oday I'm taking Angela on a fantasy trip with my pet pig to look for truffles.

A: Truffles? You, mean the French culinary delicacy? 

D: Oui, oui!

A: Okay, what about truffles? And what does the pig have to do with it?

D: One thing at a time. First, the truffles are a fungus that grows in the ground.

A: Yuk!

D: Hey, you eat mushrooms, don't you?

A: Hmmm. I guess that's true. Mushrooms are also fungi.

D: Yep. But unlike mushrooms, truffles are harder to spot. So people use pigs to find      them.

A: Pigs?

D: Pigs. March a female pig out around an area where some truffles are growing and the      pig will excitedly root them out for you.

A: Why on earth would a pig dig up truffles?

D: There's the neat part. Truffles produce a steroid called 5-alpha-androstenol.

A: 5-alpha-what all?

D: 5-alpha-androstenol. It's a chemical truffles produce, probably for several reasons.      Sexual reproduction is one of them.

A: So where do the pigs come in?

D: By odd coincidence, pigs also use exactly the same steroid to communicate their      sexual availability to other pigs. It's found in the male's saliva, and makes the female      all hot and bothered when she sniffs it.

A: So when you lead a sow over a field of truffles... (PIG SNORT)

D: She thinks there must be a lot of really sexy male pigs around somewhere. In trying to      locate the pig, she unearths the truffle!

A: And people go along behind collecting truffles to eat.

D: Yes.

A: This is the oddest Moment of Science we've ever done. (PIG SNORT)

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