parallel evolutionized and they because they live in very similar areas. You know, planes, hot, grassy, and uh so they're really similar in the end, even though they're on two different continents. Number one evolutionized t shirt. Okay, okay, Number two, that's absolutely right, all right, yeah, thank you, absolutely right? Right? Okay, great, what do you think? I thought you said? Wrong? And it's absolutely white? Okay, that's absolutely blite. But Josh, absolutely sometimes convergent evolution does not depend on this ecological niche because the trait is really advantageous for all kinds of organisms. And that's when you brought up the sharp teeth, limbs, wings, arms. Consider this the arms. Uh we can say now looking at Jean Ms, that arms are a direct relative of fins. This again goes to the idea that evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder. Right, So it's not like arms are the inevitable and of fins. What are you laughing about. It's that fins are better suited for swimming around the water. Right. But the same genes, the same genetics set, the same genetic code that give you fins also give you arms if you're walking around, maybe swinging from trees or need to climb them, or need to like, you know, high five somebody to keep society going right. Yeah, yeah, same thing. Yeah, you're right, but you know, we're not the only things that evolved limbs. But limbs are so advantageous, just like teeth um that we are. That a lot of different, completely unrelated species evolved limbs to walk and to grab things. And which is what is that convergent evolution? Yes, I would say so we're the very least parallel. You know. I have to say I'm surprising myself, extremely passionate for this one. I don't understand why. Well, it's cool. And you know, we haven't covered evolution in Earnest as a podcast, but we've hit on it in so many I think we're covering it in the long run one way or the other. You know what I think it is. I am just barely hanging on by my fingernails. So I'm really like, yeah, if I say it really fast, it'll it'll be right. All right. Let's talk about genetics in this whole mess a parallel evolution. There are two things to think about when you think about genetics, and the first one, I think it's kind of cool. The genetic code for species potentially has a hidden blueprint almost for what it could do but not necessarily does do. And the grab stre likned it too. Let's say you have a blueprint of a house and the architect designed it such that you can add on a master bedroom here in this spot, but you never do it. But it's there. You've got the land and the blueprint it for it. You just don't use it right because the architects said, don't build that edition yet they don't have the money for it. They're just building the house exactly. But it still exists in the in the master blueprint. And the same can be said of let's say a jellyfish, which is round right. There's no right or left side of a sea and and and and intomy has radial symmetry, right, a jellyfish or an anemony so hard for me? Anemone show off an enemy now it's not an enemy, uhete and chuck. There is no left or right side as a radial body plan. It's circular and which is not a funny shape at all. And the genetic code, though is there. So eventually, one day, let's say the jellyfish needed to evolve to have a left or right side for some reason, it could do that genetically speaking, the code is there. Yeah, for bilateral symmetry, which I have, which you have? That you could as down the middle. We could be folded in half. Yes, if you put a mirror up to your knows perpendicular to your nose, no, parallel to your nose, the point of your nose, it would be half. It looked like you. That's right, right, you know they say symmetry equals beauty. Yes, that's what they say. That's what a lot of people say. Um, you've got a big walleye on one side. That's why you're not attractive. What are you going after? The eyes? You mentioned disco? I'm another recent podcast, did somebody Okay? So, so jellyfish have radio symmetry, but they have a genetic marker to kick in bilateral symmetry they ever need it, and believe me, I would run horrified from Maybe that's what Cathulhu is. It's a it's a jellyfish who's like bilateral symmetry has started to kick in a little bit. Nice. Um. The point is is it's not just jellyfish. There are a lot of dormant jeans just ready to go off with the right mutation um to change all sorts of stuff and they think. Also, I read the article that he cited, the art technical article that the jellyfish have that so that they can develop their mouth. Yeah, cool, because the mouth requires bilateral symmetry jellyfish. The reason we mentioned this to begin with, though, is that the belief that you can develop similar traits even though you evolve separately, which is what we've been talking about this whole time, because the trait has always been in your genetic code to begin with, just dormant, right, it's just very very ancient, and then it can express in different ways, like apparently they looked at the fins of a fish, right and found that they have pretty much the same genes that we do for our arms, okay, and bilateral symmetry. Those genes are the same for everything. Right, So we're all a lot more related, I guess than we thought now that we're starting to look into it. I wonder if, well we probably know this by now, if we have any dormant genetic codes and humans like, we could potentially grow that tail if we needed to. Well, apparently we do have tales in some embryotic development stage. We still have distigial tales, and there are people who are born with him who don't shed them. That's pretty cool. Who had the tale? Uh? Jason Alexander had one in one of the Fairly Brothers movies. Yeah, we're like, if it was was it? There's something there's something about Mary. Wasn't it? No, No, he wouldn't in that. Are you sure that wasn't it? Yes? Thank you? Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant to. Didn't one of the friends have a tale? No? No, no, Channel had a third nipple? Yes, superfluous Nipplesony Krusty the clown. He so, Josh, what's the second thing to consider? Well, I guess the other thing we've been what got biologists into the idea of looking at jeans is that we were looking at morphological changes, right. Stuff we can see like this flying squirrel is not related to that flying squirrel, but they're both flying squirrels, even though we call them different things. Philanders um. When we look at the genetic level, we're finding that like the same morphological traits, the similarities are are also found on the genetic level, right, So basically they're thinking, like you can you can look at the ecological pressure, the environmental pressure that caused a polar bears coat to become white right um on an internal level with the interactions between amino acids and proteins that are causing these genes to be expressed, so internally and externally, these changes are are occurring um to form flying filangers and squirrels on two different continents. Thank you the freak show that is Australia for basically pointing science in the right direction. They love it when we talk about them too. We always get email from masses that are just like you. Guys are the best. Another and they gave us another one too. Um the Tasmanian wolf now extinct wolf which is um almost completely unre related to any other wolf. It's extinct, like I said, um, but it is the spitting image of the gray wolf here in North America, even though they're like they were not related, same everything. This is the kind of science I dig. Yeah, cool science. Yeah, not that physics magnetism. You're into physics that sort of just that a necessity, I guess. Yeah, but you you have an appreciation more than I do. I think. Really, Yeah, you don't like full crumbs? What is wrong with what's the full crumb? The full crumb is the point it's like a see saw, right, and that the full crumb. Yeah, okay, it's the it's the point of balance on a on a sea saw. It's the point that he saw balance. Yeah, yeah, same thing. You got anything else? Are we just gonna evolve separately? Here? I think? So? Okay, if you want to learn more about evolution, UM, you should type in evolution in the search part how stuff works dot com. Um. Also check out can animals evolve in isolation? That's a cool article, Um, This article we've been talking about from the grabster, How can two seemingly unrelated species that live in isolation from each other evolve into identical forms? You can also reach it by typing in parallel evolution in the search bart how stuff works dot Com. So there's a lot for you to go check out there, all right? Yeah, And I would say just type in evolution and how stuff works, and you're gonna get a whole bevy of cool cool stuff. That's what I said first. Yeah, I'm reinforcing that well, Chuck said search bart how stuff works? Right, Yeah, I did too. It means it's super super time for listener mail. That's right, Josh, I'm gonna call this um Mountaintop removable coal mining email from an inside one of millions. Yeah, we got a lot of positive feedback from this, and surprisingly not one person is written in yet that said, you jerks. You never think about the the minor side of things. Most people have been like, yeah, this is probably shouldn't be. Some some guy on Twitter basically said I don't like it when they get political, but this one was pretty good. All right, Yeah, I'll take that. Man. Hey guys, I've heard all your podcasts from day one, and keep up the good work. Please. Uh sometimes you are all I need to get away from the day's stress. I mean mining engineers. Student enrolled at the University of Kentucky Go Wildcats, one of the largest exporters of eager and to do mining engineers. In reality, the decision to enroll here had more to do with scholarship opportunities than a lifelong love of Appalachian mining. However, after being surrounded by over zealous students who would personally blow up the earth for an ounce of coal because it keeps the lights on, I have become entirely infatuated with this mindset. I've interviewed for all the big name companies some of which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars recruiting new workforce. When I interviewed for these companies, they seem to be in complete denial of this satistics, occasionally showing a picture of a deer standing on a patch of grass and claiming that it's as if we were never there in the first place. As I have been shown firsthand what the mining field entails, I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis. And that's something I don't know. If we make clear we're not anti minors, we know these