Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's that podcast that you thought dropped on Tuesdays,
Speaker 1: and it does. I promise. It's just been a wacky
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and thank you for bearing with me.
Speaker 1: It's Ali Ward back with another episode of Ologies. Also, yes,
Speaker 1: last week's AMA went up on a Tuesday night, but
Speaker 1: it just mysteriously unpublished itself and I was on the
Speaker 1: road to my folks house on Wednesday not knowing this,
Speaker 1: so apologies that it wasn't republished until Thursday. We got
Speaker 1: it up on Tuesday for you anyway, technical goblins, thank
Speaker 1: you for bearing with them. A lot has happened since
Speaker 1: last week. My pops is on the mend and hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll be sprung from the hospital soon. Yesterday though, I
Speaker 1: left his hospital room to check into the er myself
Speaker 1: for an infected spider bite and found out that I
Speaker 1: might have something called blood poisoning. So it's been an
Speaker 1: eventful couple of days, but I have some antibiotics. Thank
Speaker 1: you for everyone on Twitter and my friend Mike Natter
Speaker 1: for your medical guidance. Yes I'm doing a little bit better,
Speaker 1: but it's been a rough couple of days. But on
Speaker 1: Sunday I won an Emmy for writing for the Henry
Speaker 1: Fords Innovation Nation with Morocca. If you were like, what
Speaker 1: your own show? I'm very bad at self promotion, but yes,
Speaker 1: every single Saturday on CBS, and also I host my
Speaker 1: own show on CW did I mention invention? So if
Speaker 1: you need science shows to watch with your kiddos, there
Speaker 1: are a few Emmy winning programs with your weird old
Speaker 1: dad word. Okay, so this episode, who I don't know
Speaker 1: how to prepare you for what you're in for because
Speaker 1: it's so so so good. Okay, First, let's thank everyone
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Speaker 1: Thank you for bearing with me on a couple of
Speaker 1: rough weeks here. We should be back on our Tuesday
Speaker 1: scheduling next week. Promise. Okay, all I want to do
Speaker 1: is get to this episode. We're gonna get into it.
Speaker 1: So medusology, it is a word. It's the study of jellyfish,
Speaker 1: and it comes from Linnaeus, who named jellyfish Medusai, after
Speaker 1: the Greek Gorgon who had snakes for hair and turned
Speaker 1: men into stone, and according to many scholars, is a
Speaker 1: symbol for female rage. So I don't know what kind
Speaker 1: of complex feelings Linnaeus had about women are jellyfish, but
Speaker 1: perhaps hell hath no fury like a taxonomist stunk. Now.
Speaker 1: Either way, there are over two thousand species of jellyfish,
Speaker 1: some in forms that are teeny tiny and others, like
Speaker 1: the lion's main, are over three feet in diameter at
Speaker 1: certain points of their life. So this medusologist is about
Speaker 1: to become your favorite medusologist. She got her bachelor's in
Speaker 1: marine science, her masters and PhD at Brown in ecology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, a postdoc at Woodshole, and is currently
Speaker 1: an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville
Speaker 1: and a National Science Foundation Postdoc fellow at the Smithsonian.
Speaker 1: No big deal. And as if this episode isn't exciting enough,
Speaker 1: it's also part of a two fur with next week,
Speaker 1: in which we will address toxinology the study of jellyfish
Speaker 1: venom mother lovers. Are you excited? Yes you are? Okay,
Speaker 1: so hang tight for all of that with another ologists
Speaker 1: next week, but for this one, get ready to deep
Speaker 1: dive on everything from mouths to butts, to space aliens,
Speaker 1: to swimming in the bubble of your captive's stomach, to
Speaker 1: peeing on yourself, to pool noodles, flim flam, if eating
Speaker 1: jellies is her jam, and more with the world's most
Speaker 1: charming medusologist, doctor Rebecca Helm.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, if it's just on my end,
Speaker 2: like if my internet is just being a little bit ish,
Speaker 2: because we do have like a massive storm happening outside.
Speaker 1: Oh you do, Oh my god?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. It's so fun. It's like an adventure
Speaker 2: but exciting.
Speaker 1: You're in Ashville, I am, Yes, hence the storm. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Before we get rolling to is this like a one
Speaker 2: shot thing or you know, like if I have to cough,
Speaker 2: can that be edited out?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I edit the shit out of things.
Speaker 1: I don't know jack shit about jellyfish, So I'm blank
Speaker 1: canvas over here, good doctor of jellyfish. Do you know
Speaker 1: that you're a medusologist?
Speaker 2: I didn't. No. I was actually just telling a friend.
Speaker 2: I was like, you know, I'm gonna have this interview
Speaker 2: and it's on medusology, and she was like what what.
Speaker 2: I was like, I know, I know I'm a medusologist.
Speaker 2: I'd never thought about it that way.
Speaker 1: You're going to change your business cards, man, immediately?
Speaker 2: Immediately? Yeah, I mean, frankly, I need to get business cards.
Speaker 2: So do people even are we even going to do
Speaker 2: business cards anymore?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think. So how long have you
Speaker 1: been studying jellyfish?
Speaker 2: Gosh? I mean I think professionally, like, how long have
Speaker 2: I been doing a job of studying jellyfish? Probably ten years,
Speaker 2: and then probably another five years of like working for
Speaker 2: free at jellyfish, like as a student or as an
Speaker 2: intern or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was your first free job working with jellyfish?
Speaker 2: Oh? My god, it was so much fun. I went
Speaker 2: up to Friday Harbor, which is in Washington State. It's
Speaker 2: like in the San Juan Islands, and it was in
Speaker 2: the middle of the winter. No one was there. It's
Speaker 2: like a very seasonal place. And I just went out
Speaker 2: on the dock and like counted and cataloged all the
Speaker 2: jellyfish that floated by.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how do you do that? Do you
Speaker 1: have to shine a light in the water? How are
Speaker 1: you detecting them?
Speaker 2: This is a legit This is a legit question. Yeah,
Speaker 2: are there are tricks? So cloudy days are no go.
Speaker 2: Some days are the best. Right, You don't want any
Speaker 2: cloud reflection off the water because these things are transparent.
Speaker 2: They're like crystals floating through the water, right, So you
Speaker 2: need that strong intense light from the sun to sort
Speaker 2: of shine light on the side of their body, like
Speaker 2: stand out ever so slightly from the water around them.
