Ready to break free of winter and endless pandemic lockdowns? Us too! Inspired by the fresh spring air, and egged on by listener requests ("egged on", get it?!), Christine and JJ indulge in descriptions of emergence in nature: hatching chicks, caterpillars transforming into butterflies, and bulbs blooming in garden beds. Happy Spring, everyone!
Ready to break free of winter and endless pandemic lockdowns? Us too! Inspired by the fresh spring air, and egged on by listener requests ("egged on", get it?!), Christine and JJ indulge in descriptions of emergence in nature: hatching chicks, caterpillars transforming into butterflies, and bulbs blooming in garden beds. Happy Spring, everyone!
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations
Christine Malec:In a couple of weeks, we will be recording our 100th episode. And in a way, it's arbitrary, but in a bigger way, it feels like a big deal to us. And it got us thinking about all the work that we've done and all the describing that's happened and stuff, stuff that we've learned and been interested by. But it also made us wonder about the things that listeners remember. And just talking anecdotally, to listeners, I know that each person has a different thing that sticks in their mind, or different episodes that were particularly meaningful. And so what we'd love to do is to hear from listeners about episodes or descriptions or particular moments in the last, you know, 100 episodes that were meaningful to you, or that changed your conception of something, or made you think about something in a new way. And because we love the work that we do, and we know that listeners appreciate it. And we thought that for our 100th episode, we would love to share some of the feedback that listeners have a boat memorable moments for them. So if you have a particular episode, or an idea, or a description, or any part of the podcast that has been meaningful or useful for you, we'd love to hear about it. And so we're going to invite people to send us an email at talk description to me@gmail.com. And what we would love to do is to read out some of those things, from listeners for our 100th episode, and we'll probably have a bit of a conversation ourselves about some of those things that that are meaningful for us or that we remember because of course, we have favorites, too. So again, if you are motivated to do so and you want to share, please send us an email at talk description to me@gmail.com. And in a couple of weeks, we will commemorate our 100th episode by looking back in a reflective way, if we get some feedback, we'd be more more than happy to share it. And today in honor of spring, we got to thinking about and we may have even had requests for this. It started with the idea of a butterfly in the chrysalis. And it got us thinking about things like emerging chicks from eggs and insects and things blooming and emerging. And we're going to talk about some of those things that you kind of, I guess, JJ, you sort of need time lapse photography to really appreciate and so maybe it can we start with the birds and aims.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, absolutely. Let's start with the hatching birds. And you're right that the time lapse photography is very, very helpful for all of these things because, you know, hatching bird might take hours, it might take hours for birds to come. It'll take days, maybe even weeks for a bulb to turn into a flower for example. So time lapse photography is really helpful in these situations. And that's what I did was was look at time lapse photography. on YouTube. I looked up so for birds specifically, I watched YouTube videos of chicks and robins and macaws all hatching and birds Hatching is relatively simple, but very very sweet. One thing I learned when watching those YouTube videos of chicks and robins and all of these eggs doesn't matter what kind of egg doesn't matter what kind of bird is being hatched. One thing I learned is that there's always soothing and uplifting music playing in the background that always accompanies the hatching of eggs! Ha ha!
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha! Those lucky birds! Born into a world of songw. Were you invited on a guided meditation as well? I'm particularly not fond of guided meditations.
JJ Hunt:Ha ha ha! Ya, there was some serious overlap between meditation music and baby chicks hatching.
Christine Malec:A spa day.
