Hack Dog Vision To Keep Your Bones Safe

0:00Welcome to the rest of science. This is this is Field Notes. Oh, hi, Field Notes. I'm Michael. Oh, yeah. I mean, that bit's important. That's just classic Michael Hanna banter. Well, I'm here to talk about color vision. OK, specifically color vision in other animals. I spoke about this a while ago, but now it is real and it is on my body and it's protecting my bones. I'll show you. It's unfortunate that the editors are probably going to cut the bit where your top came up with your hoodie and we saw an almost nude Michael. Was that in frame? No, you're safe, don't worry. Did you guys not know that about me?

0:44In order to take my shirt off, I have to get completely nude first? I did think when the fans came off, I thought it was too much. But, you know, you do you. It's just easier for me.

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3:48Anyway, this is the shirt. And the shirt, you'll notice right away in white letters, it says no bones in here. And the shirt itself is a kind of orangish red color. And so humans can read this, you know, no bones in here part, but so can dogs. Dog vision is different. Dog vision is just dichromatic. They only see two base colors, blue and yellow. All right. So they can see brightness and darkness, but they also can only see combos of blue and yellow. That's how the world is to them. And reds and greens look the same. They just kind of look perhaps like browns. We don't know what it is like to be a dog, but we do know that dogs cannot be trained to recognize the green and the red thing or a green thing on a red thing.

4:41And so in green letters on this red shirt, we have written JK, I'm full of bones actually. So only humans can see that actually I have a skeleton inside me. As far as dogs know, I don't have any bones in here. Yeah, I think this is an ingenious plan. I think you've thought everything through. I think you have worked it all out. I can only see one tiny flaw. Yeah. Not sure dogs can read. But beyond that, great. Some of our testers brought that up. They said, well, I wore the shirt and I walked around bragging about my skeleton. And sure enough, no dogs tried to steal my bones. But it might not be because of the shirt, Michael.

5:27It might be because dogs can't read. You need a control group. And I think honestly, science will never know what really happened. Sure. But I'd rather be safe than sorry. We call this the dog safety shirt. It's part of this season's color vision box. We've got the color blindness tests all over it with different numbers. That's eight. If you can't read the eight on top of the box, then you might have color blindness of this type, or you might be a dog, in which case paws off my bones, Fido. Now, I think I may have mentioned the idea for this shirt already on the podcast, but now it is real and it's on my body protecting my bones.

6:10There's more, though, that I haven't shown, and it's that we also made a whole sticker set. These are stickers that dogs cannot enjoy. So there are stickers of things that dogs would otherwise love, like cats, bones, fire hydrants, poop, squirrels, tennis balls. This, my daughter's already been playing with the stickers and she put a diamond ring sticker on top of this one and I can't get it off. But this is a dog sniffing another dog's butt. Great. But the colors that have been chosen so that to a dog, this heart-shaped sticker, for example, that's red with a green bone on it is just gonna look like a brown heart.

6:48They won't be able to see the detail of the bone written on it. Ah, sucker. As I show this off, it feels like we're just teasing dogs. But I think really we're teaching about the variety of visual experience amongst life forms on Earth, which is a beautiful thing. Because there are other animals like the, is it the mantis shrimp? Which has, if humans have on average three cones, dogs have two, the mantis shrimp has something like 19, if I remember rightly. Yeah. Like we don't even know what it sees. It's like, the idea is that it's seeing perhaps some things that look translucent to us. It's managing to be able to distinguish between that and the sort of the water background that it's against.

7:34But I mean, the rainbow would be an entirely different experience if you're a mantis shrimp. I know. You come across the idea of a tetrachromat, by the way. Well, yes, there are humans who have, well, they have different color vision. They can see more colors than most people. Yeah. Yeah. Because it all comes down to the X chromosome, which is where most of your cones are. Certainly your red and green cones are, which is why being colorblind is so much more common in men than it is in women. I think in women, it's about one in every 200 women is colorblind. In men, it's more like 12 % or something.

8:13But yeah, the reason is that if you end up with a defective X chromosome effectively, that your cones aren't working properly, in women you get two rolls of the dice. You have two X chromosomes. If one isn't working, you have the other one. It's fine. But in men, you only get one shot because the Y chromosome doesn't have the right information on it. One strike and you're colorblind. One strike and you're colorblind. But because it is on the X chromosome, there is this idea that actually some women get two X chromosomes that are substantially different that they end up with effectively a fourth cone, tetrachromat.