Speaker 2: Most of these are really clear, you know, so you
Speaker 2: have to really be looking. You can go out at
Speaker 2: night and like drop a light in the water and
Speaker 2: find a ton of great stuff. So any type of
Speaker 2: light that can be submerged, a dive light, whatever you
Speaker 2: have on a rope and then you just sit with
Speaker 2: a cup on a stick, yeah, and wait until you
Speaker 2: see one that you want and then you just you know,
Speaker 2: like very gently, like scoop it into the little cup
Speaker 2: and then you know, pull the little stick in and
Speaker 2: then very gently put it in the bucket. And that's
Speaker 2: your that's your day.
Speaker 1: Oh and or your night, I guess maybe your night.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What is it about jellyfish? Did you accidentally become a
Speaker 1: medusologist or did you have a fascination with them forever?
Speaker 2: I loved them. So I'm from Arizona, which is very dry,
Speaker 2: and you know, I knew I wanted to explore. I
Speaker 2: love exploring, and for a lot of my childhood I
Speaker 2: thought I wanted to be like a space biologist, which
Speaker 2: isn't isn't it really a thing? Like there we haven't
Speaker 2: found aliens yet. But I was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: by the time I'm like twenty, we're totally going to
Speaker 2: find them. This'll be great. And then at one point
Speaker 2: I saw documentary on jellyfish and I was like, why
Speaker 2: even go to space? Like these are so weird?
Speaker 1: Ah, that's so true, They're so weird. I want to
Speaker 1: understand you.
Speaker 2: So that was really like what catalyzed my interest, and
Speaker 2: then it just sort of snowballed. You know, like you
Speaker 2: got a million interests when you're a kid, and some
Speaker 2: of them stick and most of them don't. And this
Speaker 2: one just kind of stuff like things kept popping up
Speaker 2: and I kept finding jellyfish and just falling in love
Speaker 2: even more so now I get to study jellyfish for
Speaker 2: a living. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Do you have a lab full of jellyfish or what
Speaker 1: is the work involve?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, so yes, usually non How dare you.
Speaker 1: The crickets are up editing? Yes, I'm sorry. I did
Speaker 1: not edit that out because it was in darias hell.
Speaker 1: And also I was like, could there be a jellyfish
Speaker 1: ring tone? Do you jellyfish even make a noise? And
Speaker 1: I did learn that millions of jellyfish coming up from
Speaker 1: the depths at night to feed on phidoplankton, make a
Speaker 1: low frequency hum. So if you want a ring tone,
Speaker 1: that's legions of hungry, soggy apparitions. I guess just download
Speaker 1: some static. Anyway, what does her work or her jellyfish
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: So under normal circumstances, I have a lab and I
Speaker 2: have a bunch of jellies, but they're not in the
Speaker 2: jellyfish form, so they don't look like jellyfish. They actually
Speaker 2: look like little proto jellyfish and they stick on the bottom.
Speaker 2: At the moment, they're all living in my house. So
Speaker 2: I've got like maybe twenty species of jellyfish in my
Speaker 2: house right now. Well it's a party. But then when
Speaker 2: conditions are right, or when you as a scientist, want
Speaker 2: to like get some medusa jellyfish, like the big charismatic
Speaker 2: kind that you used to thinking about. When you think jellyfish, like,
Speaker 2: add a chemical and that will induce them to go
Speaker 2: through this metamorphosis and then you'll get your big jellyfish.
Speaker 1: What is the chemical? Is it just puberty hormones?
Speaker 2: We don't know. That's such a great question because it's
Speaker 2: this like synthetic drug that people take for like upset stomachs,
Speaker 2: but when you add it to jellyfish, they metamorphose.
Speaker 1: Oh how did they figure that out?
Speaker 2: So this was like this was me being in grad
Speaker 2: school and panicking and needing to find a way to
Speaker 2: get jellyfish to metamorphose. And so I think the original
Speaker 2: study was done on a panel of like two hundred
Speaker 2: different chemicals. You can just like call up a store
Speaker 2: like one of these chemical suppliers and be like, I, well,
Speaker 2: like a mini sample of like every chemical you have, right,
Speaker 2: and then you can like just test them. And so
Speaker 2: the original study was done in Japan on moon jellyfish.
Speaker 2: They're just one species. And then when I was in
Speaker 2: grad school, I was like, oh my god, I'm in
Speaker 2: like year three and I don't have any data, and
Speaker 2: I just like every day I feel like I want
Speaker 2: to cry because I don't have any data. And so
Speaker 2: I just started testing all of these different chemicals on
Speaker 2: a really broad range of species, and this one just
Speaker 2: happens to work like across tons of different species.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. My god, did everyone lift you up on
Speaker 1: a chair and carry you around? Like did all the
Speaker 1: medusologists of the world say, like, doctor, how did you
Speaker 1: do this?
Speaker 2: All like a hundred of us? Yeah? Well, I mean
Speaker 2: it was published eventually, and I mean I hope people
Speaker 2: are happy. I think the biggest feedback I've gotten is
Speaker 2: from people that work at public aquariums, because you know,
Speaker 2: you need jellyfish like all the time, and if your
Speaker 2: poly ups just don't feel like it, then then what
Speaker 2: are you gonna do? So like now you can be like,
Speaker 2: you know, here's a little dab of this chemical and
Speaker 2: then they just like go through metamorphosis. Whereas before, like
Speaker 2: people were putting them in refrigerators. You know, you can
Speaker 2: like put them in little like heat contains. You can
Speaker 2: add light, you can take away. It was like a
Speaker 2: whole voodoo science. So I think it's a little better. Now.
Speaker 1: What was it like when you realized that this chemical
Speaker 1: did that? What kind of reaction did you have?
Speaker 2: Oh my god? I wrote so many bad words of
Speaker 2: excitement in my lab notebook, like I still have it,
Speaker 2: but it was just, oh my god, I did it.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I cried, like it was this whole
Speaker 2: big fish. It's dark, it's eleven at night, You're in
Speaker 2: this like cold lab by yourself, which is the light
Speaker 2: of the microscope to kind of keep you warm, right,
Speaker 2: and then and then I was looking at these animals
Speaker 2: and realized it was working, and I was just so
Speaker 2: so happy. No one else was around, so I didn't
Speaker 2: get to like celebrate or like have a Eureka moment
Speaker 2: or like walk into the room and be like I
Speaker 2: did it, you know what I mean. It was just
Speaker 2: me and the jellyfish, but it was still great.