people were very thin. Yeah, I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis to make sure that I can send this email on my electricity powered laptop. At the same time, I shudder in disappointment that they wishfully remain ignorant of the science involved in the harm they are doing. Part of me wishes to enter the field to reinvent the idea that providing energy must come at a sacrifice that compromises our ability to take care of the environment in our neighbors. Wish me luck, as I have a lot of work ahead of me, and I asked him if you want to remain anonymous, and he said it's probably a good idea. So that's anonymous, but pretty cool. He thinks a lot of anonymous pretty trade. Yeah, changing changing the place from the inside, right, Good luck, buddy. We like anonymous emails right there, usually the most like what ones right? Exactly? All right? Well, if you want to send us an anonymous email, we would love to hear from you. Um, you can address it too. Stuff podcasts at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I am here, sir, and that makes this stuff you should know. Indeed, the Friday versions been while on the Friday, it is Friday, isn't it? Are we shouting out to Kiva? First thing? I think we definitely should, dudes and do debts. We have surpassed half a million bucks as a team in micro loans to Kiva dot org. And that was our goal was to hit it in May, and darn it all if we didn't do it. We totally did it, and we started our team October ten, two nine, and but by the next October we'd already passed our two fifty dollar goal, and then we wanted to get to five hundred thousand in May. I didn't think it was possible. We totally did. It's possible because of people like Glenn and Sonja who helm the team for us. There are de facto captains. It's because of people like Blake this guy who came in and UM basically put sixteen lemons I think on his credit card because he said he was sick of us being so close to half a million dollars but not quite there. Um. And everybody who's a member on our team who's contributed anything, well at least five bucks. Yeah, we're number three on all of Cuba in the number of team members, ahead of Team Obama in Australia and Europe. We're just so proud of you. We're very proud of everybody, and it's just cool. And I guess Glenn and Sonia will probably help us figure out the next goal, which I guess will be a million bucks. I would say we I'd say a million why not, let's do it. Might take a year from now, but I ain't going anywhere. We'll find out. Let's do it, okay, So our goal now is to lend a million dollars on Cuba through our stuff. You should know team Let's go, guys, all right, way to go. Everybody eat a cupcake, that's right, a good one too. And if you want to know about CIVA and you don't know about our team, you can find that at k I D A dot org slash team or is it teams team team slash stuff. You should know you can join up at the team and just make one little lousy loan and you can get your money back and then you can pull it out if you want, but you're probably gonna want to reinvest it, which is kind of cool. And you know what before you do, before you sign up um, or if you just recently signed up, you should read our two part blog post on CIVA and how we feel about Cuba because it's not a perfect system. Um and after a while everyone inevitably runs up against the flaws and it and talks about quitting and all that and um, so we wrote a couple of posts on it so you could sort whis why we land at s Y s k um and uh, that will bring it up on the blogs, right yeah, And just you know, what I've learned is just like regular loans, micro loans are no different. There are people that get in trouble and should not have borrowed what they borrowed. And it's even sadder I think that people borrow you know, six hundred bucks and can't for that, and so there are there are some downsides, but we found not only that there are also tons of predators out there lending to people at horrible rates. But we believe in Kiva and we found that there are many, many more positive associations. So agreed, Moving on, Moving on, dude, um So also probably wouldn't hurt to go listen to our micro Lending How micro Lending Works podcasts where we first discovered Cuba. That's right, um So, Chuck, We're going to talk about something that has absolutely nothing to do with CIVA as far as I know. Okay, I think you're right. Um let's talk first about Australia. Uh, Australia is this awesome little all natural laboratory, a giant Petrie dish if you will. Just from childhood, I've always been amazed that it's a country and a continent. My hats always gone off to Australia. So to all of our peeps down in Australia, Chuck, take off your hand. Okay, there you get You're supposed to say, ohit oit oi, yes, just pretend I just did. Um and Uh. The reason being is because at one point the the continents all formed a super continent, Pangaea, some of the other continents. Um kind of stuck together a little more. Australia went off by itself, as Australians do. It went off to do its own thing, that's right. And um, there were animals in existence about sixty million years ago when it broke off. Um that we're living on Australia. Yeah. I pictured the little crack forming and then separating and literally animals looking at their little species brethren going by. That's