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The 17 Weirdest Things I Learned at the Zoo

2024-03-29 · list · Hank · 5:46 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Curiosity & trivia · tags: on location, self promotion, civic or action cta

After a behind-the-scenes tour of the Denver Zoo, Hank lists the strangest things he learned (elephant TB, a gassy fish fed peas, rhino iron overload, the zoo's free antivenom supply, skin-breathing frogs, a king cobra given chemotherapy, flamingo colour, Przewalski's horse and Kurt, musth), then notes the first issue of the We're Here newsletter and John's Crash Course lecture.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; the behind-the-scenes Denver Zoo tour and the nerdfighter nightkeeper

  • ★★ Hank was invited for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Denver Zoo. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ The zoo's nightkeeper is a huge nerdfighter who wore a NerdCon: Nerdfighteria hoodie and had John's face on her shoelaces; Hank says nerdfighters are everywhere. (playful) — 00:00:00 · John Green, Nerdfighteria

00:00:29 — Seventeen things Hank learned at the zoo, from elephant TB to giraffes, and thanks to the zoo staff

  • ★★ Hank says elephants can get the same tuberculosis people get, and the disease passes from people to elephants and from elephants to people. — 00:00:29 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ Hank says Sumatra is the sixth largest island in the world and has its own elephant, tiger and orangutan found nowhere else. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ A zoo fish that listed to the side got a CT scan, which showed intestinal gas; now when it lists, keepers feed it peas, which fixes it. — 00:00:29
  • ★ Hank says penguins love to chase flies. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Some rhinos come from low-iron regions, so those living long elsewhere eat enclosure plants and get the opposite of anemia. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ The zoo keeps one big rhino on a low-iron diet; when his iron gets too high, keepers take the iron out of him by removing a bunch of his blood. — 00:00:58
  • ★ Hank notes there are freshwater stingrays. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ The Denver Zoo has a walk-in freezer full of antivenom and is a local and national supply for people bitten by exotic pet snakes. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ The zoo gives its antivenom away free, since rules forbid selling it, and then buys more for itself. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Hank says the antivenom supply is not one of the reasons he thought zoos were good to have, but it is one. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Adult Lake Titicaca frogs have atrophied, unused lungs and breathe entirely through their skin. — 00:02:03
  • ★★ The frogs are blended and drunk as smoothies to improve health, which Hank says does not work. — 00:02:03
  • ★★ The Denver Zoo's king cobra got scale cancer; keepers biopsied it, removed the cancerous area surgically and gave adjuvant chemotherapy. — 00:02:28 · cancer, chemotherapy
  • ★★ The cobra's chemotherapy drug is one humans also get, though humans don't usually take it inside a rat. (playful) — 00:02:28 · chemotherapy
  • ★★ Wild sheep and goats from mineral-poor areas gather in parking lots for salt carried by cars or left by people peeing. — 00:02:28
  • ★★ Hank says flamingos being pink from eating shrimp is kind of wrong: two species fed the same diet differ in pinkness, and juveniles are barely pink. — 00:02:28
  • ★★ Flamingos could simply excrete the pink compounds; they are pink because being pink is evolutionarily advantageous. — 00:03:16
  • ★ Hank says Przewalski's horse is not pronounced as spelled, giving a 'Sh' pronunciation. — 00:03:16
  • ★★ Przewalski's horse is the last surviving non-domesticated horse species; nearly extinct, it was saved by captive breeding and again roams Mongolia. — 00:03:16
  • ★★ A Przewalski's horse embryo was implanted in a domestic horse; the foal, Kurt, was born, is alive and lives in San Diego. — 00:03:16
  • ★★ Hank says this raises hopes of one day bringing back extinct species that have close living relatives, giving black rhinos as an example. (hedged) — 00:03:45
  • ★★ Male elephants have a hormonal cycle causing musth, when they are very irritable partly because head glands swell until oils ooze through the skin. — 00:03:45
  • ★★ Each year a captive-raised male vulture builds a big nest, and the female, rescued with a broken wing, lays her egg in a small pile of sticks nearby. — 00:04:14
  • ★★ Hank learned nothing new about giraffes, since he knows a lot about them, but got to touch and feed one, which was amazing. — 00:04:14
  • ★★ Hank thanks the Denver Zoo staff, conservation workers worldwide, and especially Dissa and Erica, who showed him around. — 00:04:14

00:04:44 — Sign-off, first issue of the We're Here newsletter, John's Crash Course lecture on tuberculosis

  • ★★★ Hank says the first issue of the brothers' new newsletter, We're Here, went out today. — 00:04:44

  • ★★ Hank says readers can email the brothers through the newsletter and share things; it is meant to be collaborative, not one-way. — 00:04:44

    “This is going to be an every-directional newsletter.”

  • ★★ Hank notes John's new tuberculosis video on the Crash Course channel, a new format giving someone a chance to lecture, with John as the guinea pig. — 00:04:44 · John Green, Crash Course, Crash Course Lectures, tuberculosis

  • ★★ Hank looks forward to seeing who lectures next; it won't be him, though he wants to do one. — 00:05:13 · Crash Course Lectures
  • ★★ Hank tells viewers to check spam or search for the newsletter email if they don't see it, and to reply so spam filters treat it better. — 00:05:13

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description thanks the Denver Zoo and calls it a complete delight to visit. — video description
  • ★★ The description says those who sign up for We're Here by the end of the day join a 'Founder's Club', not yet defined. — video description
  • ★★ Answering a viewer's comment on captive breeding, Hank says zoos spend a huge amount of time managing the gene pools of endangered and captive populations. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Denver Zoo

Also: Projects: Crash Course · Hank and John email newsletter · NerdCon: Nerdfighteria

Works: Crash Course Lectures

Concepts: antivenom · black rhinoceros · cancer · chemotherapy · CT scan · de-extinction · elephant · evolution · flamingo · giraffe · iron overload · king cobra · Lake Titicaca frog · musth · orangutan · penguin (concept) · Przewalski's horse · rhinoceros · sodium chloride · tuberculosis · vulture (concept) · wildlife conservation · Zoonosis

Places: Mongolia · San Diego · Sumatra

Memes: they crave that mineral

animal: Kurt (animal)

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