Speaker 1: Who do you call first in that situation? Like in
Speaker 1: a Eureka contact number, like who's first on the list.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you explain that moment?
Speaker 2: I think anybody that you've been excessively bitching to about
Speaker 2: how everything is working right, like the people that are
Speaker 2: in the trenches with you and watch you suffer, it's
Speaker 2: like because they just they're just like, oh, thank god,
Speaker 2: she's done complaining about everything. I don't know, they're really
Speaker 2: excited for you too. So yeah, it was awesome.
Speaker 1: And so tell me what exactly is a jellyfish? You've
Speaker 1: already tossed around some terms, some polyps. We got some medusas,
Speaker 1: like what is a jellyfish exactly?
Speaker 2: So a jellyfish is the last step in this complex
Speaker 2: life cycle of animals that collectively we could call medusa
Speaker 2: zoans medusa zoans medusa like you know, lady with the
Speaker 2: crazy snake hair, and then zoa because they're animals. So
Speaker 2: you know, we got these medusas zoa and they have
Speaker 2: this three part life cycle, which is honestly why I
Speaker 2: love them so much. I mean, one of many reasons,
Speaker 2: but one of my favorite reasons is that they look
Speaker 2: like three totally different animals at different parts of their
Speaker 2: life cycle. So the first part is called a planulat,
Speaker 2: and it's just like this little itty bitty grain of
Speaker 2: sugar sized swimming fuzzy pill. Right, it just looks like
Speaker 2: this little kind of moldy pill floating through the water,
Speaker 2: the little hairs sticking off of it, and it can
Speaker 2: live like that for a while. And that's just like
Speaker 2: the larva that forms when an egg and a sperm
Speaker 2: meat and fuse, and so it's very tiny. Sometimes if
Speaker 2: you get swimmers, itch, that's a bunch of little babies
Speaker 2: getting stuck in your swimsuit. No very sad yees.
Speaker 1: Oh god, can you imagine if there was like a
Speaker 1: Godzilla that just took took a dip and then just
Speaker 1: had a of tiny human babies in its pants. Imagine
Speaker 1: just I know, I know, right exactly.
Speaker 2: So like it's yes, you're just like I don't even
Speaker 2: know who to feel bad for, Like it's trying for everybody.
Speaker 2: Like you get like itchy little jelly babies, but they're
Speaker 2: getting like smooshed, you know, on your stomach, like the
Speaker 2: weird it's a very bad day.
Speaker 1: Good. Oh, so those are the babies, and then what's
Speaker 1: stage two?
Speaker 2: Right, so stage two would sort of be like you know,
Speaker 2: if we're going to continue this analogy of like little
Speaker 2: human babies floating around, right, stage two would be when
Speaker 2: they settle and they form what's called a pollup m h.
Speaker 2: And it basically in the case of a jelly it
Speaker 2: looks like a jellyfish that got slipped upside down and
Speaker 2: it's kind of stuck to the seafloor. So it's got
Speaker 2: a little mouth and a little ring of tentacles around
Speaker 2: the mouth, and then it's got this little body column
Speaker 2: right and just sort of sticks to the sea floor.
Speaker 2: It's very small, like a bread crumb, okay, now, and
Speaker 2: it would sort of I mean, the polyp is really
Speaker 2: the stage that lasts for like decades, So polups can
Speaker 2: live a super long time. So it'd be like, you know,
Speaker 2: human baby finds a nice place to settle down, you know,
Speaker 2: and it just like grows into like a person.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: You know. Polyps are really like that stage. They're like
Speaker 2: the persistent, long lived stage.
Speaker 1: Okay. So a planula is the moldy green pill looking
Speaker 1: teeny daddy baby. And then they grow a little bit
Speaker 1: more and they become these breadcrumb sized polyps that look
Speaker 1: like sideshow Bob in a tube dress. But what are
Speaker 1: they doing on the seafloor. What are they doing? Are
Speaker 1: they having orgies? Are they playing peanuckle shooting the shit?
Speaker 1: And they're not reproducing no part?
Speaker 2: Actually, okay, they might clone themselves. So they have some
Speaker 2: cool cloning tricks that they do where they like split
Speaker 2: themselves in half like a little cell dividing. They can
Speaker 2: just split in half, or they can leave like little
Speaker 2: footprints of cells behind them. They don't really crawl very fast,
Speaker 2: maybe like a step every week, really slow.
Speaker 1: Take your time.
Speaker 2: But every time they do, they leave a little footprint
Speaker 2: of cells. And those cells are like little polyup seeds
Speaker 2: and they can actually hatch into new polyps at some
Speaker 2: inner date.
Speaker 1: This is happening on the ocean floor.
Speaker 2: Typically, it's all happening on the ocean floor. Wow. Typically,
Speaker 2: you're right. Typically is the perfect word, because biology is
Speaker 2: in love with exceptions. But yes, typically happening on the
Speaker 2: ocean floor.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And then when do they decide that
Speaker 1: it's time to just grow up and get sexy?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, so they don't really grow up and get
Speaker 2: sexy so much as they like bud part of themselves off.
Speaker 2: Who So they bud the little reproductive partoff. So some
Speaker 2: jellyfish will actually fission down down the side of their body.
Speaker 2: So like you can sort of imagine, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: whenever we go back to wearing like hard pants and
Speaker 2: belts again, it's probably gonna look kind of similar for me,
Speaker 2: when you're wearing a pants that are too tight and
Speaker 2: you got like a little paunch. They sort of look
Speaker 2: like that, like poly ups get a little like paunch.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I mean, we are all literally falling
Speaker 1: in love with this person's brain right now, right.
Speaker 2: Like they're wearing a belt that's too tight, and then
Speaker 2: the top of that paunch will like grow into a
Speaker 2: little jellyfish and pop off. No, and others they'll bud
Speaker 2: little jellyfish off the side.
Speaker 1: And then what do those do?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, And so this they're the reproductive stage.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I guess to continue our terrifying analogy, right,
Speaker 2: it would be like if your ovaries are testes like
Speaker 2: just like sprouted wings and popped off. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: that's what jellyfish are. So they're this like reproductive stage
Speaker 2: that has the gonads right that like sails into the
Speaker 2: sky or in this case, you know, the ocean like.
Speaker 1: Reproduces unbelievable, just like Baye bye nards have a great
Speaker 1: life and are there more than one sex or is
Speaker 1: it just like kind of blanket one type of gonad?
Speaker 2: Hm. We are like learning so much about this right now.
