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Hank Green's Top 7 Best Coconut Tree Facts!!

2024-07-26 · list · Hank · 3:47 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Curiosity & trivia

Saying that for his own mental health he won't make another big thoughtful video while John is away, Hank offers numbered coconut facts: the 150-deaths-a-year figure is wrong, storms and people spread coconuts, coconut trees aren't trees, coconuts are drupes not native to the Caribbean, too much coconut water can be dangerous, and an early fossil coconut was strawberry-sized.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Hank on John's break and his own mental health; fact one: the coconuts-kill-more-than-sharks claim is wrong

  • ★★ Hank tells John he is impressed by the particular period John chose to take off from making videos, because it has been a lot. (playful) — 00:00:00 · John Green
  • ★★ Hank says that for his own mental health he will not make another big, interesting, thoughtful video, so he offers his top seven coconut tree facts instead. (playful) — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Hank says the widely reported claim that coconuts kill 150 people a year, more than sharks, is incorrect, apparently poorly extrapolated from one study of coconut injuries in one country. — 00:00:00

00:00:37 — Coconut facts: real death counts, storms and seed dispersal, trees and nuts as made-up categories, the cocoa word, origin and spread with Polynesians, coconut water's potassium, a strawberry-sized fossil; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank says reports of coconut fatalities show zero to two people killed a year by falling coconuts, fewer than the roughly ten killed yearly in unprovoked shark attacks. — 00:00:37
  • ★★ Hank says one recent coconut victim died when an earthquake made the tree over his house drop many coconuts through his roof. (playful) — 00:00:37
  • ★★★ Hank says floating coconuts need storms to push them beyond tidal areas: without storms they would not be effective seed dispersal, so storms that destroy coconut trees also sustain them. — 00:01:06
  • ★★★ Hank says coconut trees look like trees but share no common ancestor with oaks; tree is a made-up classification, like worm, for things that look a certain way. — 00:01:06
  • ★★ Hank says the word cocoa (as in chocolate) comes from an indigenous word like cacao, corrupted into cocoa probably under the influence of the Spanish word for coconut. (hedged) — 00:01:35
  • ★★ Hank says that by physiological grouping a coconut is a drupe, a fruit containing a single seed. — 00:01:35
  • ★★ Hank says the definition of nut, like that of tree, is wishy-washy, so one could make the case that a coconut is a nut after all. (hedged) — 00:02:05
  • ★★★ Hank says coconuts, strongly associated with Caribbean life, are not native to the Caribbean, which shocked him. — 00:02:05
  • ★★ Hank says it is not certain where coconuts evolved, but before people moved them (for fresh water on voyages, and taste) they were probably confined to Southeast Asia and Indonesia, maybe Australia and southern India. (hedged) — 00:02:05 · Australia
  • ★★ Hank says coconuts seem to have first spread beyond that area with Polynesians. (hedged) — 00:02:05
  • ★★★ Hank says coconuts do not stay viable long floating on the ocean, so they needed humans to reach their current circum-equatorial range, including the Caribbean. — 00:02:49
  • ★★★ Hank says drinking too much coconut water could kill you: a very large dose has enough potassium to make the heart beat abnormally, fatal without help. — 00:02:49
  • ★★ Hank cites a case study of a man who drank 11 coconut waters; his condition was life-threatening but he did not die. — 00:02:49
  • ★★ Hank says this is one reason why giving coconut water as intravenous fluid for dehydration, long claimed as a fun fact, probably isn't a great idea. (hedged) — 00:03:19
  • ★★ Hank shows a fossilized coconut from an early coconut species that is the size of a strawberry. — 00:03:19
  • ★ Hank tells John it is a wonderful and weird world we get to inhabit. — 00:03:19 · John Green

Humor (significant)

  • One recent coconut victim died when an earthquake shook many coconuts through his roof. — 00:00:37

    “So he was kind of killed by a coconut, and kind of killed by an earthquake.”

  • English speakers added 'nut' to the word for coconut. — 00:01:35

    “In English, we added a nut onto the end of cocoa because that seemed like a good, fun thing to do, and frankly, I agree.”

  • After declaring coconuts are not nuts, Hank concedes the definition of nut is wishy-washy. — 00:02:05

    “So I guess I've gone back on my fact. A coconut tree is a nut tree. Kind of.”

  • A case-study patient drank 11 coconut waters. — 00:03:19

    “that seems like a bad financial choice.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: coconut

Also: Groups: Polynesians

Concepts: categorization · coconut water · drupe · Fossil · misinformation · nut · seed dispersal · shark · Spanish language · tree

Places: Australia · Caribbean · India · Indonesia · Southeast Asia

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