The rarest pasta on earth is almost physically impossible to make

What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast.
The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your new favorite source for the strangest science-adjacent facts, figures, and Wikipedia spirals the editors of Popular Science can muster. If you like the stories in this post, we guarantee you’ll love the show.

FACT: The rarest pasta on earth is almost impossible to make

By Jess Boddy

On this week’s episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, I journey deep into the heart of Sardinia to share the story of su filindeu, or “the threads of God.” This pasta is so rare and delicate that it’s been dubbed the rarest noodle in the world. For centuries, only a small circle of women in the village of Lula knew how to make the pasta, passing down the painstaking technique through generations. Historically, they only made the exclusive dish for folks at the end of a religious pilgrimage. 

Made from just flour, water, and salt, the magic lies entirely in the craft: the dough must be stretched, folded, and looped exactly 256 times, resulting in almost-impossibly thin strands that apparently make angel hair pasta look chunky. The process is so intricate that not even pasta giant Barilla could figure out how to automate it, and not even Jamie Oliver could master it on his visit.

The threads are then carefully layered on top of one another to form a criss-cross pattern, then dried out in the sun. The resulting sheets of tiny threads are broken up and cooked in mutton broth, then finished with a touch of sheep’s milk cheese. Those three simple components  are said to melt together in a texture you don’t even need to chew—it dissolves on your tongue.

While the tradition of su filindeu has endured for centuries, its future is less certain. With only a few women left who can make it, the current pasta matriarch, Paola, is now opening the doors to outsiders in hopes of preserving the craft. One determined chef from the US has already made the pilgrimage to learn, and he’s even made the ultra-rare dish available for purchase at his LA restaurant. But is that enough to keep the threads of God from vanishing forever? And is the commodification of these holy noodles a fair price to pay to keep them from disappearing? 

FACT: Cloacas really do it all

By Liz Clayton Fuller

I went on a bit of a deep dive recently about bird anatomy—specifically the cloaca. The cloaca is the all-in-one entry and exit for pooping, peeing, mating and egg-laying in not just birds, but also all amphibians and reptiles, as well as many fish and a few oddball mammals. I talk about the “cloacal kiss,” why most birds don’t have penises (but the 3% that do are exactly the birds you’d expect—ducks, geese, swans, etc.), and the wild genetics behind that. Plus, I answer the very important question: did dinosaurs have cloacas? The answer is… kinda, and they might’ve been surprisingly fancy and colorful. 

FACT: The “bone collector” is an especially freaky carnivorous caterpillar 

By Rachel Feltman

Scientists recently described a new species of carnivorous caterpillar, and it’s even weirder than you might be imagining. Found only in a tiny six-square-mile patch of Oahu, Hawaii, this caterpillar lives inside spiderwebs. Like, webs that still have spiders in them. No other moth or butterfly species has ever been found thriving in such a habitat.

Here’s the even weirder part: The species is nicknamed the “bone collector” because it scavenges the corpses of insects trapped by its spider roommate, then decorates its silk case with the legs, wings and heads of the dead. The result is some seriously gruesome camouflage that makes the caterpillar look like a pile of insect trash, helping it avoid becoming spider food itself.

The caterpillars are also fiercely territorial when it comes to their spider webs of choice, attacking and eating any rival caterpillars that wander in. And while they’re small—only about a quarter inch long—researchers say that if these bugs were our size, we’d probably be on the menu too. Basically, these are just tiny, ancient, bone-wearing serial killers that live with spiders and smell like death. Listen to this week’s episode of Weirdest Thing to learn more. 

 

More deals, reviews, and buying guides

The PopSci team has tested hundreds of products and spent thousands of hours trying to find the best gear and gadgets you can buy.