a that's a really good way to look at it too, because it's not like these cracks happened like you know this this species lives over here and this species lives over there, right, I mean that's pretty much exactly how it happened. I mean not that quickly, maybe using time and last photography, but um, essentially that gave that gave rise to related species evolving in in completely different parts of the world, that's right. So Australia gave us some freak shows like koala, bears, kangaroos, wombats, Tasmanian devils that are really different than other animals and other parts of the world exactly. Um, but it also gave us a little something called the flying falangists. I've never heard of this, Okay, the flying falangists looks it's a it's a rodent, has a tail that has a tiny head just covered in fur. It'll give you some sort of pestilent disease if you eat it raw. Yeah. Um. But it also has this weird little um bit of in that were tracks, except when it's jumping from tree to tree, it spreads its arms and legs out yep, spread eagle, and this flap of skin in between its arm and say it's ribs and then its legs and it's so say buttocks. This skin flaps out to allow it to glide. It's like it's like those flying dudes that you see now, the skydivers that they basically wear a little flying suits. Yeah, wingsuit yeah, wings Those things are awesome. It's pretty cool, um and way dangerous. So this is like the original. This is the o G of that. Yeah. I think it was based on that flying flanges. It sounds like, again, a total freak show until you remember, oh yeah, North America has flying squirrels that are the exact same thing. And I had a pet one. I think I mentioned that before you did, didn't you. Okay, So if you go back far enough on the family tree, you're going to find that both of these animals ancestors were living on Australia and elsewhere in the world at the time. That's right. Okay, so when they when they split off, when Australia broke off, um, this this animal's habitat was disrupted, and so you had two members of the same species living on different parts of the world but evolving completely differently. Right. So they've gotten to the point now where the flying squirrel and the flying flanges they're not the same animal. They're different species because they can't engage in successful reproduction any longer. But they still both evolved independently these flaps, which are just totally odd. That's what's called parallel evolution, right, That's right. And um, the flying flanges and flying squirrel are far from the only species that are no longer related, that are no longer the same species that have evolved similarly, which poses a really big question for biology and evolution. How is this happening? It's right. Well, parallel evolution um. Further defined is when they're related species that have been split. When two different species share these traits, it's morphological similarity kind of neat, huh. And when two completely unrelated species develop this morphological similarity. It's called convergent evolution. And it's kind of hard to tell because we don't know exactly how things were millions of years ago. When sure exactly which one of these uh we're similar back then? But we do know in like the case of the squirrel in the Philanger Philanger, Yeah plane filangists, Philanger, I've been saying philangists, Philanger. Yeah, it's a Philanger, the flying Philanger. What they should is called a squirrel. M. Well, that that that occurred to me. Maybe maybe there isn't such a thing as parallel evolution. Maybe it's all humans. We're just not calling everything the same thing. It's our naming convention. There's problem solved. So one of the reason and it's pretty simple actually, and it makes a lot of sense that parallel evolution can occur is that, um, when you have a similar environment with two species, uh, population pressure is gonna lead to similar traits, Like we gotta survive, So if we live in a similar environment, then we're probably gonna evolve similarly. Like if it's really cold, we're probably gonna have thick fur as you know, different species. Um, it's pretty basic. Another really good example I think that was used with teeth, Yes right, yeah, I know that it's jumping around a little bit, but that's all right. Teeth things we take for granted, they're so ubiquitous. Sharp teeth. Sharp teeth are found in all carnivores. And the reason why is because it's a really good trait. Yeah right, because we can dig into meat. Same thing though, although I can't with my stupid bum tooth. I'm I'm devolving someday again through technology, I hope. So. So, what you're talking about, Chuck is Um with natural selection is that basically, if you imagine dropping an animal into a an environment, so a jungle, right, there are parts of it that are going to allow it to thrive. There are things that are going to make it less likely to thrive. The things that make it likelier to thrive, or the the traits that are going to get passed along from generation to generation. As long as they hang along, hang on long enough to to survive through the reproduction process, then it gets ingrained and boom, you've got yourself a trade well by nature, the the traits that allow it to hang on long enough to reproduce are going to be most successful traits because with reproduction, those