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Crisis support for the world, one text away

{0: 'Nancy Lublin, cofounder and CEO of Crisis Text Line, is using technology and data to save lives.'}

TED2020: The Prequel

"I'm 14, and I want to go home." "My name is Beth, I'm here for you, tell me more." "I've run away before, but I've never been involved with anything like this. I think they put drugs in my liquor." "It sounds like you feel you're not safe. The fastest way for me to get help to you is for you to call 911." "LOL, Beth. If they hear me, they'll kill me. They're about to send another man in to have sex with me, please hurry." "OK, it sounds like you're in danger. I can call 911 for you and send help. You're being very brave." "Thanks, Beth. Tell the police to be careful, these men are armed." I can share this story with you, because it was widely reported in news outlets throughout the country. We did call 911. The police rescued this girl, two other girls, and arrested three men, all at the Motel 6 in San Jose. My name is Nancy "Beth" Lublin. I'm the cofounder and CEO of Crisis Text Line, the free 24/7 service that helps people by text and Messenger, with mental health and behavioral health issues. And when I go on the platform as a crisis counselor, I use the alias "Beth." I happen to be the crisis counselor who took that conversation. But this is what Crisis Text Line is. It's strangers helping strangers in their darkest moments to stay alive, feel less alone, and to remind them how strong they are. Crisis Text Line launched quietly in August 2013 in Chicago and in El Paso, and within four months, we were in all 274 area codes of the United States, because people used the service, had a great experience and shared it with their friends — that's organic growth. And in six and a half years, we've now processed about 150 million messages. The people who use our free 24/7 service skew young, because it's text, so they skew young. 45 percent are under the age of 17. Also poor, racially diverse. 17 percent identify as Hispanic, and 44 percent LGBTQ. The top five issues that we see are relationships, depression, anxiety, self-harm and in approximately one in four conversations, suicidal ideation. Everyone texting us is unhappy, yet we normally have about an 86 percent satisfaction rating from our texters. What makes it so good? The technology, the data and the people. So, the technology. It is not an app. It's not something you have to download. It's free, there's no complicated intake survey, so it's really user-friendly. You just text us. We use machine learning to stack-rank the queue based on severity. Kind of like a hospital emergency room would take the gunshot wound before the kid with a sprained ankle. We work the same way. So we take the high-risk cases first. So the person who swallowed a bottle of pills would come before someone else. This is data science to save lives. But it's humans who do the counseling. We've trained over 28,000 volunteer crisis counselors who apply online, go through a background check and then about a 30-hour training. And if they pass — not everybody passes, there's only a 33 percent pass rate — they can save lives from their couch. It's a new gig economy for volunteerism, like Uber or Lyft for volunteerism. And we also have full-time staff with a master's degree in a relevant field. They're supervisors, and they watch every conversation and step in if needed. Thanks to this technology and data and our volunteer labor model, we're able to reach tons of people in pain. People who don't have access to other resources, like the gay teenager who can't share with his parents, because they keep telling him to pray the gay away. Or the girl who can't sleep at 2am because she's got anxiety about finals and she doesn't want to disappoint people who love her. So they text us. And we love on them. And we support them, and we remind them how strong they are. And we work on a plan together to stay safe. And we tell them that if this felt good, sharing with us — and 68 percent of people say they've shared something with us they've never shared with another human, so if it feels good to share with us, maybe find just one other person in your life tomorrow to share with. And after our conversation, they put that safety plan in place. And maybe they go to sleep. Or they journal. Or they listen to BTS or Lizzo, or they write a letter to their sister or their boss or to themselves, to read in 12 months. They stay safe. Sometimes, people have the ideation, the plan, the means and the timing to hurt themselves or someone else, and we can't deescalate. Like the man in Texas, five years ago on Christmas Eve, who told us he only felt pleasure when he inflicted pain and he wanted to kill women and was going to do it that very night. In those imminent risk situations, we call 911. And thank goodness for 911, because in that Texas incident, as reported in the news, they did send help, they sent the police to his home, and they found him with an arsenal of loaded weapons and on record as being in possession of a human foot. Now, active rescues are less than one percent of our conversations. But still, that's about 26 a day. And six of those a week are for homicide. Typically school shooters. We have now completed more than 32,000 active rescues. Our own data and external studies show that we're very good at saving lives, and at changing lives. We use the data to make it possible for us to change systems. So for example, we've learned the best way, the best language to risk-assess around suicidal ideation isn't to use the words, "Are you thinking of committing suicide?" Instead, it's to use words like, "Are you thinking of death or dying?" Or "Are you thinking about killing yourself?" And now, we've shared that language with journalists, to adopt this. We've shared that language with activists. We're advising the National Emergency Number Association, the 911 Association, on best practices for first responders in suicide. And we're working with the Veterans Administration to identify suicidal ideation and intent in veterans. (Sighs) Pain isn't an American experience. It's a human experience. So we've been growing. So far, we've been expanding one country at a time: Ireland, the UK, Canada — which we did in both French and English. And we could keep growing, one country at a time. And it would take us decades to reach even just a third of the people in the world. And that's just not acceptable. We've already seen, since the start of COVID in early March, a 40 percent increase in our volume. 78 percent of our conversations include words like "freaked out," "scared," "panic." People are worried about the COVID virus, and so they're nervous about symptoms and they're concerned for family on the front lines. We're also seeing the impact of the quarantines themselves. People are away from their routines, perhaps they're quarantined with abusive people. So we've seen a 48 percent increase in sexual abuse, and a 74 percent increase in domestic violence. One of the biggest impacts we've seen of the virus and the lockdowns is the financial stress. We're seeing more people reach out with fears of bankruptcy, fears of homelessness and other financial ruin. And right now, 32 percent of our texters identify as coming from household incomes under 20,000 dollars. That's up from our typical 19 percent low income. So we need to grow. Quickly. For months, we were planning on announcing that we were going to expand by language: Five languages in the next five years, covering 32 percent of the globe. And then, COVID happened. Things changed. And now five years feels like a luxury. So today, right now, we are committing to do it in half the time. Five languages in two and a half years. We're going to turn on Spanish everywhere, English everywhere, Portuguese everywhere, French everywhere, and the fifth language? Arabic. So we're going to bring our service to countries and populations that have limited mental health services and almost no data about what's going on. These include immigrant populations — who have phones. And young people, who are often not counted in studies, but they have phones. So we're going to shift to language, which makes the technology easier, because in addition to text, we're going to be using WhatsApp and Messenger. And global expansion helps us with middle-of-the-night capacity, because we'll have time-zone coverage. So think about it, this will be strangers helping strangers around the world. Like a giant global love machine. And the fact that the TED community has supported our audacious dream is just deeply, deeply meaningful, to me and to everybody on our team. And the best way for us to show our gratitude is to just let you know that we are ready and we are fired up. And we're going to use this support to impact millions of lives around the world. Times are hard. And it's confusing, and it's depressing, and sometimes, we all feel alone, especially in isolation. But no matter what age, no matter what your situation is or where you live, we'll be at your fingertips, in your pocket. I've been thinking a lot these last few weeks about that trafficked girl who I connected with. And I hope she's somewhere safe. I don't know ... I don't know how she's quarantined or who she's with, but I hope she's safe. And I don't know, last year, how she had our number, or even how she had access to a phone to reach out to us. I never asked her. Because it didn't matter. What mattered was that she could contact us, that she did have it, and we got help to her quickly. And that's the goal, it's to make it easier for people to get help than avoid getting help. That in moments of hardship, of danger, of physical distance, that nobody is ever alone. That thanks to Crisis Text Line, none of us is ever actually alone. [Support this initiative at AudaciousProject.org]