Speaker 2: It seems like polyps are male or female much of
Speaker 2: the time, so like in a lot of species, it's
Speaker 2: like either this or that. But there are some species
Speaker 2: where you know, they start male and then as they
Speaker 2: get bigger, they become female.
Speaker 1: Oh cute. Do they have to eat more in order
Speaker 1: to go from a little tiny breadcrumb to these fluffy,
Speaker 1: stinging you know, long medusa hair creatures they do?
Speaker 2: They usually they'll sort of munch on on plankedin that
Speaker 2: are in the water, so you've got you know, lots
Speaker 2: of little like swimming shrimp and crabs and fish and
Speaker 2: things like that. Some pull this cool trick kind of
Speaker 2: similar to their coral cousins, where they actually have algae
Speaker 2: living in their body in themselves.
Speaker 1: Oh that is so fancy, so awesome.
Speaker 2: I'm so jealous, sincerely, Like can you just imagine, like
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go like eat lunch and then you
Speaker 2: like walk outside in sunbathe for like two hours.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Medusa's owens, of course belong to the
Speaker 1: phylum Nidaria, as do corals, So for more on their
Speaker 1: coral cousins, you need to treat yourself to the Nidariology
Speaker 1: episode from summer twenty nineteen with shale with Suda. And
Speaker 1: then just go hug a reef. Jkjk. Do not hug
Speaker 1: the reef. It is live. It does not want you
Speaker 1: to hug it. You do not want to hug it either.
Speaker 1: And then they they have to go to the surface
Speaker 1: obviously for that. So they there are gonuns just fly
Speaker 1: up up up up up until they get kind of
Speaker 1: to the surface and they can get the plankton and
Speaker 1: get the floating stuff and get the sunlight.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Oh some of them, some of them will go deep.
Speaker 2: The ones that don't have that luscious algae, they might
Speaker 2: go deep. They might already be deep. You know, different
Speaker 2: species of jellyfish, they like different places. Upside down. Jellyfish
Speaker 2: actually swim to the bottom and just like hang out
Speaker 2: on the bottom and like a shallow lagoon and just
Speaker 2: like sunbathe twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, what a life? I mean, what are life?
Speaker 1: And how are they functioning because they are transparent. You
Speaker 1: don't see any brains or stomachs, Like, how are they
Speaker 1: even pulling any of this off? Like what do they
Speaker 1: even have in that little umbrella?
Speaker 2: I know they're they're so inspiringly minimalist.
Speaker 1: They maricondoed all their organs.
Speaker 2: They did just none, none left, just some gonads. And
Speaker 2: they don't even have a butt. They just have one hole, right,
Speaker 2: So it's just like, forget this anus, right, We're just
Speaker 2: gonna do everything using this one hole. So they've just
Speaker 2: got this like central like mouthenus, this manus in the middle,
Speaker 2: you know, and they'll take in food and then they'll
Speaker 2: digest it in this like big body cavity that sort
Speaker 2: of acts like, you know, a stomach, but it's also
Speaker 2: a circulatory system.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they're just like, we don't need we don't
Speaker 2: need two things for this. This can be this can
Speaker 2: be done together.
Speaker 1: What happens in this vascular gastro circulatory gut situation?
Speaker 2: They they you know, they digest their delicious food, right,
Speaker 2: So like if you were trapped, if you were caught
Speaker 2: by a jellyfish, right, like if you're a tiny fish,
Speaker 2: you would be you'd be stung, okay, and it would
Speaker 2: hopefully just kill you because because of what I'm about
Speaker 2: to tell you, just like let's just hope you just
Speaker 2: die and you're not like caught by one of those
Speaker 2: species that just like paralyzes its.
Speaker 1: Oh god, Oh what a nightmare. Okay, I'm dead. I'm
Speaker 1: dead as fuck. Okay, great.
Speaker 2: So you're like reeled up to the to the mouth
Speaker 2: butt right to the mouth anus combo hole and sucked inside.
Speaker 2: So you're just kind of like and some of them
Speaker 2: have these like really long, frilly like tendrils coming off
Speaker 2: the mouth. We call them oral arms. They sort of
Speaker 2: look like streamers, you know, they're very nice. So you'll
Speaker 2: get sort of sucked into the mouth and then they
Speaker 2: have some jellies anyway, have like inside tentacles, so you
Speaker 2: got like your outside tentacles, and then you might have
Speaker 2: like these tentacle like gastric theory on the inside that
Speaker 2: are also covered in stinging cells and they just kind
Speaker 2: of churn around, you know. So if you are paralyzed,
Speaker 2: then you're just like being like stung like over and
Speaker 2: over and like churned around and like slowly digested by
Speaker 2: like all the all the enzymes in the stomach.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, do you ever see a meal in
Speaker 1: digestion after a jellyfish eats? Can you see like a
Speaker 1: partially digested shrimp in there?
Speaker 2: Everything? And it's terrifying. For the ones that don't fully
Speaker 2: kill their prey, it's like they'll swim around. Oh you know,
Speaker 2: so you kind of watch them and they're like trying,
Speaker 2: and they're struggling, and and you can't get them out,
Speaker 2: and they're slowly disintegrating. It's it's pretty upseting.
Speaker 1: Do they breathe?
Speaker 2: They they don't have lungs, but they do. Most jellyfish breathe.
Speaker 2: There's like one really weird species of parasitic medusazoin that
Speaker 2: lives in like caviar, so like lives inside the eggs
Speaker 2: of a sturgeon.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And they might not actually breathe. They might be the
Speaker 2: only animal that doesn't really need oxygen.
Speaker 1: Are most our most jellyfish are? They usually transparent? What
Speaker 1: kind of a ray? Are we talking aesthetically?
Speaker 2: Every color of the rainbow? All rythmly, Okay, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: so we've got our like white jellyfish, like moon jellyfish.
Speaker 2: You know, they're kind of like opequy, milky white. You know,
Speaker 2: we got some really like not transparent, super white jellyfish.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite jellyfish in the whole world is
Speaker 2: called the barrel jellyfish.
Speaker 1: Okay, just quick aside. The barrel jellyfish is a larger
Speaker 1: jelly and it can grow to be two and a
Speaker 1: half meters across. It's got these eight frilly tentacles in
Speaker 1: a big mushroom helmet top, and it looks kind of
Speaker 1: like an oceanic version of the Scrubbing Bubbles commercial, which
Speaker 1: side note to a side note happened to be my
Speaker 1: favorite cartoon as a child, and my mom had to
Speaker 1: break it to me that it wasn't an actual show.