JJ Hunt:Heh heh. The first thing that happens with an egg and a lot of these videos they show an egg. You know it's often chicks -- chickens -- because you know people have access to those eggs, and they'll take them and they'll it'll be in an incubator or it'll be in a warm space on a blanket or a towel or something like that with a camera on time lapse pointed right at the video right at the egg. And so typically what happens first is that there's a tiny, tiny hole punched through the shell from the inside, just a little tiny hole, and the egg at that point starts rocking back and forth around the same time, just movement inside the egg that is shifting, because the shell is still hard. And when you're looking through that hole, if you've got a little hole, then you can see a little bit inside, you can peek inside, and you can see little tiny bits of movement in there. It's hard at this point, you can't really tell what's going like what's happening inside what it looks like. But you can see a bit of movement. And, you know, regardless of the bird, the egg probably has a hard outer shell that's aligned with a fine membrane. So sometimes as these cracks appear in the hole start to break open, it exposes the membrane, so you'll have the outer shell crumble away, but the inner membrane will still be intact. And that has to be kind of picked away at and cracked further and ripped away. So holes and cracks might appear in different parts of the egg, might maybe one over here and one over there. And then sometimes they'll grow together. Sometimes they will be there'll be two little holes and there'll be a crack line between them. There's lots of different ways, of course that it unfolds. I've actually seen a couple of these videos where it's the classic egg crack right around the middle. So you know there's a line of crack that goes all the way around until the bottom of the shell gets pushed off and really dramatically by the chick inside. It's, it's really a like, it's quite a varied thing, as you can imagine long and laborious task for these tiny little creatures. And I gotta say when these chicks are, are first emerging from their shell, they aren't that cute and sweet right away. They are wet, they're rumpled. Some of them have soggy feathers that look more like hair. Others don't have any hair or feathers at all. They're bare, they're pink and fleshy. And they're kind of raw looking. They don't have feathery wings, they just have these fleshy stumps for limbs, and their heads are often quite oversized, very heavy, with like thin skin covering the dark eyes beneath. And so as these little creatures have, have pushed out of their shell and then pushed off the shell so that it's out of their way, they'll kind of flail around a little bit and flop about as they as they get their bearings and and then finally settle in and start to relax. Because it's such a process. It's so exhausting for them.
Christine Malec:Is there any color in the new hatched chicks?
JJ Hunt:It depends on the bird. So I think it was the macaw that I saw was was black, with feathers, but really wet and so not not full and feathery, but but had some kind of downy black feathers. And then others were totally, totally bare. And they are this this very pink, raw fleshy color that are no no other no other colors, just the entire animal is this is this pink fleshy color.
Christine Malec:I'm curious about the movement of the egg. I hadn't really thought of that. So I guess it's hard to tell in a time lapse. But maybe you could compare a time lapse versus what you might have seen in the real world. But is the movement of the egg jerky or slow and run Nicole? What does it look like
JJ Hunt:In time lapse, it rocks back and forth. And it looks like it's rocking back and forth. Pretty, you know, they're sharp movements. But that's time lapse, if you're looking at it, not in time lapse and I have seen a chick being born. You know, it doesn't happen every day in Toronto, but in a chick being coming out of its shell, and they do rock back and forth. I mean, that's just the shape of the egg. Any movement on the inside is going to have it rolling a little bit from side to side, not so much movement that it's going to like roll off a table necessarily. Certainly not if it's lying on a towel or a blanket, but enough that it's that it shifts slowly from side to side kind of like a little tiny bit of a roll back and forth.
Christine Malec:Because my only experience of eggs obviously is in a carton and they're completely inert and there's nothing alive inside them and so it's it's disorienting in a way to think of an egg as moving around. The cracking part is intuitive, it make sense. But the movement it It conveys life In a way that stupidly I'm not. I don't normally associate with eggs.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, it is a little bit disconcerting. What because it's hidden. It's what's it what's going on inside, there's movement inside. Which is even more the case when you get into something like snakes, because then it's like, what really what is going on inside there? That's it. That's a different thing altogether.
Christine Malec:Oh, let's please let's talk about that. That's totally new to me. I know snakes come from eggs, but I never even thought what that looks like, are they the same color? Are they white or brown as chicken eggs?
