Please enjoy this impromptu podcast episode with my youngest daughter! Thank you for joining us! If you would prefer to read, the transcript is people!
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Hi, and welcome back to the Curiosity Chronicles.
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I am your host, Taylor Cecilia Brooke, and with me today, I have a very special guest.
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Would you like to introduce yourself?
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All right, tell them your name.
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My name is Lucy Costello Luella.
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Your name is Lucy Luella Costello,
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yeah,
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and you're joining me here today on the Curiosity Chronicles,
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right?
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Yeah.
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What do we do at the Curiosity Chronicles?
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Um, we...
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Tell you things that we're curious about.
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We tell you things that we're curious about.
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Yep, yep, yep.
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So what should we figure out today?
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What are you curious about today?
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How do fireflies glow?
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How do fireflies glow?
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Okay, we will look that one up.
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What else are we going to talk about today?
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Um, how?
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How are seeds made?
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Oh, how are seeds created?
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Like how do they start in the flowers?
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That's a great question.
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All right, one more.
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How do snakes shed their skin?
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Oh, that's right.
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You wanted to know why and how they shed their skin.
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The other day, we were in the car, and you wanted to know why snakes molted.
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And I thought it was because that's what happens when they grow, but I'm not entirely sure.
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So today, we're going to look it up, aren't we?
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All right.
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So the first one, we need to figure out how fireflies glow.
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Let's figure this out.
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Okay.
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What do you think is going to happen?
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How do you think they glow, Lucy?
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I think it's because...
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They have a special part of their body that glows.
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Yeah.
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Do you think it's a chemical or do you think it's like just a part of their body?
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I think inside the little glowing thing, they have something that is attached to their body and it glows.
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So you're pretty close.
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Apparently,
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according to the AI overview on Google,
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fireflies light up through a chemical reaction in their abdomens called bioluminescence.
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This reaction occurs when oxygen combines with luciferin,
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an organic compound,
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and luciferase,
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an enzyme,
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in the presence of adenose triphosphate,
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which fuels cellular work.
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So essentially,
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there's a chemical reaction in their tummies,
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and it causes all of their insides to light up.
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Now, why is that only fireflies?
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Why do fireflies light up and not the rest of the insects?
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Well, sometimes when it's too dark for some insects, they light up a little bit.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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You think so?
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Like, which ones?
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Uh, I think, like, um, spiders.
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Wait, those aren't insects.
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Um, like, cockroaches.
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Oh, really?
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You think those glow?
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Mm-hmm.
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Interesting.
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Okay, are you ready to learn six things we didn't know about lightning bugs?
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This is the science behind fireflies from pestworld.org.
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Fireflies aren't actually flies.
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What?
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Yeah, apparently they're beetles.
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What?
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Yeah.
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Oh, that's really funny.
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So some fireflies don't glow, right?
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Oh, so the ones in the family that glow are different from the ones who don't.
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And the ones who do glow have wings and the other ones don't.
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And they're often referred to as glow worms.
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Okay, so fireflies have light organs that are located beneath their abdomens.
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And more than 2,000 species bear the name firefly, but not all of them glow.
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Those that do mix oxygen with a pigment called luciferin to generate light with very little heat.
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Apparently, it's the most efficient light in the world.
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Apparently, fireflies in Southeast Asia will synchronize their flashes.
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And in the U.S.,
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this phenomenon occurs during the first few weeks of June in the Great Smoky
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Mountains in Tennessee.
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We're going to have to go check that out sometime.
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Synchronized firefly flying.
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Ooh.
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Okay.
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Oh.
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Fireflies use their lights to ward off predators.
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Okay.
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But apparently, Firefly blood also contains a defensive steroid called leucobufagins.
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Wow, that's really interesting.
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All right.
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That was a lot.
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I still don't know.
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Okay, so apparently...
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Bioluminescence,
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which is what fireflies have,
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is rarer on land than in water,
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but there are several species of bug that emit their own light in addition to fireflies.
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You were not wrong.
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Lucy, there is in fact an exceedingly rare glowing cockroach.
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It relies only on light.
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bioluminescent bacteria.
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So it has to like eat the bacteria it creates.
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That's how it survives.
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That's super interesting.
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That is kind of gross.
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Okay.
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So now we are going to... Did you learn everything you wanted to learn about fireflies?
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Great.
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So now we're going to see how is a seed created?
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How do seeds...
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How do seeds work?
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How do seeds know which way is up?
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How do seeds germinate?
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There's so many, so many.
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Okay.
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Oh, this is a great diagram.
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Okay.
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But how did, this is like the chicken and the egg question.
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How is this?
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So I'm assuming, but see, this is the problem.
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I'm not even finishing my sentences, am I?
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So we have the fruit, right?
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Or the legumes.
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Or the flower or the vegetable, right?
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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And you have those seeds, but vegetables, kind of.
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Corn, yes.
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Potatoes, no.
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Broccoli, yes.
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Oh, that's confusing.
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Okay.
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So you have the seed, and it grows into a plant, right?
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Yeah.
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And then you get the seed from the plant, right?
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But how did the seed get, how was the seed first created?
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That's what I want to know.
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I do too.
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How was the first seed made?
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Here we go.
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Let's see.
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Oh, interesting.
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Okay, so scientists believe that the first plant to use seeds was an extinct seed, fern, called aphids.
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Elkisnea polymorpha, which lived during the Devonian period around 400 million years ago.
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These plants evolved cup-like structures called
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cupules along their branches to protect the developing seed, which was called an ovule.
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The capsules are made up of groups of branches that enclosed the ovule and its associated tissues.