Speaker 1: It was just a toilet cleaning commercial. Anyway. The barrel
Speaker 1: jelly is also known as the dust bin lid jellyfish
Speaker 1: or the frilly mouthed jellyfish. Can I read you this
Speaker 1: weird sentence from its Wikipedia page? Okay, well, it says quote,
Speaker 1: in European populations, barrel jellyfish evoke unpleasant and disgusting feelings.
Speaker 1: It seems like a generalization, but Rebecca loves barrel jellyfish
Speaker 1: and goes on to describe them a little as well
Speaker 1: as other jellyfish varieties.
Speaker 2: And they are white with this bright blue ring around
Speaker 2: the side. Oh, so pretty gorgeous. And then you know
Speaker 2: we've got like purple blue, red, red's pretty common. Black
Speaker 2: sometimes you'll see black.
Speaker 1: I didn't know there were black jellyfish. That sounds so goth.
Speaker 2: So they're deep sea too, so they're like just like
Speaker 2: cold and dark.
Speaker 1: And blacks looked them up and they look like a
Speaker 1: jellyfish wearing a crushed velvet, dark purple cape, like jellyfish
Speaker 1: who refused to donate their Coctoi twin ceeds to Goodwill. Now,
Speaker 1: black jellyfish are also called black sea netal or the
Speaker 1: sarlac jellyfish. Yes, the sarlac jellyfish. And now you're not
Speaker 1: imagining that. Jellyfish names are just up there in taxonomy
Speaker 1: treasures with mushroom names in terms of zany creativity. And
Speaker 1: as long as we're here, let's just bloop through a
Speaker 1: very tiny sampling of jellyfish names. Flower hat jellyfish, blue blubber,
Speaker 1: calliflower jellyfish, the fried egg, which honestly looks like breakfast,
Speaker 1: and a caramel flond had a baby. There's also the
Speaker 1: pink MIENI, who absolutely shit talk you in its burn book.
Speaker 1: And then there's blood belly comb jellies, which aren't really jellyfish,
Speaker 1: but they look like if your heart got lost and
Speaker 1: ended up on the outside of your body but in
Speaker 1: the ocean, and was all so full of blinking disco lights. Now,
Speaker 1: why is there such a variety? Why do some of
Speaker 1: them have really long, colorful tentacles and some don't, Like
Speaker 1: are there different types of jellyfish?
Speaker 2: Yes, there are four types. Okay, yep, okay, four ish
Speaker 2: four plus minus types. You know, okay, scientists, we fight.
Speaker 2: Ok So, we've got the box jellyfish, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: shaped like squares, and they've got like tentacles and four
Speaker 2: little corners. You do not want to get stung by
Speaker 2: one of those.
Speaker 1: I've heard bad things.
Speaker 2: Very bad. I mean, I love them. They're like really
Speaker 2: clever as far as jellyfish go. They're like quite smart.
Speaker 2: They can like navigate around obstacles, and they've got these
Speaker 2: like really well developed eyes that sort of like look
Speaker 2: at you when you're looking at them, and it's like
Speaker 2: a little unrving. Oh okay, great, So that's one group.
Speaker 2: Then we've got the very poorly known but very endearing
Speaker 2: star jellyfish or star zoan's And they're actually jellyfish that
Speaker 2: sit on the bottom all the time, not like not
Speaker 2: like an upside down jellyfish. It's like, well, I just
Speaker 2: like to be here. They like have to be there.
Speaker 2: They're stuck to the bottom. Oh, stalked jellyfish, it's another
Speaker 2: word for them. They're really cute. They're like, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe size of your thumb. They don't really sting. They've
Speaker 2: got these really great like little tentacle palm poms. So
Speaker 2: they shape like little wine glasses, but if wineglasses had
Speaker 2: little like palm.
Speaker 1: Palms on them. Oh oh what a SWE's little sweeties.
Speaker 2: They're very cute. Yeah, I love them. And they do
Speaker 2: little summersaults too to get around. So they'll live on
Speaker 2: like a blade of sea grass, you know, and I
Speaker 2: think to themselves, like I want to be at the
Speaker 2: top of this blade of sea grass. They'll like bend
Speaker 2: over and like use their little palm poms to sort
Speaker 2: of stick to the blade of sea grass, and they'll
Speaker 2: flip their little their little stock over to the other
Speaker 2: side and kind of attach. Just do that over and
Speaker 2: over again.
Speaker 1: Oh, they sound like I had a creation of Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they would be perfect. And then we've
Speaker 2: got our water jellyfish or hydrozoans, biggest diversity of jellyfish,
Speaker 2: very very poorly known by like the average person. Okay,
Speaker 2: so they're like two thousand species, but they're all pretty small,
Speaker 2: like maybe you know, your fingernail size, maybe bottle cap,
Speaker 2: and they're all pretty clear, and they usually don't really sting,
Speaker 2: so just like you know, it's kind of like they
Speaker 2: don't bother people. People don't really bother them, sort of
Speaker 2: ships in the night.
Speaker 1: Under the radar exactly. Okay, So to recap those types
Speaker 1: so far, there's box jellyfish, stalked or star jellyfish, and hydrozoans. Now,
Speaker 1: I would also like you to know that a group
Speaker 1: of jellyfish is called a smack. Now, what about when
Speaker 1: we think of jellyfish, those flowing vengeful medusa, that thrumming
Speaker 1: quiet majesty, the danger.
Speaker 2: And then the last group is called skyphozoa. And these
Speaker 2: are like your big charismatic like aquerium jellyfish, right, that
Speaker 2: gal a little like frilly arm parts right, and have
Speaker 2: their little like tentacles out. And there are lots of
Speaker 2: different colors, and these are the ones that also that
Speaker 2: you know, will ruin your beach vacation. They've got, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of two modes. They've got the frilly long tendrils
Speaker 2: coming off the mouth mode. So that's one group, and
Speaker 2: then the other group is like this filter feeding group
Speaker 2: that has like a cauliflower stuck to the back of them.
Speaker 1: Oh what are they doing with that?
Speaker 2: So they're filtering out seawater. So they're like filter feeders,
Speaker 2: really very peaceful, beautiful filter feeders. And that big like
Speaker 2: cauliflower looking thing is actually complex of like a thousand
Speaker 2: little mouths that just sucking food from the water.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what about brains? Do they have brains?