JJ Hunt:They're quite a bit different. So I think it's something like 70% of snakes, lay eggs, snake species lay eggs. Some of them are like one egg every three years. But other kinds of snakes lay 100 eggs at a time every single year. So there's a lot of variation. And you know, so snake eggs in general, are they're soft. They're not hard like a like a chicken egg like you would feel picking up a chicken egg from the grocery store. Snake eggs are soft. They're kind of leathery. I've never felt when myself but I've read that they're kind of leathery. They're more oblong in shape. Some of them are very similar to bird egg shapes, like a chicken egg shape, I should say. Because of course even with birds, there's like all kinds of variation in size. And very much the same with with snakes. Sometimes you get an oblong snake egg that's soft, but otherwise shaped more or less like a bird egg, like a chicken egg. And sometimes they're more like capsules, or even like huge tick tax. So they're like really capsule shaped, usually white or beige. Sometimes with a little bit of coloring on it like a bit of modeled I've seen somewhat like a model gray or a blue gray coloring or a brown coloring. And they can be anywhere from like one inch long to five inches long. So there's lots of variation in the snake eggs. But again, the soft shell is one of the key differences. By the time a snake is ready to hatch. The shell is quite soft, it looks a little bit like a deflated balloon.
Christine Malec:Oh!
JJ Hunt:Yeah, and you can really see the movement inside, right because the egg is soft. And it's not just a pecking motion, there's something slithering in there something moving with its whole body, it's not as rigid, it's not spiky and sharp movements, it's smoother movements. Again, in time lapse video, it looks more twitchy. But but but it's really it is a little bit more smooth. If you're looking at these outside of time lapse, at some point, in this movement inside the shell, there will be a little bit of a slit that's broken in it. And again, not a crack because it's not that it's not that texture, it's not that hard. It's a slit, and then a snake head will just pop out.
Christine Malec:Ooh!
JJ Hunt:And this little head is sticking out. And the head darts around for a bit, you know looks from side to side, maybe it'll just stay there totally motionless with this head sticking out of this egg, the tongue going back and forth. And then as often as not in the videos that I saw, the head will go back inside. And then they'll hang out inside again like okay, that was interesting. I'm going to come back in for a bit, because that was weird.
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha.
JJ Hunt:And then the eggs again, they move around a little bit, they shift around a little bit. And then at some point that the snake does slither out usually through that one slit that has grown because of the extra movement that's that's going on inside. And when a baby snake comes out of it, some of its shell, most of the ones that I saw anyway, they look very much like just smaller versions of their adult selves. So their coloring, their patterns tend to be in place from what I could see. But what is always shocking is how long they are. How did that snake fit that egg? It's like clowns coming out of a clown car.
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha!
JJ Hunt:How on earth?! And it's true every time like every time I saw it I would think how were they twisted up in there? How were they coiled up?
Christine Malec:Oh!
JJ Hunt:Yeah, really interesting. With some snakes, there's like a bit of a foamy ooze that seeps out of the egg as they slither out but others they seem they seem to emerge quite dry and you know, just snakes ready to be snakes in the world.
Christine Malec:I have two important questions. Do YouTube videos of snakes hatching of meditative spa music?
JJ Hunt:Ha ha ha! Some of them, but some of them are a little bit more hardcore. It's mostly the birds that get the really cutesy music, but you'd be surprised. Some of them it's like it's really sweet and look at these inflated balloons. Oh my god, there's 100 new baby snakes coming out of those eggs! But with Enya playing in the background. Ha ha!
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha! And the other question, are they cute?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, I mean they kind of are I mean totally depends on your, you know...
Christine Malec:Of course.
JJ Hunt:Some people, a lot of people, are afraid of snakes. And there's reason to be afraid of some snakes. But some of them are. I even saw some baby cobras being born. And they come out. And you know, cobras are a distinctive because they've got that hooded head. And so they kind of stand up a bit, kind of like, if you've got your arm out in front of you, and you bend the elbow, and then make like a little, little pan puppet with your hand that kind of and there's a hood around the head area. And then they snap, they strike. You know, like you're pecking with your hand. And even as little tiny babies, cobras, these cobras I saw this video we're doing that action. And it's like, oh, look at that they're trying to attack and poison something!
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha!
JJ Hunt:They are small. They are kind of cute. Yeah, but at the same time, they're behaving like snakes. So if the general behavior of snakes creeps you out, then baby snakes probably would too. But if that if that doesn't scare you, they are kind of cute.
