Mimics, Twins, and Doppelgӓngers... Obviously | SciShow Quiz Show

this episode of scishow quiz show is sponsored by battle for cattle click on the link in the description to download and start playing the world's first synthetic vaccine game ladies gentlemen and Friends beyond the binary welcome to what is without a doubt the most recent scishow quiz show we've ever filmed I'm your host Michael Aranda today we have Joe Hanson from hot mess the coolest climate show on YouTube about how climate change affects us all you may also know him from another project it's ok to be smart welcome Joe hi it's I think it's good to be here yeah it may also know him from thinking he's me or I'm him which has been a lot of my life it might probably more of my life in yours that's fine I don't normally feel short I know but I feel short I also feel okay Joe is facing off against Hank Green who you may know from such places as the internet and this YouTube channel it's true our contestants will be battling for some sweet prizes not for themselves but for two patreon patrons we've selected at random Oh Joe you're competing on behalf of Sarah Fritz Sarah I'm sorry Hank you are playing for Mike Schaeffler hello Mike each of you begin with 1,000 scishow points answer a question correctly you'll win some number of points if you answer incorrectly you'll lose some number of points you tend to lose less than you win so it's kind of good to troca that's the right trend yeah and this button is involved in something yeah you have to hit the button and that's how you decide who's gonna answer the question perfect and when do we answer wouldn't can we buzz in as soon as you know you don't have to wait for all the ends buzz right before I ask a question Wow he's very confident so whoever emerges from the last round with the most points wins their patrons some slick gear Stefan show our contestants what they could go home with today welcome to the prize zone the magical corner of magical prizes it's a magical magic ooh there's a fairy but only I can see it all right let's get down to business shall we Sarah and Mike both of you are taking home some autographed cards from the final round today but the winner is gonna receive the I won scishow quiz show pin and a no expenses paid ten day trip to Hawaii what do you think of that person who looks suspiciously like me well if it's a no expenses paid trip then you're basically just telling someone they should plan a trip to Hawaii I guess which is a nice suggestion but it's not really a prize and last time I checked we were in the prize zone all right if you need me again I'll be over here thanks I thought we had fun clone in the building today not logic clone anyway you're getting a lovely pin and a suggestion to take a trip to Hawaii but if you happen to be lucky enough to lose today you're taking home the I lost scishow quiz show pin I guess I'll also suggest that you take a trip to Hawaii maybe you guys could both meet up on the beach and take a selfie with a turtle send it to us now that's magical that it is back to you Thank You Stefan now this episode for no reason in particular is about mimics twins and doppelgangers oh wow this thing's totally random first round mimic tentacle cousins round number one mimicry is not too uncommon in the animal world for example animals might mimic other more poisonous animals to ward off predators or they might resemble plant matter and hopes that a predator will pass them over this question though is about a bird native to the Amazon rainforest it's young mimic something you might not expect in order to discourage predators from seeing the nestlings as a tasty snack do they resemble a toxic caterpillar wow I made a video about this he's a biologist the answer is a toxic caterpillar Oh the answer is a toxic caterpillar predation is the main reason that baby birds who haven't left the nest yet don't make it to adulthood and unfortunately this bird called the cinereous mourner has a relatively long nesting cycle but it's found a way to make do researchers began to suspect something was up when they notice the young scenario mourners are strangely brightly-colored compared to the adults adult birds are a dull gray but their young are a bright orange combine that with the young's long bristly white tipped feathers and scientists reasoned that this was likely a form of mimicry maybe they were trying to blend in and resemble a moss covered fruit or maybe there was more going on the answer started to become clear when scientists realized that the bird shared a habitat with certain toxic caterpillars ones belonging to the family Megillah pijt these are the same furry orange caterpillars known for their uncanny resemblance to a certain public figures infamous orange hue comb-over and they're covered in nasty spines in a 2015 paper researchers reported that not only does the baby mourner look like the caterpillar but when disturbed the baby actually Bob's and weaves like the caterpillar does they considered this convincing evidence of a bird mimicking an insect to piggyback off its toxic properties is this a scishow quiz show first yeah correct question answer that all the question being alien sad answered asked later named the bird if you want what's on your it's a serious mourner man I'm in trouble thank you for tuning into this show everybody congratulations Jerell we'll see