[laughs]

... and they would just look at us and say, "Mom, Dad, we're-- can we just go and walk around Rome?" But w- what was so amazing about that trip was how people repeat themselves.

I don't wanna say history repeats itself, but people repeat themselves, and themes repeat themselves.

Like, on this idea of failure, we were in Florence.

So Florence, you know, has, you know, the famous cathedral.

It's this black and white cathedral, and it's the Duomo there.

And there are these famous bronze doors on the baptistery, and they were created by this artist named Ghiberti.

Yes.

For as big as the time-space continuum is, you hardly ever see people traveling across it.

Ah, what is that thing? Why is it growling? We're over there in the snow.

Hurry, everyone inside.

Get me in there.

[panting]

You got it.

Ha.

Now it makes sense why there are so many octopuses here.

Warm water means less time for your eggs to hatch, and less time for your eggs to hatch means more chances for your octo-babies to survive.

[door closes]

Before we get into the credits for today's episode, we want to give some special shout-outs and say a huge thank you to some of the wowzers whose families are powering the wow this year.

You were joking?

What the researchers did was to observe or watch very closely how the great white sharks and the orcas interacted when both of them were hunting for food in this national marine sanctuary.

And then what?

When the researchers compared how the sharks migrated to where they saw the orcas, they found that every time the orcas showed up, the sharks would just hightail it out and go further up the coast to do their hunting somewhere else.

Or another might say you would string two cups together and use them as a phone.

Exactly.

A- anyway, when they looked at the results of the group that had been performing the boring task beforehand, the researchers found that this boring group was able to come up with way more examples of things you could do with a cup than a different group that hadn't done boring stuff before.

[sighs]

But, I mean, I'm talking really good at watching paint dry.

Acrylics and oils and water- [sighs] [snores] Shrimp cocktail.

[snores] Wait.

What? What's going on? What? I didn't fall asleep.

They found that the people who were chowing down and slurping up those bugs [slurping], they had more bifidobacteria than they had before.

Huh.

Bifidobacteria.

Bifidobacteria.

Bifidobacteria.

W- where have I heard that before? Oh, oh, I know.

I'll, I'll check my bacteria app.

Care to identify those?

Gracias.

I mean, I mean, all the different vocal muscles and parts of their little mouse brains that had to work together to create that snappy back and forth sing-off.

I mean, that's just not something you see very often in the animal kingdom.

Uh, well, unless you count us humans.

Uh-huh.

Well, I did notice when the mice were on stage having their singing duel that they seemed to be very polite with each other.

I mean, they never sang over each other, a- and they seemed to pay attention to when the other mouse was finished before picking up the next verse.

And then also-

WBUR Podcasts.

Boston.

Um, hi, I'm Mindy.

And I'm Guy Raz.

And together, we bring you the Wow in the World podcast, where we search, find, and share new scientific discoveries.

What are you even talking about, Guy Raz? Pengu-Cam?

Yes, Pengu-Cams.

Uh, they're these little lightweight cameras that attach to the penguins.

I just read a new study about them in the scientific journal PeerJ.

And what you're watching is whatever the Pengu-Cams are capturing in the water.

So nothing is scripted or edited?

What? No, Mindy.

These cameras are capturing penguin behavior.