8:47Now, I've heard about this, but what does that mean for their vision? What do they see that I don't? Well, so there's only been a really, really, really small number of women who have like been sort of identified and tested in a scientific way. But there are some people, some estimates say that actually maybe around 20 % of women have this, but don't know that they have it. I mean, you can go your whole life being colorblind and not know that you are. Yeah. Right. Because it goes back to quality. You don't know how your experience relates to somebody else is. But if you are a woman who ends up arguing with other people about the colour of things quite a lot, then it's possible that you're a tetrachromat.

9:26I think the idea is that you can distinguish between colours much more easily. So whereas you and I might be able to see a million colours, a tetrachromat might be able to see up to a hundred million. So they can detect extremely subtle changes that you otherwise wouldn't be able to see. But we don't know really. It may be that they have entirely different colors altogether. There was one woman who was a tetrachromer, sort of confirmed tetrachromer. And she said that when she walks along a pebbly beach, she doesn't understand how everyone just says, oh, it's all really gray. She didn't understand it because she was like, what are you talking about?

9:59This is like being at a jeweler's shop window that you can see this like sparkling array of like myriad colors just shining back at you. What is everyone talking about? It's just really gray. Wow. Maybe in there, there is a pebble that says, hey, humans, suckers. And it's just put there by the mantis shrimp. Yeah, you trichromats will never appreciate me, the pebble. I love that. It's such a good reminder that we see such a small portion of the world. And there's so much more there that other species see that even other individuals, humans can see. It's like the universe through a keyhole, you know?

10:41Exactly. Exactly. Now, here's an ambiguous thing that we made. This is a coin. It's like a challenge coin-sized coin. It's made of metal, and you can flip this to never lose a coin toss. The way it works is that it says heads on one side and tails on the other. And it also says tails on the other side and heads on the other. It's an ambigram. So if I hold it like this, you can read the word heads, and the editors can maybe outline the word heads there. But if I turn it upside down, we're still looking at the same side, but now it says tails. Nice. So you can flip this coin. The other person can call it in the air.

11:22You catch it and then you just show it to them one side up or the other to have it be heads or tails so that you can always win or always lose. You know, it's up to you. You are in control. So I love this little bit of word art there. And then you see the coins around the edge. It's like different frames in the animation of a spinning coin, that's a zoetrope illusion. And so when you spin this coin, it's got a little divot in the middle so you can spin it like a top. It looks like the coin is moving. But this coin can spin on its face like that, like a spinning top. And if you spin it and you look at it through your phone's camera, it can align with the frame rate and the coins along the edge become an animated spinning coin.

12:08So this is a coin that spins a coin. I like that a lot. It's like the origin of cinema. But those are some of the little inventions that we've got here. Here's what I want to know, right? When you come up with all these inventions, where does it start? Are you just like, like the idea of doing a shirt for colorblind dogs? Where do you, where does that come from? Well, we always wanted to do something around color vision. Like the whole box is always this team effort and people will have an idea and then we all piggyback off of it and add to it. And so I think for this shirt, it began with we want to do something with color vision, maybe make goggles that allow you to see the world as a dog would, for example.

12:54And we still might do that. I'd love to make a book actually that comes with pages that you can look through to see the world as a cat, as a dog, as we couldn't really do a mantis shrimp. because you'd have to add colors. But maybe we'll figure out a way to do that. And then somehow it turned into a shirt that, oh, you know what? We had the idea to do a shirt that only your phone could see. Because, you know, phones also see more colors than humans do. This is a great experiment to do at home. Just open up your camera app and point it at the front of a TV remote control and start pushing buttons.

13:33To the human eye, the light on the remote will just look blank. But through your camera, you'll see like a bluish light flickering because the camera receives the infrared radiation and then it converts it into a color humans can see on the screen. So you can see lights that you couldn't otherwise see through your phone. We wanted to make a shirt that worked in the same way, where until someone took a photo of it, they couldn't see what was on the shirt. and we couldn't actually get it to work with the like shirt printing technology that exists today. So we said, how about instead of phones, we focus on like an animal.