Speaker 2: They don't really have brains.
Speaker 1: How do they do anything?
Speaker 2: They're like cloud computers, so or really they think like
Speaker 2: a cloud computing system might. Where they've got these central
Speaker 2: regions of concentrated neurons at various points along the edge
Speaker 2: of their sort of bowl or bell shaped body. So
Speaker 2: like right on that margin, you know, like every couple inches,
Speaker 2: there'll be this little spot and it's called a rapelia,
Speaker 2: and it has like a little sort of very simple
Speaker 2: eyeball and a very simple sort of up down where
Speaker 2: am I in the world sensory structure, and then a
Speaker 2: little cluster of neurons, and so each one of those
Speaker 2: kind of takes in its little wedge of the world
Speaker 2: that it sees and and sort of reports back to
Speaker 2: every other one, and then collectively they kind of all
Speaker 2: make decisions together.
Speaker 1: But they are one single organism, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh, yes, yes, yeah, But it would be sort
Speaker 2: of like, you know, if you had like a quarter
Speaker 2: of your brain on one hand, a quarter on the other,
Speaker 2: quarter on one foot, and a quarter on the other foot, right,
Speaker 2: and like no one was the boss, you know, everyone
Speaker 2: has equals, say, and but when one is like really screaming,
Speaker 2: like there's food over here, we should go over here,
Speaker 2: then everyone's like, I also love food. I'm going to
Speaker 2: go there as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, and so when we see them in the
Speaker 1: ocean or in an aquarium, we are typically seeing like
Speaker 1: them in their reproductive phase, because that's when they're kind
Speaker 1: of the most attention getting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're really I mean, it's they're sort of
Speaker 2: like flower phase if we just want to throw around
Speaker 2: like a million different metaphors, right, yea. It's a very showy,
Speaker 2: attractive phase, very bizarre hypnotic phase polyps. I love polyps, right.
Speaker 2: All I have at home right now are polyps, and
Speaker 2: they're very low maintenance, but they're not charismatic like at all.
Speaker 1: Oh so, remember the pollup is kind of between jelly
Speaker 1: somewhere between a baby planula and a hornball medusa. And
Speaker 1: how long can they live? If the polyp can live
Speaker 1: for up to a decade, how long can the meduca
Speaker 1: form of it live?
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, like in in the wild, a
Speaker 2: lot of jellyfish are seasonal. So so like these are
Speaker 2: the questions where I'm like, you know, that sounds like
Speaker 2: a simple question. M hmm. Let me talk for forty
Speaker 2: five minutes about my right. So, in the wild, they
Speaker 2: like are seasonal, and they seem to like mostly, if
Speaker 2: not completely, all die off okay in the fall for example,
Speaker 2: or whatever their not favorite season is, and then the
Speaker 2: polyp kind of hangs out on the bottom until conditions
Speaker 2: are right, and that turns out some new jellyfish whenever
Speaker 2: times are good again. But but like I've kept jellyfish
Speaker 2: for like two years. Oh and and they're jellyfish that
Speaker 2: live in like Norwegian fjords where you can kind of
Speaker 2: track like who's who by how big they are? So
Speaker 2: maybe not like oh that's Tom the jellyfish, maybe not
Speaker 2: like that detailed, but you can be like, you know,
Speaker 2: that's like a boomer jellyfish, right, it's like a millennial jellyfish,
Speaker 2: Like you can kind of tell they said, how big
Speaker 2: they are, what generation they're from, and people, I mean
Speaker 2: think they might be like twenty years old.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, you can't tag them, can you.
Speaker 2: You know, people are working on it, and you can
Speaker 2: do like short term tags, like you can now tag
Speaker 2: a jellyfish and like let it go and then just
Speaker 2: like follow it around.
Speaker 1: Just like behind it in a canoe for a while there. Yeah, buddy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: are there aquariums that can tell you like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had Phil for you know, six seasons
Speaker 1: now or probably.
Speaker 2: I mean, I I know when I had jellies for
Speaker 2: like two years, Like they all had names, like none
Speaker 2: of them are supposed to be named, you know, because
Speaker 2: they're like science jellyfish and you want to get attached,
Speaker 2: but like eventually, you know, you just end up kind
Speaker 2: of naming them on accident. So it was like big guy,
Speaker 2: little guy, middle guy. That middle guy became the big
Speaker 2: one so that there's like middle one, but he's the
Speaker 2: biggest one. And yeah, I mean they've lived a really
Speaker 2: long time and they they're ups and downs. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like a complicated life with yeah, injuries and you
Speaker 2: know there's one time where everybody accidentally ate a bunch
Speaker 2: of paper towels that fell into the tank. You know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and I'm sure there are aquaris that could
Speaker 2: tell you the same thing, like, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: we've had these jellyfish for five years and you know
Speaker 2: that one, you know, he wasn't doing so great this fall,
Speaker 2: but he's really picked up, how you know, And.
Speaker 1: Oh they all got sick from eating paper towels. I
Speaker 1: love them. Did you ever notice different personalities? Like are
Speaker 1: there some that are more hyper than others?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so hard to say because they're like,
Speaker 2: how are you feeling today? I just don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: like maybe you're just having it off day, maybe you're
Speaker 2: having it off months, like maybe you have you know,
Speaker 2: like a jellyfish migraine. And I just can't tell. I
Speaker 2: never I just I never really noticed a ton of difference.
Speaker 2: But but I mean it was again, it was like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I know you lost like five of your
Speaker 2: tentacles the other day on the little swipper mop. I
Speaker 2: used to clean your tank. Like maybe that's why you're
Speaker 2: behaving differently. I just don't know.
Speaker 1: And how do they get it on.
Speaker 2: They do a bunch of different things. So most jellyfish are,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like the standard like ocean sex
Speaker 2: thing is just like, don't even worry about meeting someone.
Speaker 2: Just like release everything into the water and hope for
Speaker 2: the best. You know, just just just dribble some eggs
Speaker 2: out as you're sort of like munching, and you know
Speaker 2: it's a good luck. Help me fine, right, some jellyfish,
Speaker 2: you know, the the female will keep the eggs like
Speaker 2: in her body and then essentially sperm just like swim
Speaker 2: up her mouth and find them. Oh my god, yeah.
Speaker 1: Up her mouth, butt.
Speaker 2: Up her Mouthbut so it's just like one day you're
Speaker 2: just like, oh, I got fertilized. I don't know when
Speaker 2: that happened.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. You just get knocked up while you're
Speaker 1: trying to munch on a plankton. You don't even know
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Totally. Yeah, I have a million babies.