Christine Malec:Bird eggs are really recognizable. But when you see a snake egg, is it obvious everyone knows that's a snake egg. It doesn't sound egg like
JJ Hunt:Yeah, I don't think I've ever encountered a snake egg out in the wild. I would be quite nervous if I did not knowing my snake eggs. You would recognize it as an egg. But it would you would wonder if you weren't someone who knew about eggs. In certain words, someone who knew about snake eggs in particular, I can imagine seeing an a snake egg and thinking is that healthy? Is it supposed to look like that?
Christine Malec:Ahhhh.
JJ Hunt:Because it's the deflated kind of like softness of it would would make me wonder if it was near the end of its if the snake inside was about to hatch and it was moving around. I would be very anxious. Because it is that moment like I have no idea what's in there. But it's there's a high percentage chance not gonna like me being this close.
Christine Malec:It's a great beginning to sci fi movie.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, totally. When you can see why why eggs would be included in sci fi movies all the time. Because that this idea of something growing on the inside you don't know what it is. It's very dramatic. Very it's very cinematic.
Christine Malec:On the topic of eggs, you did a little looking into sea turtles also.
JJ Hunt:dramatic and adorable footage. So sea turtles generally lay their eggs on land, like on beaches, often on beaches that are familiar to them. I think in some cases, a turtle will go back to the very beach where they themselves hatched to lay their eggs. Ya, amazing. And so what they do is they they use
Christine Malec:Oh! their hind flippers the female turtle will use the hind flippers to dig a hole in the sand that's about a foot and a half deep, and then directly deposit her eggs her soft shelled eggs into that hole. And depending on the kind of turtle it can be anywhere between 50 and 350 eggs in one hole. And then she covers the hole with sand again using those hind flippers. She might even drag a bit of vegetation in to be on top of it to camouflage it. And that's how the turtles are buried underground. So you might be on a beach and not know that there are turtle eggs buried underground are so well camouflaged. And after 60 to 80 days, the National Geographic camera crews arrive and they wait for the magic moment. What happens different times a day sometimes after sunset that makes the filming really dramatic and night vision lenses and soft lighting must be used which is good for these videos. Sometimes it happens during the day which is a little bit more perilous because I think there are more predators out in the middle of the day. But the first thing that happens from an observers standpoint is that a tiny crater will appear in the sand like a little small cave in. There's underground movement and that means the grains of sand at the surface will shift and fall into this little depression are this little crater and then there's more shifting of the sand and you can tell something's going on under there. And the holes may be getting a little bit bigger the craters getting a little bit deeper. And then what happens is this tiny little turtle head pops up and again might even just be the size of your thumb. This little turtle head very reptilian leathery skin already looks cracked and kind of weathered, mouth opening and closing to get the first look Little bit of breath of air, and then a flipper will pop out and then another flipper will pop out. And they'll try and pull themselves out of the sand like a, like a tiny adventurer in an action movie climbing out of quicksand. Tee hee!
JJ Hunt:It's exactly like that using these flippers. And usually at first is just one or two turtles popping up. But then depending on the species, might be dozens there might be hundreds of turtles. And so the crater kind of churns up as these turtle heads pop up, and they pull themselves up with their flippers and they climb over one another. And this little tiny, you know, crevice in the sand. This crater in the sand might expand into a great big hole filled with teeming with these tiny turtles, a Sandy hit full of tiny, wriggling awkward turtles as they stumble around and climb on top of each other trying to figure out how their bodies work. And then they have to orient themselves, then at some point, they'll figure out they need to go to the water, and they start moving in something like a lion at first, that kind of spreads out a little bit. And that turtles move baby turtles move with a launching kind of lurching action. So they use their front flippers, and they kind of pull their front flippers back, like they get a grip on the sand and then pull back, which launches the body forward a few inches. It's kind of like doing the breaststroke on land. And they kind of lurch one, boom, boom, boom, and they make their way down toward the water. And if they don't get picked off by a predator, as many of them do, they eventually reach the water. Generally, what happens is, is a gentle wave, a very small wave that washes up farther than the other waves will pick up these tiny little turtles when they get close, and then pull them into the water and then off, they go into the water where they're quite a bit safer than when they are on the beach.