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The earliest seeds were lobbed, creating a sheltered chamber at
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one end of the seed.
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Within the cupule,
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the seed was also enclosed by a layer of tissue called the integument,
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which eventually develops into the seed coat.
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Okay, ready?
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Before seeds existed,
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plants reproduced using spores,
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which are called single-celled structures that are different from seeds in a few ways.
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The genes for seeds may have helped
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plants defend themselves against pathogens and herbivores.
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Plants may also have acquired some of these genes from fungi or other microbes
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through a process called horizontal gene transfer.
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Oh, so that's super interesting.
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Basically, the seed came about through evolution.
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So it evolutionized from the plants getting different bacterias and microbes and
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all that.
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And it created the seed.
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But here's another great question.
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Someone from the conversation, curious kids, where did the first seed come from?
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They haven't always used seeds and they came a bit by bit over a really long time
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to like the evolution that I was talking about.
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Um,
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So here's how this works according to the conversation.
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When a living thing has a feature which works well, it'll be able to live longer and have more young.
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These young will probably have similar features thanks to their parents.
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Plants started using seeds to spread their young somewhere between 385 million and 365 million years ago.
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Before seeds, plants used spores.
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And some plants today still do that, such as algae, mosses, and ferns.
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You might have spotted the tiny brown dots on the underside of the fern leaves.
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Have you ever been walking outside and you see a leaf on the ground that has all these little dots on it?
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So then are called spores.
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Can you kind of see that?
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Yeah, that's how those plants grow.
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Spores are different from seeds in a few ways.
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A spore is made up of just one part, a single cell, while a seed contains many cells.
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each with different jobs spores have to work harder what's that um that is the walk
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and jump of a horse tail uh spore so there's lots of things that can produce spores
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like mushrooms yes like mushrooms exactly um
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Today, plants with seeds do things a little differently.
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There are two main types, angiosperms and gymnosperms.
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Angiosperms are flowering plants.
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Their seeds develop inside of fruit like apples, tomatoes, or even rose hips or holly berries.
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Okay.
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Is that a holly berry?
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I think so.
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Yes, that looks like a holly berry.
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Gymnosperms, such as pine trees, grow their seeds inside a hard cone.
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the upsides of seeds.
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Seeds have evolved because they are better at helping plants survive.
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They also have a hard coat, and they are better at spreading their young.
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Well, that was super interesting, and now we understand how all of this started.
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So originally it was spores, and then it moved, right?
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Yeah.
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What is next?
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Why do snakes molt?
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Was that our last one?
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Okay.
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Snakes molt or shed their skin for a number of reasons,
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including growth,
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parasite removal and skin damage.
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Wow.
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As they grow, their skin doesn't grow with them.
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So new skin grows underneath and then they have to shed its old skin to make new
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room to make room for the new skin.
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How crazy is that?
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If there's a parasite embedded in the snake's skin, the shedding will remove it.
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And then if something happens,
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if something damages the outer layer of a snake's skin,
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it'll molt then as well.
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That is super interesting.
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So there's a lot of reasons why a snake would need to molt.
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Are you doing another one?
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Well, that was our last one.
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Do you have any other questions for today or anything that you want to tell my
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subscribers or share with my subscribers?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, what do you want to say?
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I want to do something about raccoons.
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You want to do something about raccoons?
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You want to learn about raccoons next?
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Yeah, but why?
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do raccoons, um, why raccoons, um, why do raccoons, um, really wash their food?
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Um, why raccoons, um, why do raccoons' hands have to be sensitive to what they're eating?
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So I'm assuming it's because they can't see very well, but let's look this up.
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Why do raccoons...
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Why do raccoons wash their food?
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Ah.
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Apparently, when they dunk it in water, they get more sensory information.
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It's called dousing.
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When they wet their paws, it makes it more sensitive.
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So I'm assuming it's just because...
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It helps them understand what they're eating so they don't eat something that they should,
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although they are trash pandas.
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So I'm pretty sure they eat pretty much everything.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
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Even cardboard.
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You think they eat cardboard?
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Yeah.
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Oh, really?
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Yeah.
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Oh, my.
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And I also think they eat poisonous mushrooms.
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You think they eat – well, I wonder if they're actually poisonous to the raccoons.
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Or if they're only poisonous to the humans.
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Because some mushrooms aren't poisonous to animals.
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And there's a lot of fruits and flowers and things out there that we can't eat.
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But lots of animals can, right?
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Yeah, but why can't we eat them?
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Well, because our biome can't break them down and it makes us sick.
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Yeah, it's kind of like how dogs can eat raw meat.
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And we can't really eat very much raw meat.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, kind of crazy, huh?
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But if you put a lot of salt on lots of raw meat, you can eat all of it.
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Are you talking about salt curing?
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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So that's how they used to cure meat back in the day.
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They used to put a ton because they didn't have refrigerators because they didn't have electricity.
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So it's called salt curing.
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And they just crusted the whole piece of meat in salt.
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Kind of crazy, huh?
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I did that with something a few.
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Oh, I did that with the carnitas that were too salty.
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I must have too salted it too far.
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Are you okay?
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Yeah.
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Are you ready to be done?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Would you like to say bye to my subscribers?
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All right.
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Bye.
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All right.
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And that wraps a silly little episode with my sweet little four-year-old,
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Lucy,
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in the Curiosity Chronicles.
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I hope you learned a little bit about raccoons, snakes, fireflies, and seas.
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It was a unique episode.
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Have a wonderful day, and we will talk to you later.
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Bye!
Fireflies⚡, Seeds 🌱, Snakes 🐍, Racoons 🦝, and one adorable 4 year old 👧