What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll get an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s popular podcast. The weirdest thing I learned this week Every other Wednesday morning on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts. This is your new favorite source for the weirdest science-related facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals compiled by the editors of Popular Science. If you liked the story in this article, you’ll probably like this show too.
Fact: Curly hair may have evolved to keep the head cool
Rachel Feltman
As a certified curly girl, I’ve always been fascinated by the different shapes human hair can take. But for most of modern history, science has woefully ignored the study of curly or tightly coiled hair. Thankfully, this is starting to change, thanks in large part to the curious research and advocacy of Dr. Tina Rasisi. You can read more about Lasisi and her research on human hair morphology and evolution in this great article by PopSci alumna Hannah Seo.
This week’s episode of Weirdest Thing takes a deep dive into the findings of one of Rashish’s most interesting studies. In 2021, she and her colleagues were able to demonstrate that curls can help keep your head cool. Humans have evolved to rely on sweat to regulate body temperature using evaporative cooling. But our large brains tend to overheat, so in an ideal world we wouldn’t want our brains to get hot enough to cause us to sweat in the first place. Perhaps that is why we lost almost all the rest, leaving the fur on our heads. That’s why we look quite strange next to other mammals, and even other apes. Hair blocks the sun’s radiant heat and prevents scalp burns and scalp burns.
Here’s the problem. Hair physically blocks sunlight from hitting your head, but it also acts as an insulator, trapping incoming heat.
Because tighter curls tend to have more exposed areas to UV rays, globally, Rasisi and his colleagues decided to test whether coils and ringlets are more effective at keeping the head cooler than straight hair. They tested this using a fun and bizarre setup that involved a mannequin wearing a glamorous wig with a power cord plugged into its eye socket.
Sure enough, wavy hair kept my head cooler than straight hair, and tightly packed hair provided the greatest cooling effect. And when you consider the sun’s ability to scorch the skin above my skull, any hair was better than being bald.
Lasish and her colleagues believe that the curls create a kind of spongy effect, allowing air to circulate freely and preventing heat from getting trapped there. Listen to this week’s episode of “Weird Things I Learned This Week” to hear more interesting facts about the evolution of curls and coils.
Fact: Turkey vultures spit projectiles for self-defense
Written by Liz Clayton Fuller
The lesser vulture is one of the heroes of the bird world. Although often misunderstood, these magnificent birds contribute to society by eating carrion, the rotten flesh of dead animals. Carrion can carry all sorts of toxins and diseases, including anthrax, tuberculosis, and rabies (you know what I mean by that expression). Surprisingly, the lesser vulture is able to ingest all of the aforementioned contaminants intact because its stomach is so acidic. The squirt-and-vomit strategy is especially effective because of the high acidity of the stomach. While feeding on carrion, the lesser vulture maintains its cleanliness by having a featherless bald head and large nostrils that prevent pieces of carrion from adhering to it. The lesser vulture also has a habit called “urhidrosis”. This is the habit of animals urinating on themselves to cool themselves down when it gets hot outside. As such, the lesser vulture has certainly earned a reputation for being a bit mean, but wonderful.
So how do yellow-bellied vultures find carrion to dispose of, which they perform an amazing service to humanity by scavenging? Turkey vultures have the largest and most powerful olfactory system in the bird world, which helps them locate (already dead) prey. Their sense of smell can guide them to carcasses miles away, and in fact many other vultures rely on Turkish vultures to find vulture carrion, which they will follow . When it comes to what kind of dead meat is on the menu, freshly dead meat is preferred. It is a common misconception that turkey vultures stalk and kill their prey, but they only arrive after the prey is dead. Aside from the fact that they have just died, yellow-bellied vultures are not picky at all. In Tennessee alone, we’ve seen them as scavengers for armadillos, skunks, cows, deer, groundhogs, and more. Next time you see a lesser vulture flying around, thank it for its work as nature’s cleaner.
Fact: A rebel Zambian astronaut tried to beat an American to the moon.
Written by Purvita Saha
In 1964, the world was in the midst of a space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, a new candidate emerged in a Time magazine feature. That is Zambia, a southern African country that recently gained independence from Britain. In the article, a science teacher named Edward Makuka Nkoloso revealed that he is training a team of 12 astronauts to take the country to the moon. No, they weren’t literally building space catapults, they had claustrophobic barrel rockets. But the candidates were learning to walk on their hands. That’s because Nkoloso thought it would require navigating the moon’s inhospitable terrain. Eventually, the teacher settled on a crew of his teenage girls, a missionary, two cats, and his own dog, Cyclops. But without funds, Nkoloso’s dream of sending people from his hometown beyond Earth’s orbit faded into legend. No one could be sure whether his efforts were genuine or an attention-seeking stunt. The 2014 short film The Afronauts reinterprets this as pure fiction.
Perhaps Nkoloso would be proud of the region’s growing importance in astronomy today. From the Meerkat radio telescope to the Africa Millimeter Telescope, multinational teams of scientists are discovering never-before-seen stellar wonders thanks to South Africa’s crystal-clear skies. At least, this proud Zambian, interviewed by Time magazine more than 60 years ago, had a vision for the future.