14:11How about dogs? They famously have limited color vision compared to a human. And then I was the one who said, all right, here's the deal. It's going to be about bones. It's going to be about keeping you safe from a dog that wants your bones. I want to be in one of those meetings one day. Okay. I want to just be a fire on the wall You should come by. We just had one this morning. We're talking about, here's something I have to send you a set. We're making a bunch of charms. They can be like key chains or just like charms for a charm bracelet that are based on SI standard units. Amazing. So we're giving you a pendulum that has a period of exactly like a 10th of a second.

14:51We're giving you a little vial that contains exactly one kilocalorie of sugar. So you know what that looks like. A 10-gram weight and a square with a smaller square cut inside of it that is exactly a square inch and a square centimeter. So you'll always have those to reference. And the plan is to do the full line of scientific unit charms. So we'll also have a light that produces either one lumen or some some exact measurement, yeah, standard amount. And what else is there? There's, oh, we'll give you an ohm resistor, key chain. I like this a lot. Will it also look good, Michael? Because if it will, I'll wear it.

15:35They're made of steel. So they're hard wearing and they're stainless. So they're going to look beautiful. I think it's all really well designed. I'd show you photos, but that's all confidential. But then you'd have to kill us. Then you'd have to kill us. Okay, should we go to a break? Let's go to a break and when we come back, we'll be answering some of your questions. Perfect, see you then.

16:08This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. What if your immune system could learn to recognise cancer cells? That's immunotherapy. One type is CAR T-cell therapy. T-cells are your body's watchman, and doctors can now extract these and reprogram them to spot cancer. They've started showing this real promise in treating cancers of the blood like leukemia, because unlike most cancers, blood cancer cells, they float around separately, and that makes it easier for CAR T-cells to seek them out and destroy them. And now, Cancer Research UK-funded scientists are designing CAR T-cells that can tackle solid tumors too, making them tougher so they can survive a more crowded and hostile cancer environment.

16:50Now these approaches are experimental, but they do start to show where treatment might go next. And over the past 50 years, Cancer Research UK's pioneering work has helped to double cancer survival in the UK. I mean, this shows you how far research can take us. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

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17:47Okay, we are back to get into some of your questions. Remember, you can always submit your own by emailing them to us at therestisscienceatgoalhanger.com. Who knows? We might answer it right here on the show. We certainly might. You know what? While you were talking, I realized on the camera, my skin color on my arm is exactly the same as the top that I'm wearing. It just looks like you're naked and sunburned. Naked and sunburned simultaneously. Very oddly, just on the shoulders. Exactly. This is a really glittery sunburn on this particular occasion. I need to notice, I need to put on some fake tan if I'm wearing this top.

18:22You know how silly people are? If you don't say anything, they don't do anything. But if you say, guys, can you subscribe to our channel? Suddenly there's a massive influx of subscribers. Yeah. But that's because we are influencers, Hannah. If we tell people to subscribe, they do it. Just like lemmings. Though lemmings don't actually exhibit lemming behavior. No, that's true. They were driven off the cliff by Disney producers, weren't they? Yeah. Anyway, the point is you should subscribe. Yeah. We hate saying that. We hate it because it's such a cliche, but unfortunately it works. So until every last one of you has done your duty and clicked that like and subscribe button, we will continue forcing that narrative down your throats.

19:05Just a brief object that has nothing to do with science at all. It is purely a plug for my best friend's book. So this woman, her name's Anna McCauley. She was my best friend through school. She was like the smartest kid in the school. So I felt very jealous and competitive with her. But we became very close friends. She was the best man at my wedding. And she's written a book. And the book is a perfect marriage of like UK and America, just like us. It's called Abbey Offsides. It's about an American who moves to England, starts working for a football team in Liverpool. And one of the characters in this book is based on me.

19:52Oh, but you're not saying which. What bigger honor could there be? I will say this. First of all, it's really a whole mind trip to read a book where you know there's a character based on you. It changes the whole experience. Wait, is it the dashingly good-looking romantic lead? No, it isn't. However, she did write the character to be a much better friend to the main character in this book than I have ever been to her. It actually almost made me feel bad. I'm like, oh, gee. Also, the character that I'm based on has hair, like thick, curly hair. And I'm like, OK. I mean, so do you if you do a handstand.