The dark history of IQ tests

TED-Ed

In 1905, psychologists Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon designed a test for children who were struggling in school in France. Designed to determine which children required individualized attention, their method formed the basis of the IQ test. Beginning in the late 19th century, researchers hypothesized that cognitive abilities like verbal reasoning, working memory, and visual-spatial skills reflected an underlying general intelligence, or g factor. Simon and Binet designed a battery of tests to measure each of these abilities and combine the results into a single score. Questions were adjusted for each age group, and a child’s score reflected how they performed relative to others their age. Dividing someone’s score by their age and multiplying the result by 100 yielded the intelligence quotient, or IQ. Today, a score of 100 represents the average of a sample population, with 68% of the population scoring within 15 points of 100. Simon and Binet thought the skills their test assessed would reflect general intelligence. But both then and now, there’s no single agreed upon definition of general intelligence. And that left the door open for people to use the test in service of their own preconceived assumptions about intelligence. What started as a way to identify those who needed academic help quickly became used to sort people in other ways, often in service of deeply flawed ideologies. One of the first large-scale implementations occurred in the United States during WWI, when the military used an IQ test to sort recruits and screen them for officer training. At that time, many people believed in eugenics, the idea that desirable and undesirable genetic traits could and should be controlled in humans through selective breeding. There were many problems with this line of thinking, among them the idea that intelligence was not only fixed and inherited, but also linked to a person’s race. Under the influence of eugenics, scientists used the results of the military initiative to make erroneous claims that certain racial groups were intellectually superior to others. Without taking into account that many of the recruits tested were new immigrants to the United States who lacked formal education or English language exposure, they created an erroneous intelligence hierarchy of ethnic groups. The intersection of eugenics and IQ testing influenced not only science, but policy as well. In 1924, the state of Virginia created policy allowing for the forced sterilization of people with low IQ scores— a decision the United States Supreme Court upheld. In Nazi Germany, the government authorized the murder of children based on low IQ. Following the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, the discriminatory uses of IQ tests were challenged on both moral and scientific grounds. Scientists began to gather evidence of environmental impacts on IQ. For example, as IQ tests were periodically recalibrated over the 20th century, new generations scored consistently higher on old tests than each previous generation. This phenomenon, known as the Flynn Effect, happened much too fast to be caused by inherited evolutionary traits. Instead, the cause was likely environmental— improved education, better healthcare, and better nutrition. In the mid-twentieth century, psychologists also attempted to use IQ tests to evaluate things other than general intelligence, particularly schizophrenia, depression, and other psychiatric conditions. These diagnoses relied in part on the clinical judgment of the evaluators, and used a subset of the tests used to determine IQ— a practice later research found does not yield clinically useful information. Today, IQ tests employ many similar design elements and types of questions as the early tests, though we have better techniques for identifying potential bias in the test. They’re no longer used to diagnose psychiatric conditions. But a similarly problematic practice using subtest scores is still sometimes used to diagnose learning disabilities, against the advice of many experts. Psychologists around the world still use IQ tests to identify intellectual disability, and the results can be used to determine appropriate educational support, job training, and assisted living. IQ test results have been used to justify horrific policies and scientifically baseless ideologies. That doesn’t mean the test itself is worthless— in fact, it does a good job of measuring the reasoning and problem-solving skills it sets out to. But that isn’t the same thing as measuring a person’s potential. Though there are many complicated political, historical, scientific, and cultural issues wrapped up in IQ testing, more and more researchers agree on this point, and reject the notion that individuals can be categorized by a single numerical score.

How "policing for profit" undermines your rights

{0: 'Dick M. Carpenter II studies cutting edge issues at the intersection of social science and constitutional law. '}