you next time you didn't realize I don't I'm not a part of this is gonna get worse turn honestly I did not think I was gonna go well for me ever so question to resembling toxic species is a really common strategy but we can go deeper the mimic octopus is one of the most talented imitators of the natural world and has been observed pretending to be a sea snake a lionfish a flatfish and tons of other animals but even this master of disguise can be beaten at its own game because researchers have caught an organism that uses this mimic for camouflage oh okay was this interloper a coral another octopus a fish or a jellyfish I have no idea just guess one two go ahead it's almost as if Joe understands the odds of the situation where you sure you want to touch it first [Applause] okay why not a jellyfish sounds I like jellyfish incorrect I'm afraid that I have a higher chance of getting the answer right I'll say another octopus also the answer is C a fish discovered in 1998 off the coast of Indonesia the mimic octopus is known to be one of the most sophisticated mimics in the natural world many creatures have evolved to look like something else but the mimic octopus can imitate a variety of other organisms it's an expert in what scientists call dynamic mimicry however you don't always have to be a master of disguise sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time in 2011 researchers spotted a black marble jaw fish swimming alongside a mimic octopus it stuck with the octopus for at least fifteen minutes or so and - the octopus didn't seem to notice for mine black marble jaw fish are dark in color with lighter bands which makes them look a little like the octopus there are also weak swimmers normally they hide in burrows to avoid predators but this one seemed to have found a way to use the mimic octopus as a taxi service it swam along blending in and was safer as long as the scientist observing it was able to watch you know nothing to see here just another tentacle researchers think the octopuses ability to imitate poisonous creatures like lionfish was enough to keep predators away from both the octopus and the jaw fish they also don't think this happens often since the range of the jaw fish doesn't overlap much with that of the mimic octopus this was a case of opportunism rather than a fish evolved to mimic mimic octopuses but it's impressive that it was able to play the mimics game so well okay that is the end of round one uh-huh time for the next round this round is about twins when researchers need to control for the effects of genetic variation in humans they often turn to twin studies since identical twins have the same DNA one of the highest profile twin studies ever conducted was NASA's twin study which just wrapped up someone at the space agency realized that twin brothers being accepted into the astronaut corps represented a scientific goldmine the study focused on Scott and Mark Kelly Scott spent a year in space while his brother Mark remained here on earth as a control the two were monitored for basically every biological characteristic scientists could manage but the question is which of the following did they not report as part of the study genetic changes changes in brain structure immune system changes or changes in eye structure was the second be the second one I can't remember what it was either but it was definitely that one that is correct the answer is B changes in the brain structure presumably they would have loved to monitor this but there's no fMRI machine on the space station this study might not have looked at brain structure but it did look at basically everything else for example it checked out astronauts telomeres these are caps on the ends of chromosomes that have to be maintained by cells and they get shorter as we age in the twin study though Scott's telomeres actually grew slightly longer during his flight they returned to normal once he was back on the ground and it's still not clear why this happened but it's definitely odd researchers also observed epigenetic changes in both Scott and mark epigenetic markers are genetic patterns that don't affect the four-letter code of DNA but can change how the cell reads and uses that information the changes in epigenetic markers were a bit different in the latter part of Scott's flight than they were in mark over the same period of time though once again they returned to normal later on still this information might help researchers pinpoint which genes are most responsive to being in space moving past genetics one of the most notable differences researchers observed between the two brothers was in their immune systems Scott showed signs of inflammation a sort of immunological response to stress while in flight and it even persisted six months later and finally though researchers didn't look at the brother's brains directly they did monitor what physiological characteristics they could including their cardiovascular systems body weight and even the structure of their eyes specifically they saw some Wehling and scott's retinas as well as other changes and noted that the twins have some genetic risk for ophthalmic issues they also performed various cognitive tests that demonstrated that astronauts definitely hang on to their smarts while in space no major changes there which is good those guys need their brains I never have an MRI member that I knew that