are the ones that are going to get passed around the most frequently, and then eventually the one the animals that had more of the traits that didn't allow it to thrive are gonna die out. They're not going to reproduce. So on a long enough time scale, this reproduction will lead to um higher frequency of traits that make an animal fit for its environment. Right, Like the guerrilla, for instance, used to have a large ale with a pin wheel on the end of it, but it was really you know, I didn't really do much for him, so over time it just kind of went away. Right. That's not true, though, is it? No, it's not true. What do you mean? Is it all right? It was making sure? Um? So these changes though, these traits, right, they just kind of seemed to pop up here there, if you're in our current understanding of genetics, same nineteen eighties understanding of genetics, they just kind of pop up out of nowhere. Um. But chuck, if I may digress for a second, please, have we ever explained what came first the chicken or the egg. Yeah, it's been a while though it has, but we have already yeah, but it's been a while. I think it deserves a recap okay, because you actually know the answer, Yes, I do. I can say that the egg came first because the genetic mutation that gives rise to new species, to new animals occurs UH in the zygotic stage of development. Right. So that means a non chicken and a non chicken got together and created as I got that had a mutation that eventually turned it into a chicken. Its jeans were expressed to be a chicken. To the egg came first. The egg came before the chicken. Eventually the egg hatched and you had the first chicken. But the egg came first, all right, Um. But the point of me saying that is that the mutations that appear, these traits that change over time or show up that make an animal more fit for its environment, happened in the reproductive level of zygote, That's right. And the accumulation of those traits, the beneficial traits that make it able to survive UH in a certain place, like a polar bear in the cold, is called an ecological niche. Niche and some people say, we talked about the polar bear before um separating from the Brown Bear and the Black Bear and Evolution in Isolation, which was kind of a companion podcast of this one. Did you write that one, Yeah, I wrote that one. I didn't write this one that this was the grabster. Yeah, that's right, of course. So that's an ecological niche and um animals, like we mentioned the polar bear, that have adapted to live in a cold area. You throw a polar bear out in the savannah of Africa and it's not gonna do too well, right, which brings up another point I think that is there's a lesson in all of this what we're talking about, especially with ecological niches. We especially us being humans at the top of the food chain and the smartest things ever since slight spread um or prairie dogs go ahead, okay, tend to look at evolution as um basically a ladder and we're at the top, baby, right, that's not the case an ecological niches point that point that out. If you if humans okay, great example, if you take a human and put it at the bottom of the Marianna trench, it's not going to thrive, It's going to drown or its heads going to explode. We're not suited for it. So we're not evolved. We're not at the top of evolution. If evolution were a ladder and we were at the top, we'd be suited for any environment. We're not at a good point. So, as a guy named Matt Ridley points out in a book called The Red Queen, Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, um that evolution is not a ladder, it is a treadmill. Yeah. No, animals necessarily better than another more highly evolved. It has to do with adapting to your local environment. That's one of the processes of parallel evolution. Makes sense. We adapt to our local environment or our ecological niche. That's right. That's a very good point. And the reason we're pointing out ecological niche to begin with is because animals are I'm sorry organisms period that have parallel or convergent evolution are usually or more likely to have a similar ecological niche. It's a really really long way of putting that, was it. Yeah. Uh. For instance, you look at um an animal like the wildebeeste or North American cattle, they're actually sort of parallel evolutionized and they because they live in very similar areas. You know, planes, hot, grassy, and uh so they're really similar in the end, even though they're on two different continents. Number one evolutionized t shirt. Okay, okay, Number two, that's absolutely right, all right, yeah, thank you, absolutely right? Right? Okay, great, what do you think? I thought you said? Wrong? And it's absolutely white? Okay, that's absolutely blite. But Josh, absolutely sometimes convergent evolution does not depend on this ecological niche because the trait is really advantageous for all kinds of organisms. And that's when you brought up the sharp teeth, limbs, wings, arms. Consider this the arms. Uh we can say now looking at Jean Ms, that arms are a direct relative of fins. This again goes to the idea that evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder. Right, So it's not like arms are the inevitable and of fins. What are you laughing about. It's that fins are better suited for swimming around the water. Right. But the same