TEDxMileHigh

Picture yourself driving down the road tomorrow, heading somewhere to buy an item you found on Craigslist, perhaps a nice mountain bike for 3,000 dollars. At that price, it's probably one of those bikes with a little electric motor on it — (Laughter) maybe some streamers from the handlebars. (Laughter) The seller has declared this a cash-only deal, so you have, in the console of your car, 3,000 dollars. Suddenly, you are pulled over. During the stop, the officer asks, "Do you have any drugs, weapons or large amounts of cash in your car?" You truthfully answer, "Yes," not to the drugs or to the weapons, but to the cash. In the blink of an eye, you are ordered out of your car. The officer searches it and finds your cash. On the spot, he seizes it, and he says he suspects it's part of a drug crime. A few days later, the local district attorney files paperwork to keep your money — permanently. And all of this happens without you ever being charged or convicted of any crime. Now, you might be saying, "Ah, this would never happen in the United States." (Laughter) Incidents like this occur every day in our country. It's one of the most significant threats to your property rights most people have never even heard of. It's called "civil forfeiture." Most of you are generally aware of criminal forfeiture, although the term itself might be a little unfamiliar, so let's begin with forfeiture. When we forfeit something, we give up that thing, or we're forced to give it up. In criminal forfeiture, someone is charged and convicted of a crime, and therefore, they have to give up property related to that crime. For example, suppose you use your car to transport and deal drugs. You're caught and convicted; now you have to give up or forfeit your car as part of the sentencing. That's criminal forfeiture. But in civil forfeiture, no person is charged with a crime — the property is charged and convicted of a crime. (Laughter) You heard that correctly: the government actually convicts an inanimate object with a crime. It's as if that thing itself committed the crime. That's why civil forfeiture cases have these really peculiar names, like, "The United States of America v. One 1990 Ford Thunderbird." (Laughter) Or "The State of Oklahoma v. 53,234 Dollars in Cash." (Laughter) Or my personal favorite: "The United States of America v. One Solid Gold Object in the Form of a Rooster." (Laughter) Now, you're thinking: How does something like this happen? That's exactly what I said when I first learned about civil forfeiture while on a road trip with my wife. No, we did not get pulled over. (Laughter) I was reading about the history of civil forfeiture as part of my work as a research director at the law firm, and I came across one of the cases I just mentioned, "The United States of America v. One 1990 Ford Thunderbird." In that case, Carol Thomas loaned her car to her son. While in the car, her son committed a minor drug crime. Carol didn't commit any crime, so law enforcement couldn't convict her and take the car, but they could — and did — use civil forfeiture to "convict the car" and take it. Carol was completely innocent, but she lost her car nonetheless. In other words, she was punished for a crime she did not commit. When I read this, I was gobsmacked. How could this occur? How is this even legal? It turns out, it began in our country with maritime law. Early in our republic, the government sought to fight piracy — yes, actual pirates. The problem was the government often couldn't catch the pirates, so instead it used civil forfeiture to convict the pirates' property and take it, and therefore deny the pirates their illegal profits. Of course, the government could've simply taken and kept the booty without necessarily using civil forfeiture, but doing so would have violated our most basic due process and property rights. Now, the government rarely used civil forfeiture until the 1980s and the war on drugs. We expanded civil forfeiture law to cover drug crimes and then later, other types of crime. Canada and the European Union adopted similar provisions so that now all kinds of people are ensnared in the forfeiture web, people like Russ Caswell. Russ Caswell owned a small budget motel in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. His father built the motel in 1955, and Russ took it over in the 1980s. During the years that Russ owned the motel, from time to time, people would rent rooms, and they would commit drug crimes. Russ didn't condone the activities — in fact, whenever he found out about it, he would immediately call police. Russ was entirely innocent of any crime, but that did not stop the US Department of Justice from seizing his motel simply because other people committed crimes there. But Russ's case was not alone. Between 1997 and 2016, the US Department of