Christine Malec:Are they cute?
JJ Hunt:They're really cute. They're really sweet. The movement is sweet. The numbers of them are sweet. There's just so many of them and they're falling all over each other doing the thing that like, you know, babies and tiny creatures that hardly know how to use their bodies, you know, foals that fall over? And what? That tends to be pretty cute. And they're they're pretty sweet in that way. All stumbling over each other. And yeah, yeah, they're pretty sweet.
Christine Malec:Let's talk insects. And yeah, I think this episode actually did get started with the idea of a butterfly. Emerging from an apparently it's a chrysalis not a cocoon, right?
JJ Hunt:Yes, yeah. We often call them cocoons that's in pop culture, general culture, that's what we call them. But a cocoon technically is like a, like a silky sleeping bag. And there are some mods that make cocoons, but for the most part, it's a chrysalis and a chrysalis is, is a different thing chrysalis is actually it's part of the it's part of the body of the insect. It's, it's, it's, it's weird. Oh, it's weird. And when you when you take one of these videos, there are lots of videos online of caterpillars turning into butterflies. And, and when you break it down, when you watch it closely stage by stage and you have someone especially narrating it, it is weird, it is creepy. And I needed the narration to tell me what was happening. Because sometimes the visual of what was going on, it's like, I don't understand like this. What I'm what I'm watching here could be a special effect. It just doesn't. It doesn't make sense to me. So I needed the scientific explanation of the narrator sometimes to to kind of talk me through it.
Christine Malec:Can we start with the caterpillar? Because I think that's the best dramatic effect is what you start with and what you end up with.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, totally. So a monarch. Let's let's look at the monarch butterfly. We've actually described the look of butterflies thing that was insect was episode 65 or something like that.
Christine Malec:Okay, yeah.
JJ Hunt:So let's start with a monarch caterpillar because that's a nice one to kind of follow through with so the monarch caterpillar, it looks like a like a slug. But it's got tiny black feet and tiger stripes. So these are like ragged tiger stripes alternating black and white and either a yellow or like a pale lime green color. And two rows of of black feet, one on either side. There are stubbier feet in the back in they are kind of like pincers, like like a cat's fingernail near the front. But again, black and there are pairs of long black tentacles at both the front and the back of the caterpillar. So it can be kind of hard to tell the front from the back they look very, very similar front and back. So when it's time for this caterpillar to transfer form, it finds a support like a, like a thin but stiff branch or something like that like a little twig on a tree, and it spins a layer of silk. This comes out of the mouth area. And it's like a tiny sticky little cotton ball. And they stick this little layer of silk to the underside of the twig. It's kind of like creating a button on the twig. And then it turns around, and it grabs on to this button of silk with its its last pair of legs. So visually, it kind of looks like it's gripping this silk button with its rear end. And then it hangs upside down. So it's its head is pointing down, it might bend into a bit of a J shape for a while. But generally, this is this is how it's going to be throughout this chrysalis stage with the the rear end being attached to the underside of a twig by this little silk sticky silk button, and the head pointing down. And here's where it gets weird.
Christine Malec:Wait, it's pretty weird already!
JJ Hunt:He heh. After about like eight to 12 hours, the caterpillar begins to swell, it has eaten an awful lot leading up to this stage to kind of prepare for this moment and the body itself, the caterpillar begins to swell. And it makes this kind of pumping action with its body. So the body is a little bit like a flip, flexible corrugated tube. So like the bendy part of a bendy straw, you know that?
Christine Malec:Yeah, yeah.