genes, the same genetics set, the same genetic code that give you fins also give you arms if you're walking around, maybe swinging from trees or need to climb them, or need to like, you know, high five somebody to keep society going right. Yeah, yeah, same thing. Yeah, you're right, but you know, we're not the only things that evolved limbs. But limbs are so advantageous, just like teeth um that we are. That a lot of different, completely unrelated species evolved limbs to walk and to grab things. And which is what is that convergent evolution? Yes, I would say so we're the very least parallel. You know. I have to say I'm surprising myself, extremely passionate for this one. I don't understand why. Well, it's cool. And you know, we haven't covered evolution in Earnest as a podcast, but we've hit on it in so many I think we're covering it in the long run one way or the other. You know what I think it is. I am just barely hanging on by my fingernails. So I'm really like, yeah, if I say it really fast, it'll it'll be right. All right. Let's talk about genetics in this whole mess a parallel evolution. There are two things to think about when you think about genetics, and the first one, I think it's kind of cool. The genetic code for species potentially has a hidden blueprint almost for what it could do but not necessarily does do. And the grab stre likned it too. Let's say you have a blueprint of a house and the architect designed it such that you can add on a master bedroom here in this spot, but you never do it. But it's there. You've got the land and the blueprint it for it. You just don't use it right because the architects said, don't build that edition yet they don't have the money for it. They're just building the house exactly. But it still exists in the in the master blueprint. And the same can be said of let's say a jellyfish, which is round right. There's no right or left side of a sea and and and and intomy has radial symmetry, right, a jellyfish or an anemony so hard for me? Anemone show off an enemy now it's not an enemy, uhete and chuck. There is no left or right side as a radial body plan. It's circular and which is not a funny shape at all. And the genetic code, though is there. So eventually, one day, let's say the jellyfish needed to evolve to have a left or right side for some reason, it could do that genetically speaking, the code is there. Yeah, for bilateral symmetry, which I have, which you have? That you could as down the middle. We could be folded in half. Yes, if you put a mirror up to your knows perpendicular to your nose, no, parallel to your nose, the point of your nose, it would be half. It looked like you. That's right, right, you know they say symmetry equals beauty. Yes, that's what they say. That's what a lot of people say. Um, you've got a big walleye on one side. That's why you're not attractive. What are you going after? The eyes? You mentioned disco? I'm another recent podcast, did somebody Okay? So, so jellyfish have radio symmetry, but they have a genetic marker to kick in bilateral symmetry they ever need it, and believe me, I would run horrified from Maybe that's what Cathulhu is. It's a it's a jellyfish who's like bilateral symmetry has started to kick in a little bit. Nice. Um. The point is is it's not just jellyfish. There are a lot of dormant jeans just ready to go off with the right mutation um to change all sorts of stuff and they think. Also, I read the article that he cited, the art technical article that the jellyfish have that so that they can develop their mouth. Yeah, cool, because the mouth requires bilateral symmetry jellyfish. The reason we mentioned this to begin with, though, is that the belief that you can develop similar traits even though you evolve separately, which is what we've been talking about this whole time, because the trait has always been in your genetic code to begin with, just dormant, right, it's just very very ancient, and then it can express in different ways, like apparently they looked at the fins of a fish, right and found that they have pretty much the same genes that we do for our arms, okay, and bilateral symmetry. Those genes are the same for everything. Right, So we're all a lot more related, I guess than we thought now that we're starting to look into it. I wonder if, well we probably know this by now, if we have any dormant genetic codes and humans like, we could potentially grow that tail if we needed to. Well, apparently we do have tales in some embryotic development stage. We still have distigial tales, and there are people who are born with him who don't shed them. That's pretty cool. Who had the tale? Uh? Jason Alexander had one in one of the Fairly Brothers movies. Yeah, we're like, if it was was it? There's something there's something about Mary. Wasn't it? No, No, he wouldn't in that. Are you sure that wasn't it? Yes? Thank you? Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant to. Didn't one of the friends have a tale? No? No, no, Channel had a third nipple? Yes, superfluous Nipplesony Krusty the clown. He so, Josh, what's the second thing to consider? Well, I guess the other thing we've been what got biologists into the idea of looking at jeans is that we were looking at morphological changes, right. Stuff we can see like this flying squirrel is not related to that flying squirrel, but they're both flying squirrels, even though we call them different things. Philanders um. When we look at the genetic level, we're finding that like the same morphological traits, the similarities are are also found on the genetic level, right, So basically they're thinking, like you can you can look at the ecological pressure, the environmental pressure that caused a polar bears coat to become white right um on an internal level with the interactions between amino acids and proteins that are causing these genes to be expressed, so internally and externally, these changes are are occurring um to form flying filangers and squirrels on two different continents. Thank you the freak show that is Australia for basically pointing science in the right direction. They love it when we talk about them too. We always get email from masses that are just like you. Guys are the best. Another and they gave us another one too. Um the Tasmanian wolf now extinct wolf which is um almost completely unre related to any other wolf. It's extinct, like I said, um, but it is the spitting image of the gray wolf here in North America, even though they're like they were not related, same everything. This is the kind of science I dig. Yeah, cool science. Yeah, not that physics magnetism. You're into physics that sort of just that a necessity, I guess. Yeah, but you you have an appreciation more than I do. I think. Really, Yeah, you don't like full crumbs? What is wrong with what's the full crumb? The full crumb is the point it's like a see saw, right, and that the full crumb. Yeah, okay, it's the it's the point of balance on a on a sea saw. It's the point that he saw balance. Yeah, yeah, same thing. You got anything else? Are we just gonna evolve separately? Here? I think? So? Okay, if you want to learn more about evolution, UM, you should type in evolution in the search part how stuff works dot com. Um. Also check out can animals evolve in isolation? That's a cool article, Um, This article we've been talking about from the grabster, How can two seemingly unrelated species that live in isolation from each other evolve into identical forms? You can also reach it by typing in parallel evolution in the search bart how stuff works dot Com. So there's a lot for you to go check out there, all right? Yeah, And I would say just type in evolution and how stuff works, and you're gonna get a whole bevy of cool cool stuff. That's what I said first. Yeah, I'm reinforcing that well, Chuck said search bart how stuff works? Right, Yeah, I did too. It means it's super super time for listener mail. That's right, Josh, I'm gonna call this um Mountaintop removable coal mining email from an inside one of millions. Yeah, we got a lot of positive feedback from this, and surprisingly not one person is written in yet that said, you jerks. You never think about the the minor side of things. Most people have been like, yeah, this is probably shouldn't be. Some some guy on Twitter basically said I don't like it when they get political, but this one was pretty good. All right, Yeah, I'll take that. Man. Hey guys, I've heard all your podcasts from day one, and keep up the good work. Please. Uh sometimes you are all I need to get away from the day's stress. I mean mining engineers. Student enrolled at the University of Kentucky Go Wildcats, one of the largest exporters of eager and to do mining engineers. In reality, the decision to enroll here had more to do with scholarship opportunities than a lifelong love of Appalachian mining. However, after being surrounded by over zealous students who would personally blow up the earth for an ounce of coal because it keeps the lights on, I have become entirely infatuated with this mindset. I've interviewed for all the big name companies some of which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars recruiting new workforce. When I interviewed for these companies, they seem to be in complete denial of this satistics, occasionally showing a picture of a deer standing on a patch of grass and claiming that it's as if we were never there in the first place. As I have been shown firsthand what the mining field entails, I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis. And that's something I don't know. If we make clear we're not anti minors, we know these people were very thin. Yeah, I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis to make sure that I can send this email on my electricity powered laptop. At the same time, I shudder in disappointment that they wishfully remain ignorant of the science involved in the harm they are doing. Part of me wishes to enter the field to reinvent the idea that providing energy must come at a sacrifice that compromises our ability to take care of the environment in our neighbors. Wish me luck, as I have a lot of work ahead of me, and I asked him if you want to remain anonymous, and he said it's probably a good idea. So that's anonymous, but pretty cool. He thinks a lot of anonymous pretty trade. Yeah, changing changing the place from the inside, right, Good luck, buddy. We like anonymous emails right there, usually the most like what ones right? Exactly? All right? Well, if you want to send us an anonymous email, we would love to hear from you. Um, you can address it too. Stuff podcasts at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you