one to taste you start getting too cocky yeah got in under the wire there as you feel out of my league but I'll see how it goes speaking of twin studies by some accounts King Gustav the third of Sweden ordered the very first twin study during his reign in the latter part of the 18th century of course he did it not for the love of scientific inquiry but because he had a vendetta against a popular beverage at the time what was it alcohol hot chocolate tea or coffee I think it was coffee yeah I gotta stop hesitating should have had more coffee you think it was gonna hit I thought it was coffee ha ha ha ha I'm very not confident sometimes this being one of them I'm getting up in your business hold me back the answer is d the guy really had it out for coffee coffee was a relatively new craze in Europe in the 18th century and doctors were arguing about whether it was good or bad for people some things never change the Swedish government even attempted to ban coffee a handful of times which went about as well as you might expect still one of the drinks biggest enemies was King Gustav in an effort to prove that coffee was horrible and dangerous and would shorten your life he offered to commute the sentences of two twin brothers on death row if they would help him prove his point he had one drink three pots of coffee every day for the rest of his life and the other three pots of tea doctors were assigned to monitor the brothers but no one really knows how this experiment ended Gustav was assassinated in 1792 and both doctors died before their subjects supposedly though the tea drinker died at an age of 83 and the coffee drinker outlived them all the story might not be entirely true and not all accounts say that the participants were even twins still we do know that Sweden eventually gave up on banning coffee and is now one of its most enthusiastic fans eventually however researchers developed more rigorous methods for studying twins and by around 1922 twin studies were an accepted method for studying human genetics very weird so we've got one more question before we get to the last round our next question is most people think that human twins come in two varieties mmm you have identical or monozygotic twins which develop from a single fertilized egg that splits into two embryos and fraternal or dizygotic twins which develop from two separate egg and sperm pairs but there's actually another option I know you do I do a little it's very weird in 2019 researchers reported only the second pair of these documented by medical science is it identical cousins born two pairs of identical twin parents [Laughter] unrelated twins born from the same parents but sharing no genetic material what semi identical twins born from one egg and two sperm cells or non simultaneous twins having identical material but born at different times wait I'm gonna go with one this isn't what I thought it was one egg cell being fertilized by two different sperms so semi identical twins that is correct I didn't think that that could happen the answer is C semi identical twins in 2019 researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that they documented a pair of says quiz zygotic or semi identical twins doctors first suspected something unusual when sonograms of the two fetuses looked well not identical even though the pregnancy appeared to be a case of identical twins specifically one initial we appeared to be male and one female however genetic tests indicated that both actually had a mix of xx and XY cells throughout their bodies and while both inherited a single set of genes from their mother tests also confirmed they got two different sets from their father you'd expect identical twins to share 100% of their DNA and fraternal twins to share an average of 50% but these two children have 100% of their mother's DNA in common and 78% of their fathers the researchers think this happens when two sperm cells fertilize a single egg cell normally this wouldn't work out but they think the cell managed to pull off a three-way division by duplicating the maternal genome some of the daughter cells had DNA from the egg and one sperm cell some from the egg and the other sperm cell and some from both sperm that last group would have died because cells need at least one x chromosome and the duplication of the maternal genome would explain why the twins had some cells that had two x's basically a lot of shuffling happened to give the cells viable sets of DNA the mass of cells continue to develop first as a single embryo then split into not quite identical twins with a mismatched complement of those cell lines the researchers were only able to find one other example of semi identical twins in the medical literature and didn't dare to guess exactly how rare this kind of fertilization might be but the twins now a few years old seemed to be doing just fine okay so you've got 1100 points still Hank you're up at 1500 we're going into our final round that means that it's time for you guys to place your bets on the answer to this next question you can wager any or all of your points yeah on this one you have which I can only tell you at this point that this question is about doppelgangers rate you know what when all the line all in 1,100 ohm I don't have to tell me there's a thing to row down on a crap part of my game theory I'm actually gonna do it okay Prentiss never happened