JJ Hunt:So there's kind of this pumping action. You can imagine if you take that bendy part of a bendy straw, and you kind of expand it and contracted expanded contracted expanded contract, it's a little bit like that. And what that action is actually doing is pushing a material from the top, which is near the button down toward the hanging head. And you can when you're zoomed in really close in these videos, you can actually see like a little bulge at the top that's being worked down by this pumping action. So if you imagine like a snake eating a large rat, so that the bulge is evident as the prey is worked down the body, it's not dissimilar to that over and over and over again. A little bit more gentle, a little bit more rapid.
Christine Malec:Oooh! This pumping action means that the head which is hanging down, grows and expands and as it grows and expands the skin so that like Tiger skin, the tiger stripes, it splits just at the lowest point just above the head. And when it splits the body of the caterpillar emerges as this plump, lime green hardened shell because a caterpillar has an exoskeleton and so the chrysalis is actually the exoskeleton and the tiger stripes those are just skin deep. So as the body gets bigger and bigger, the tiger skin splits. Kind of like up the spine that splits in the body of the caterpillar grows, the shell grows and emerges underneath it. And that pumping action while pushing, whatever it is pushing down the material inside the caterpillar gets pushed down. That same pumping action kind of been pushes the skin up kind of like a bunching sock. So all of that skin gets pulled up and up and up toward that twig as the body grows a little bit bigger, a little bit more plump. So when the shell has fully emerged, all of this skin has been gathered up at the top and and then a barb emerges from inside this new chrysalis this kind of line green hardshell and this tiny barb emerges from inside the chrysalis and attaches itself to the sticky silk button. And then this -- it's a pupa now -- it gyrates. And as its gyrating and kind of spinning itself around and moving, it's moving. The all of that gathered skin that got like, pushed up, it falls away. And then the gyrating slows, and then it stops all together. And that shell which was already hard, it hardens some more and it gets smoother. So it had been kind of a green color. There might have been some bands of yellow around it a little bit of that corrugation but it gets that it smooths out it takes on a darker green color. And that's the chrysalis. And its now, if a Caterpillar was shaped like a pinky, the chrysalis is shaped more like a thumb. It's a little bit stockier. It's a little bit wider. And it's smooth and dark, darker green color. And and there it sits. It just sits exactly like that. Nice and quiet and it hangs like that for quite a while. Yeah. Is it... is it creepy to watch that? That sounds very odd.
JJ Hunt:It's it's a strange thing to watch. I mean, it's mesmerizing. It's kind of beautiful. But it's bizarre. It's totally bizarre. But because a lot of us know what's happened like, you know, what's going to happen is a butterfly is going to come right. And so there's excitement and anticipation and it's, it's really neat. And then it gets quiet. And and and I think what's going on inside that chrysalis is even more bizarre and creepier. I think there are moments where if you were to crack it open, you would find nothing but goo inside. Some very strange things are happening. But you can tell when the when, when it's the the creature inside is ready and is transformed because in the final days of metamorphosis, that green chrysalis begins to grow translucent. And it goes from being green to being absolutely clear. And at that point, the monarch butterfly that's inside is completely recognizable.
Christine Malec:Gasp!
JJ Hunt:Because it's got folded, black and orange wings, we know that pattern that's a recognizable pattern, we know those wings, and they're all folded up inside. So you can now see this like tiny little package in a clear shell of a folded up butterfly. And so what happens at this point is the chrysalis splits open at the head end so that the head that's that's down the dangling end, and it splits open at the bottom and the butterfly slowly crawls out and it's kind of like watching a sleepy kid slowly wriggle out of a tight sleeping bag. If they were hanging by their feet, right? It's a little bit slow. At first, it's a little bit awkward, they kind of have to push open the crack in this plasticky this clear plasticky looking chrysalis, and then they get one body segment out and then another and then when when the largest part of the body comes down, it usually drops out suddenly. But the butterfly clings to the empty pupa case, with its long, thin black legs. And again, this case at this point looks like a bit of empty, stiff clear plastic wrap at this point. And so the butterfly kind of twists and moves a little bit again, all still holding on. So hanging on to this, you know, empty pupa case, and the wings which have been tucked in, they slowly begin to unfold. And the wings are kind of soft and limp at this stage, they need time to dry so the the wings just kind of hang down for a while. And the butterfly starts to its body starts to twitch like a pregnant belly, which houses an active baby, there's, you can see again, when you zoom in close, you can see a little bit of movement in there. And what is happening is the butterflies body is pumping is is making and then pumping fluid into the wings. So as the wings are drying in the air, there's fluid that's being pumped into them. That makes the wings rigid. So when it's ready, and the wings are dry, and they are in there, they're stiffening from this fluid inside, then they are able to kind of climb up the empty pupa case. And they climb up on to the twig or branch that it was hanging on. And it tests its wings. So it gently opens and closes them in. In a very classic flapping motion. It does this for a while. And then after a few hours, it takes off. It's a fully formed butterfly.