20:33That's true. Look at that. Upside down. I am a hirsute man. Anyway, Abbey Offside's not available here in New Zealand until October. So luckily, I've got my advanced reader's copy. I read this, you know, a year ago. OK, first question. Let's get back to it, shall we? OK, this comes from Dan Pelveco, who asks, I was curious to know if there is any way that we could use DNA and RNA to encode data like a hard drive. Is there anyone working on this? They're not just working on it, Dan. There's this whole race going on about it. So at the moment, I'm filming this series and one entire episode of the series is going to be about exactly this, exactly this question.

21:16So maybe what I should do is give you an update after we've gone off to film it. But yeah, this is like, we're at this point where semiconductors are reaching the kind of limits of Moore's law. It's unbelievably expensive to sort of transcribe data through this digital process. But it also just takes up physically a hell of a lot of space. So this time next week, I'm going to be in a mountain in Pittsburgh, which has been converted into a sort of safe data storage facility. the idea that you know if there's attacks or like fires or whatever it might be out out there in the world inside the mountain the data will be safe and kind of can stay there for a really long time but nothing has got anything on dna you know like we've dug up woolly mammoths from the from the permafrost in siberia and then managed to extract dna from them that's been there for you know hundreds of thousands of years since before humans even existed so this is like the only data source that we know for sure can be frozen in time and still be completely robust, you know, hundreds of thousands of years later.

22:26So there are people who are doing exactly this. Can I ask a question? Please, go ahead. Okay, so when you and Dan talk about encoding information in or as DNA or RNA, what does that mean? Does that mean using their actual amino acids to store data using the… Yeah, A, T, G, and C. Yeah, exactly. Okay. And that's what makes it DNA? Because obviously, if you encoded the text of Moby Dick, it wouldn't be DNA in the sense of like, oh, this is instructions for a living organism. It would be using the language of DNA to form a long molecule that could be read to give us back Moby Dick. Exactly right.

23:15So you couldn't sort of pop it into a cell or pop it into an egg and then suddenly Moby Dick be born. But you could pop it into a special reader. You could pop it into a special reader. Like an electronic computerized reader that would then be like, ah, I've analyzed this DNA molecule and here's call me Ishmael, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Exactly right. And if you think about it, this is one of the big advantages of it. Apart from the fact that we know that it's sort of, that it's stable over incredibly long periods of time. We also, in DNA, you have four bases, right? A, T, C, and G.

23:51Whereas in binary, you've only got two, zero, one. Right. So it's also incredibly articulate, basically. It's extremely, extremely capable of compressing data really, really, really efficiently. And you are also, you're down at the size of molecules, right? So like one bit becomes minuscule. Even physically, it's very compressed because you're writing with molecules, large molecules, you know, but still molecules. And I know DNA can be lost pretty easily, but it's stable. Like you said, we can pull them out of woolly mammoths, but I guess it'd be more stable than like, okay, let's etch some little markings on a little wafer and hope it doesn't get scratched.

24:36These molecules kind of preserve themselves by their own intermolecular forces. Quite literally, you're exactly right. I mean, if you think about, so I know we've spoken about this before, but the Human Genome Project, which is trying to take human DNA and then transcribe it into a string of those letters, A, T, C, G, and so on. The Human DNA Project, I went to go and see it the other day as part of this program that I'm filming at the Sanger Institute. They have it printed out as a series of books. I cannot tell you, it is absurd when you see just human DNA written out. I think it's 112 books and these books are meaty tombs.

25:19And you think, oh, tomes, sorry. I never get that word right. A meaty tomb. That sounds like a good movie. But you open them up expecting the writing to at least be big. And it's not, it's minuscule. We are talking many, many, many, many, many thousands of pages across many hundreds of books, right? It's insane. And all of this is squished in and is copied in every single one of your cells, which are just, I mean, it's so tiny, right? Like it's so articulate, DNA. There's this one estimate that basically if you took everything that humans have ever created, and then you tried to re-encode it using DNA instead of sort of traditional methods, then they would basically fit in the back of two vans, the backs of two vans.

26:09Wow. Everything that's ever been written by humans. I mean, you go to like, you go to a data mountain like the one in Pittsburgh, you put it in DNA and it's basically just like a little fridge, you know, like a little tiny little fridge. You need nothing. It's almost nothing. Would this be smaller than electronic storage as it exists today? Like how much physical space does a bit take up on a hard drive? Do you know what? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. either. Because the problem is that one bit, I mean, the bits you have to have like transistors, right? So like even the transistors are small, we're still talking many orders of larger than DNA.