while you guys place your bets we're gonna go to commercial break if you're enjoying playing along with our quiz show there's another nerdy informative science game you should know about it's called battle for cattle and it teaches you about the roles of pathogens antibiotics and vaccines the game is based around the fact that countless cows pigs and chickens are given antibiotics every year that's great because it allows farmers to control disease outbreak but it also comes with downsides since excessive antibiotic use can also lead to antibiotic resistance also some infections like from the nasty bacteria mycoplasma cannot be treated with conventional antibiotics at all in the game you have to face these challenges along with others you're given a farm full of poor sick cows and you have to figure out how to save as many as possible by first administering antibiotics but later designing a synthetic biology vaccine it's fun and I learned a bit about the actual process of making a vaccine which was pretty cool if you want to learn more you can check out the game for yourself it's available for free online at battle for cattle calm or you can download it from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store Moo welcome back definitely end it into zeros whatever you just throw it down might be zero all the zeros I have to work with you guys ready mm-hmm here we go probably last question popular legend has it that everyone has a doppelganger that somewhere out there is someone who looks exactly like you maybe even right here in this room anyway forensic science kind of relies on the opposite idea that by using scientific methodology we can identify beyond any doubt one unique person out of the billions on this planet mm-hmm in 2015 Australian researchers set out to calculate the chances that any given face has an exact match how likely is it one in one eye you definitely have a doppelganger on the planet somewhere yes somewhere one in a hundred one in a million or one in a trillion it doesn't matter that doesn't it's not for me my friend oh you don't know how much I'm wagering I know how much I'm wagering I think I know this oh wow I think I might have this research yeah I think so reveal your answer said si and I wagered far - mine is si I show our winner the answer is d the odds of you having a doppelganger are less than one in 1 trillion in this study the researchers used a database of three thousand nine hundred eighty two faces and measured eight distinct facial characteristics like the distance between their pupils and the length of their ears within their data set of about 4,000 people they only needed to compare five or six of those characteristics to identify any one of them without duplicates once all eight traits were taken into account they calculated that the probability of any two faces matching one another was less than one in a trillion and while there are a lot of people on this planet there aren't that many in fact they found that even using only four of their traits the odds of a match were still in the ballpark of about one in ten million this study did rely on extremely specific measurements though if you and your doppelganger matched in every way but your pupils were 61 millimeters apart and theirs were 62 it wouldn't have counted as a match that's because they were trying to find ways to tell people apart with as little doubt as possible so if you're willing to relax your definition of a matching face a little bit you still might find you have a doppelganger out there somewhere Wow well I wouldn't have done better for me if I had if I'd wagered more than a fart noise it's just I'll get your fart noise is it here I feel richer than I ever first imagined that's good that was a good one well congratulations Joe thank you come my fart noises on there right now Sarah that was for you including the Fargo super sorry Mike that's gonna do it for us today if you want to see more of Johansson head over to youtube.com slash hot mess PBS or it's okay to be smart if you want to see more of Hank well you're already in the right place so just hit that big ol subscribe button thanks for watching this episode of scishow quiz show and thanks to all of our patrons on patreon include the ones who just won some fabulous prizes right here today if you'd like a chance at winning checkout patreon.com/scishow from Paducah doo doo boo boo [Music]

Channel: SciShow

Views: 191,353

Rating: 4.83741 out of 5

Keywords: SciShow, science, Hank, Green, education, learn, joe hanson, michael aranda, stefan chin, olivia gordon, quiz show, mimicry, biomimicry, doppelgangers, cinereous mourner, Megalopygidae, dynamic mimicry, black-marble jawfish, telomeres, epigenetic, twins, twin studies, King Gustav III, coffee, monozygotic, dizygotic, sesquizygotic, semi-identical twins, DNA

Id: 3qMzcPgiELQ

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/TheBookishPurpleOne]

And I have literally just put together that this is Hank on one half and Joe on the other. Not just a more typical face swap. I've seen this image about 10 times while messing with my watch later list for today. Wow.

[u/MissyMrsMom]

Are you sure, I’m fairly certain I dated that guy in high school.

[u/[deleted]]

I might see this image in my nightmares tonight.

[u/gundee126]

I legit thought it was Hank in the thumbnail.

[u/ShrishtheFish]

Joenk Greenson: :D