Speaker 1: Now that's romantic.
Speaker 2: And she will, she'll, she'll you know, like keep all
Speaker 2: her little babies actually in little special pockets in the
Speaker 2: sort of like long frills on her mouth butt.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you will, a science fiction program about an
Speaker 1: extra terrestrial alien that has a mouth butt lined with
Speaker 1: poison arms and holds babies in his pockets.
Speaker 2: So you know, like some jellyfish, like moon jellyfish, they've
Speaker 2: got all those like beautiful like lufa like tentacles kind
Speaker 2: of around their mouth, and they're just like for females,
Speaker 2: just like pockets full of babies.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's like a kangaroo. It's like a
Speaker 1: very slimy kangaroo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like millions of babies and they're all kind
Speaker 2: of like crammed together in these little stomach pockets. You
Speaker 2: can see them. Like if you go to an aquarium
Speaker 2: with a jellyfish biologist, which one hundred percent recommend, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll give you all the dirt. I'm like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: that female, she got a lot of babies. Check out
Speaker 2: all the little white streaks. Millions of babies.
Speaker 1: When does she kick them out?
Speaker 2: Good question. I don't know if they get kicked out
Speaker 2: or or they just kind of after a while they're like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I am so sick, you know, my
Speaker 2: ninety nine million other siblings, right, Like, I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: swim out into the world and do my own thing.
Speaker 2: I don't really know when that happens. Usually I just
Speaker 2: kind of put a moon jellyfish in a bucket and
Speaker 2: kind of give a little like shaky shake and I
Speaker 2: get you know, a couple thousand.
Speaker 1: If only human birth were that easy. You just go
Speaker 1: in a hot tub birth like, I'm done. Done, Just
Speaker 1: jostle me gently and I'm a baby fallout.
Speaker 2: I didn't even notice that they were gone. Oh, oh
Speaker 2: my god.
Speaker 1: What about myths? What about flimplan about jellyfish? Is any
Speaker 1: myths that you just cannot stand?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, well, you know they're not fish.
Speaker 1: Right, Should we be calling them jellies?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, I've kind of just decided,
Speaker 2: like I'm going to lean into it because like everybody
Speaker 2: knows what I'm talking about more or less. Yeah, Like
Speaker 2: when I say jellyfish, like you get a mental picture
Speaker 2: even if you think it's a fish. At least we're
Speaker 2: kind of on the sort of same page, you know,
Speaker 2: and we can kind of correct that later. Whereas like
Speaker 2: if I say, see jellies, it's like, what do you
Speaker 2: what do you mean? Right? What is that? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it's a good idea. And unfortunately, like
Speaker 2: I don't work in an aquarium, so I don't have
Speaker 2: to really like make this distinction. But yeah, I changed, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: so I sort of go back and forth. I'm just like, okay, whatever,
Speaker 2: but I will say that, like for me, for a
Speaker 2: lot of scientists, I know, like a jellyfish is like
Speaker 2: a Medusa's zoon, and there are lots of other things
Speaker 2: in the ocean that also look like floating boogers and
Speaker 2: they are not jellyfish. Right. So you've got your comb jellies,
Speaker 2: and you've got your larmvations, which are basically like little
Speaker 2: tadpole animals that make these giants snot cars that they
Speaker 2: drive around.
Speaker 1: Oh god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, You've got your salps, which are like little barrel
Speaker 2: shaped animals and they just like eat tons of algae
Speaker 2: all the time, right, And none of these are jellyfish,
Speaker 2: even though they all look like jellyfish.
Speaker 1: So a comb jelly is not a jellyfish. Yes, oh god,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Okay, more on comb jellies in
Speaker 1: a bit. But one thing, it does.
Speaker 2: Have it has a butt.
Speaker 1: What about the the wind of the sails or what
Speaker 1: are those ones with the blue mohawk?
Speaker 2: Oh, by the wind sailors, those are fancy polyps. They
Speaker 2: have jellyfish. Oh they do, they do. So those are
Speaker 2: just like fancy polyps that live on the ocean surface
Speaker 2: instead of like on a little rock or something.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, do they do? They metamorphose? Metamorphosize me casually
Speaker 1: trying to say the word menamorphosize to a scientist. I
Speaker 1: desperately want to be friends with cool col Also, I
Speaker 1: did look it up and apparently you can say metamorphosize
Speaker 1: or metamorphose, so now we all know that. Also, the
Speaker 1: villella are indeed jellyfish, and they are these inflatable blue
Speaker 1: little wedges. But you can call them by the wind sailors.
Speaker 1: Even though it does sound like a Hemingway book you're
Speaker 1: required to read in sophomore English, Rebecca says, by the
Speaker 1: wind sailors, they're like a jellyfish factory underneath. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine if someone's like, oh, wow, yeah, I looked at
Speaker 1: their butt and they are just a baby factory oozing babies.
Speaker 2: So if you like, flip one over you'll see it's
Speaker 2: got like little brown sort of ring in the bottom,
Speaker 2: and that's where all the little jellyfish butt off, and
Speaker 2: the brown is from the algae that live in the jellyfish.
Speaker 2: So they just kind of hang out in the sun.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Okay, because I've seen those all over
Speaker 1: the beach. If I see those on the beach, should
Speaker 1: I be tossing them back into the water? Are they
Speaker 1: there for a reason?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, I love them
Speaker 2: and I'm studying them. So please, if you ever see
Speaker 2: some serious moment like, I would love it if you
Speaker 2: would report them on like I Naturalist or jelly watch,
Speaker 2: which is this like citizen scientist jellyfish community of like
Speaker 2: jelly watchers.
Speaker 1: Oh in citizen science side note, is also called community science,
Speaker 1: and you can be part of it.
Speaker 2: Yes you everyone, Yeah, because you know, we don't really
Speaker 2: know why they roll up on beaches when they do.
Speaker 2: We think it's maybe something having to do with currents,
Speaker 2: but who knows. I mean, I will say, like, by
Speaker 2: the time they're on the beach, it's kind of been
Speaker 2: a pretty bad day already, so you could try to
Speaker 2: toss them back and they might do Okay, or they
Speaker 2: might just kind of be eaten by fish.
Speaker 1: Oh Man and your particular research, What are you researching
Speaker 1: now or are you researching like ten different things about jellyfish?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm researching like two or three different things about jellyfish.