Christine Malec:Wow, that is mind mangling. Is this something that sighted kids watch? Like, is this something every kid has has seen?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, it's a it's a classic. I mean, you'll sometimes actually put one of these things in a in a terrarium in a classroom and a kid's room or like a school room. You can also go on YouTube, there's tons of these things. And a lot of them are aimed at kids. I watched several that were aimed at kids as well as a few that were aimed at adults, because my understanding of the science fall somewhere. Right. Right. And yeah, but a lot of kids would, would have seen this at some point over there over there's the in their school years. It's a It's fascinating. It's a great way to explain the you know, changes in nature and in growth and birth and all of those things. And it's just, I mean, it's hard to come up with something that is more engaging from a scientific point of view like you You want to see how crazy science is? You want to see how wild nature is. Check this out.
Christine Malec:You don't need science fiction. We're gonna talk some plant life too. And bulbs. Yeah, bulbs they they're often the first sign of the spring and new things growing. And so what did you find in time lapse of bulbs growing?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, tracking bulbs as they grow. It's, it's really a very lovely springy thing to do. Right? We had a warm spell in Toronto last week. So the bulbs are starting to come out. A you are of course in Vancouver, they they're always weeks ahead of us.
Christine Malec:And they're always a little boasting about it. Talk to someone on Vancouver in March. "The crocuses are blooming!" I just have to bite my tongue. That's really nice as I pull my parka.
JJ Hunt:Ha ha ha!
Christine Malec:Congratulations to those of you who have fully blooming daffodils and things like that. But for those of us still in the [shiver!] it's actually hideous weather today.
JJ Hunt:Oh ya.
Christine Malec:Freezing rain. So yeah, those poor little bulbs, but in an ideal world...
JJ Hunt:Yeah. So you can start to see them as you're like if you're walking in your neighborhood, you'll start to see on front lawns or again, you can do what I did go on YouTube and find time lapse people have done time lapse of these. So this is a nicer one because I could wall for me anyway, I could watch the time lapse video and then run outside and see what does it look like out there look like there. So that was kind of nice. So what happens as the first bulbs start to sprout is they come up as well. Often, these the little waxy green, they look like stems or they're just bundled leaves that come together and pointy tips. And those start to emerge from the mounds of dead leaves and garden beds and in lawns. Some of them get their flowers very early like snow drops in crocus's, what happens is that the snow drops, they don't get very tall, they start to pop up these green stems and leaves in they can sometimes grow in the last of the snow. So when the snow melts, oh look, there's already a little snowdrops stem sticking out of the ground, this bundle of leaves and they come up and then they there's a small delicate white flower from the snow drop head which is hangs down like a lantern. So it's not that the it's not that the flowers are poking up at the sky, they are hanging down and aimed at the ground. crocus's They poke out of the ground with a papery white skin on the outside of this bundle of growing very thin green leaves these thin leaves as they're bundled, they get taller and taller and taller. And then if you're watching a time lapse, rather suddenly, this papery looking stock emerges from the center from the core of this bundle of tall thin leaves. And then before the stock has even cleared leaves, it bursts open this from inside this papery shell, this large purple flower head will emerge and it opens up into a trumpet shape. Inside this trumpet to this purple trumpet, there's a bright yellow stamen inside the stamen looks like a tiny trumpet itself or maybe a golf tee. And that's how the that's how crocus's Come out into the world. Again, when I say tall leaves, I mean they're narrow. They're you know, they're not, you know, waist high or anything like that these are they're they're pretty low to the ground. Tulips emerge from the ground as bundled leaves. So if you imagine all of the waxy layers of corn husks, but without the carbon side, and then you bundle all those waxy layers of husk into a tight spear shape, that's kind of what the tulip looks like as it starts to