Justice took more than 635,000 properties. This means each year, tens of thousands of people lose their properties in cases in which they're never charged or convicted of any crime. And we're not necessarily talking about major drug kingpins or headline-grabbing financial fraudsters whose cases involve hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Many of these seizures and forfeitures involve just everyday people like Russ Caswell or you or me. But it gets worse. Are you wondering: Where does all this cash and property end up? In most places, law enforcement keeps it. And they use it to buy equipment or pay for building repairs or even pay salaries and overtime. This is a clear conflict of interest. It creates a perverse profit incentive that can distort law enforcement. And this is a problem that's not lost on those in law enforcement, either. Former chief of police in Rochester, Minnesota, Roger Peterson, described the choice that police officers often face. As he described it: suppose I'm a police officer, and I see a drug deal. Now I face a choice: Do I go after the buyer and remove from the street illegal drugs, or do I go after the seller and get cash for my agency to use? So it's easy to see why a police officer might go for the cash. It was just such a circumstance that compelled police officers in Philadelphia to seize an entire house. In 2014, Chris and Markela Sourovelis' son sold 40 dollars worth of drugs down the street from their house. Forty dollars. The police watched the deal go down. They could've arrested the buyer and confiscated the drugs, but they didn't. They could've arrested the Sourovelises' son right there on the street and grabbed 40 dollars. But they didn't. They waited to arrest him at home, because then they could seize their entire house. The house was worth 350,000 dollars. That is what I mean by a perverse profit incentive. But the Sourovelises' case was no outlier. Philadelphia, the "City of Brotherly Love," the "Athens of America," the "Cradle of Liberty," birthplace to the Constitution, home to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, the "City that Loves you Back" — (Laughter) that Philadelphia was running a forfeiture machine. Between 2002 and 2016, Philadelphia took more than 77 million dollars through forfeiture, including 1,200 homes. Cars, jewelry, electronics — all of it they sold, the proceeds they kept. And they would have kept right on doing it, had it not been for a class-action lawsuit — our team's class-action lawsuit — (Applause and cheers) Thank you. We forced them to change their forfeiture practices and to compensate victims. (Applause and cheers) When our team first began researching forfeiture in 2007, we had no idea how much forfeiture revenue there was. In fact, no one knew. It wasn't until our groundbreaking study, "Policing for Profit," that we found federal law enforcement agencies have taken in almost 40 billion dollars — billion with a B — since 2001, more than 80 percent of that through civil forfeiture. Unfortunately, we have no idea how much state and local agencies have taken in, because in many states, they don't have to report it. So until we reform forfeiture, we'll never know how much forfeiture activity actually occurs in the United States. And we desperately need reform. Legislatures should abolish civil forfeiture and replace it with criminal forfeiture. And all forfeiture proceeds should go to a neutral fund such as a general fund. When forfeiture proceeds stop hitting law enforcement budgets directly, that is when we will end policing for profit. (Applause) Now, as you can imagine, law enforcement officials don't love these recommendations. (Laughter) They stand to lose a lot of money, and they believe civil forfeiture is an effective crime-fighting tool. The trouble is, it's not. In June 2019, we released a study that found forfeiture does not improve crime-fighting. And the report also found that law enforcement agencies pursue more forfeiture money during economic downturns. So when city and county budgets are tight, law enforcement will use forfeiture to find the money. So it's no wonder, then, that law enforcement officials predict a criminal apocalypse — (Laughter) if these reforms are adopted. But some states have already implemented them, and we're pushing for reform all across the country, because until we reform forfeiture, this is something that could happen to any of us. It can happen in the United States, it can happen in the United Kingdom, it can happen in countries throughout the European Union and beyond. People like you and me and the Sourovelises and Russ Caswell, just doing the everyday stuff of life, can be caught in a scheme we never thought possible. It is time we end policing for profit once and for all. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)