emerge from the ground. And as it grows, those those tightly bundled leaves begin to fall open. And when they all come together at the base, a stem begins to grow and that stem grows up, it rises up from the ground and then it continues growing up through the core. And what emerges is a tightly packed tulip head. And you can already see the color at this point. So might be red might be orange, yellow, purple, doesn't matter. They're all kinds of colors of tulips, but again, tightly bundled and tapered and the stem continues to grow with this bundled head at the top and till the head is you know, as tall as the leaves maybe even grows a little bit past the highest leaves and then the flower head falls open and falls open into a tall cup shape. And and that's how it stays in your garden until until all of those leaves you know die off and crumple up and fall to the ground. I also really like to watch the house plants time lapse. There's this kind of weird sub genre of YouTube videos on house plant time lapse. Those are those are kind of fun. Those are weird to watch.
Christine Malec:Explain, please.
JJ Hunt:So there's something about the way house but I mean, you think of the houseplants as being inanimate, they're just plants. And you know, maybe they grow over time, but it's so slow that you don't really get a sense of how they're moving. And when you watch them in time lapse, they look like Muppets, like, they move around, oh, wait a bit, especially if they're near a window. So what people do is they set up their plants near the windows, and they and they do time lapse videos, and really draws attention to how much the sun seeking houseplants we'll move throughout the day.
Christine Malec:Oh, wow.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, it's really interesting. So some of them some of the house plants if they have like longer vines with bigger leaves, what will happen is those vines will sag or droop overnight. And then in the morning, when the sun comes into the window, they'll pop up again, this isn't time lapse, they'll pop up, and they will turn to face the window, like a bunch of kids facing the front of a classroom. So all of the leaves, they'll turn to face and their stems might actually have to arch back to balance out and support the leaves that are leaning forward toward the sun. Yeah, and then some plants will will will turn more slowly. So over the course of the day, they'll just kind of, they'll keep their leaves facing the sun and they'll slowly as the sun moves across the window or tracks across the room, they will slowly turn over the course of the day. Really cool. I saw one time lapse. It was well set up they actually had a clock on a shelf surrounded by houseplants.
Christine Malec:Ah!
JJ Hunt:So you could see the you know, the hour hand of the
Christine Malec:Gasp!
JJ Hunt:And these plants were kind of squat house plants with big wide leaves. So not vines or plants with long stems. And the clock going around and around and around. They did about, I way these ones moved is that they would they even in this time lapse of 24 hours in 10 seconds, they lifted their leaves slowly kind of shifting in place kind of like all the leaves came up and they parked up as the sun came in, they grew think they did 24 hours in less than 10 seconds. a little bit. And then they all settled back down as the sunset again. So it really it reminded me it looked like a big, deep breath in. And then a long exhale as the sun went down. Yeah, very cool.
Christine Malec:I have a question about sunflowers in this respect. Is it true that if you look at a field of sunflowers during the day, it's discernible that their heads turn?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, sunflowers do follow the sun. And when you're watching a field of them, you can see I mean, obviously lots of wind so they're blowing back and forth of it. But they do slowly follow in turn to the sun. I've noticed this we grow sunflowers we grow like 10 foot tall sunflowers in our backyard. And as they're growing, and they're in this and the flower itself is starting to to grow at the top of the of the flower. You can see it kind of like a like a satellite dish, searching for what which way should I be facing so that I'll catch the most sun. And then when you see a field of them in one of these time lapse videos, you do see them slowly turning again it's a it's a little bit like kids faces because sunflowers are so big. And those those faces do turn toward the sun. It's a very, it's a very human movement, actually.
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