The electrifying speeches of Sojourner Truth

TED-Ed

In early 1828, Sojourner Truth approached the Grand Jury of Kingston, New York. She had no experience with the legal system, no money, and no power in the eyes of the court. Ignoring the jury’s scorn, Truth said she was there to fight for custody of her five-year-old son Peter, who’d been illegally sold to an enslaver in Alabama. As the trial played out over the next several months, Truth raised funds, strategized with lawyers, and held her faith. Finally in the spring of 1828, Peter was returned to her care— but Truth’s work was far from over. She would dedicate the rest of her life to pursuing justice and spiritual understanding. Truth was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree in the late 18th century in Ulster County, New York. Although New York state had announced the abolition of slavery in 1799, the emancipation act was gradual. Those who were currently enslaved were forced to serve a period of indentured servitude until their mid-20s. Throughout this period, enslavers repeatedly sold Baumfree, tearing her from her loved ones. Often, she was explicitly prevented from pursuing new relationships. Eventually, she married an enslaved man named Thomas, with whom she had three children. She was desperate to keep her new family together— but the slow progress of abolition threatened this hope. Baumfree’s enslaver, John Dumont, had promised to free her by 1826. When he failed to keep his word, Baumfree fled for her safety. During the escape, she was only able to rescue her youngest daughter Sophia, while her other children remained in bondage. It would be two years before she regained custody of Peter. After that, she would wait another two years before she saw any of her other children. During this time, Baumfree found solace in her faith and became increasingly dedicated to religious reflection. After settling in Kingston, New York, she joined a Methodist community that shared her political views. She continued her practice of speaking aloud to God in private, and one night, her evening prayers took on even more sacred significance. Baumfree claimed to hear the voice of God, telling her to leave Kingston, and share her holy message with others. Though she never learned to read or write, Baumfree became known as an electrifying orator, whose speeches drew on Biblical references, spiritual ideals, and her experience of slavery. Her sermons denounced the oppression of African Americans and women in general, and became prominent in campaigns for both abolition and women’s rights. In 1843, she renamed herself Sojourner Truth and embarked on a legendary speaking tour. Truth saw her journey as a mission from God. Her faith often led her to the nation’s most hostile regions, where she spoke to bigoted audiences as the only Black woman in the crowd. Truth was confident God would protect her, but some crowds responded to her bravery with violence. During one of her sermons, a mob of white mean threatened to set fire to the tent where she was speaking. In her memoir, Truth recalled steeling herself to confront them: “Have I not faith enough to go out and quell that mob… I felt as if I had three hearts! And that they were so large, my body could hardly hold them!” She placated the men with song and prayer, until they had no desire to harm her. Truth’s speeches impacted thousands of people in communities across the nation, but her activism went far beyond public speaking. During the Civil War, she became involved with the Union Army, recruiting soldiers and organizing supplies for Black troops. Her work was so well regarded that she was invited to meet President Lincoln. She took the occasion to argue that all formerly enslaved people should be granted land by the government. Truth continued to travel and speak well into her 80s. Until her death in 1883, she remained an outspoken critic who fought for her right to be heard in a hostile world. As Truth once said, “I feel safe even in the midst of my enemies; for the truth is powerful and will prevail."

The most important anus in the ocean

TED-Ed

Can you guess what you’re looking at? Is it a fuzzy sock? An overripe banana? A moldy tube of toothpaste? In fact, this is the humble sea cucumber, and while it might look odd, its daily toil paves the way for entire ecosystems to thrive. Sea cucumbers are members of the phylum Echinodermata, along with sea urchins, starfish and other radially symmetrical, “spiny-skinned” marine invertebrates. Some sea cucumbers have feathery tentacles flowing from their mouths, some are puffed like bloated balloons, and others simply look like Headless Chicken Monsters— the actual name given to a rare deep-sea species. But they are generally characterized by their long, cylindrical shape. A sea cucumber is essentially a brainless, fleshy form surrounding a digestive tract, bookended by a mouth and an anus. Adhesive tube feet run the length of their bodies and allow them to scoot along the seafloor. Specialized tube feet can be used for feeding and respiration, though many sea cucumbers actually breathe through their anuses. Rhythmically contracting and relaxing their muscles, they draw water in and out over an internal lung-like structure called a respiratory tree that extracts oxygen from seawater. Certain species of crabs and pearlfish take advantage of this rhythmic action and, once the sea cucumber’s anus is dilated, they shimmy in and take shelter. The rear end of a single sea cucumber can harbor up to fifteen pearlfish at a time. However, it seems that not all sea cucumbers put up with this intrusive behavior. Some species are equipped with five teeth around their anus, suggesting that they may have taken an evolutionary stand against unwanted guests. But even sea cucumbers that lack anal teeth are outfitted with tools to defend themselves. They evade threats and launch counter-attacks using their mutable collagenous tissue, or MCT. This gel-like tissue contains bundles of collagen, called “fibrils.” Proteins can interact with these fibrils to slide them together, stiffening the tissue, or apart, softening it. This versatile tissue has many advantages: it aids in efficient locomotion, enables sea cucumbers to fit into small spaces, and allows them to reproduce asexually by splitting apart. But MCT’s most explosive application is employed when a predator attacks. By loosening the attachments of internal tissues then quickly softening and contracting their muscles, many species are capable of shooting a wide range of organs out of their anuses. This act is called “evisceration” and it’s a surprisingly effective defense mechanism. In addition to startling and distracting predators, the innards of some sea cucumber species are sticky and toxic. Evisceration may seem drastic, but sea cucumbers are able to regenerate what they’ve lost to their gut reaction in just a few weeks’ time. Aside from the few species that have evolved to swim and those that feed without moving, many of these cumbersome creatures pass their time grazing the seabed. Sea cucumbers are found everywhere from shallow shores to abyssal trenches 6,000 meters below sea level. On the deep sea floor, they comprise the majority of animal biomass, reaching up to 95% in some areas. As these sausage-shaped wonders trudge along, they vacuum up sand, digest the organic matter it contains, and excrete the byproduct. In this process, sea cucumbers clean and oxygenate the seafloor by breaking down detritus and recycling nutrients. This creates the conditions for sea grass beds and shellfish to thrive. Sea cucumber excretions can also aid in coral formation and may play a role in buffering marine environments from ocean acidification. As the ocean’s vacuum cleaners, they are very good at their job: about half of the sandy seafloor is thought to have passed through the digestive tract of a sea cucumber. So next time you’re rejoicing in the feeling of sand crunching between your toes, consider this: those very grains of sand might have, at one point or another, been excreted by a pickle that breathes through its butt.