Speaker 2: So okay, I'm looking at the jellyfish life site, so like,
Speaker 2: you know, how does one stage like switch to another stage?
Speaker 2: Like what is what's really happening in there right? Like
Speaker 2: is it jellyfish puberty or is it like more dramatic
Speaker 2: than that. We don't really know. So that's sort of
Speaker 2: like one one thing I'm looking at. And then the
Speaker 2: other thing of the three is is sort of like
Speaker 2: how do you open ocean jellyfish like get there right? Like,
Speaker 2: you know, because most jellyfish they have this poll up
Speaker 2: it's very important does a lot of really good things
Speaker 2: kind of helps you weather the bad times, you know,
Speaker 2: just hanging out on the bottom. But some open ocean
Speaker 2: jellyfish like they've just lost that part of the life cycle,
Speaker 2: so they just theyre just go directly, like one one
Speaker 2: egg becomes a little planila becomes a jellyfish, skipping the
Speaker 2: whole middle part. And it's just like how do you
Speaker 2: skip a middle. You know, it's like development. How do
Speaker 2: you just cut out the middle part? Yeah, still look normal.
Speaker 1: Oh oh my gosh. So you're trying to find those
Speaker 1: like nature's riddles out.
Speaker 2: Yeah I love that. Yes, it's like very us very
Speaker 2: perplexing to me, Like, how can you do that? That
Speaker 2: doesn't seem fair, right, that would just be like us
Speaker 2: skipping puberty, Like you just wake up as an adult
Speaker 2: one day.
Speaker 1: So confusing, so hairy all at once. And the third
Speaker 1: aspect of what she's studying is how does the environment
Speaker 1: inform this process? But let's move on to a hard
Speaker 1: hitting question. How do you feel when it's Halloween and
Speaker 1: you see a lot of jellyfish costumes? Like I love you?
Speaker 1: Do you love them? The clear umbrella with the streamers?
Speaker 1: Have you ever done that?
Speaker 2: I do? Yes, of course I did that, like back
Speaker 2: in like the early two thousands, like it was the
Speaker 2: beginning of it. I was so into it. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love it. I mean when trigger traders come to my house,
Speaker 2: I always like have little info packets that I give
Speaker 2: with the candy about like a cool animal.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how the kids feel about it, but
Speaker 2: I love it so yeah. Whenever I see jellyfish, I'm like,
Speaker 2: you get every info packet, like, you get all of them.
Speaker 1: The info packets on do you make the info packets?
Speaker 2: I do, yeah, noise, Yeah, they're just like little leaflets.
Speaker 2: So last year I was a baby snail for Halloween.
Speaker 2: Hu and baby snails are like the most amazing snail
Speaker 2: life cycle stage to me because they have fairy wings,
Speaker 2: like they have these huge angel wings and they just
Speaker 2: like swim around the ocean being like little baby wing snails.
Speaker 2: I did not know that, and they're called villagers. Baby
Speaker 2: snails are called vellager larvae. And so I just my
Speaker 2: Halloween costumes, like I had a big shell and then
Speaker 2: I put little angel wings on it and then I
Speaker 2: look handed out little vellag or info es.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, have you ever had neighbors come up
Speaker 1: to you and say, hey, thanks a lot for that,
Speaker 1: you know, Melissa's now really.
Speaker 2: No, But that's mostly because I give out info packets
Speaker 2: at my friend's houses. So it's just like like, you know,
Speaker 2: just kind of like bomb education, right, and then like
Speaker 2: leave rapidly before anyone's like, oh my god, did you
Speaker 2: really just hand my child like a little info packet
Speaker 2: on baby snails.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I love it. Can I ask you your
Speaker 1: own questions?
Speaker 2: Yes, of course.
Speaker 1: Okay they submitted like three hundred questions. People have so
Speaker 1: many jollyfish questions. They're pumped. Okay, But before your questions,
Speaker 1: a few words from sponsors who make it possible to
Speaker 1: donate to a cause of the ologists choosing, And this
Speaker 1: week doctor Jellyfish chose the Vancouver Aquarium, which has had
Speaker 1: a rough go of things with the pandemic closures, and
Speaker 1: they've just reopened with a limited number of ticketed reservations.
Speaker 1: But they put out a statement that said, although our
Speaker 1: doors are open, we still need your help to secure
Speaker 1: the future of the aquarium. We can't survive without you
Speaker 1: and your donations. And the Vancouver Aquarium, if you've never been,
Speaker 1: is home to thousands of incredible ocean species and aquatic life.
Speaker 1: It's also ocean Wise headquarters where scientists and educators and
Speaker 1: conservation experts do all their work to not only protect
Speaker 1: the oceans, but to inspire others to join them. The
Speaker 1: Vancouver Aquarium opened in nineteen fifty six and it's connected
Speaker 1: more than forty million people from around the world to
Speaker 1: oceans and the wonders within them, and you don't even
Speaker 1: have to be in Canadia to enjoy the aquarium. I
Speaker 1: just went on their site and I lost my marbles
Speaker 1: realizing that they have a live otter cam. They got
Speaker 1: a penguin cam, they got an underwater otter cam, and
Speaker 1: a baby otter cam. I just watched a baby otter
Speaker 1: with a pacifier. Don't be jealous. Just go on their website.
Speaker 1: They also have you ready, that's a drum roll. It's
Speaker 1: like a drum roll that I tried with my mouth.
Speaker 1: A live jellycam featuring like billowing Medusa jellies gliding by
Speaker 1: like someone in a ruffled nineteen eighties prom gown. It's devastating.
Speaker 1: So a donation went to them. It's devastatingly beautiful. So
Speaker 1: a donation went to them. And you can go check
Speaker 1: out their jellycam or you listen to the rest of this.
Speaker 1: That donation was made possible by word approved sponsors of
Speaker 1: the show, who you may hear about now. Okay, yeah, questions, Okay,
Speaker 1: are you ready for Patreon questions? Yes, yes, please, lightning
Speaker 1: round here we go so many questions. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: blaze through as many as we can. Sound good, Okay, ready,
Speaker 1: Anna Thompson wants to know can they control their tentacles
Speaker 1: or are they at the mercy of the current.
Speaker 2: They can control their tentacles so they can contract them
Speaker 2: and relax them, and when they contract it's like one
Speaker 2: of the fastest muscle contractions in nature.
Speaker 1: Really Okay, So next week's episode we're going to learn
Speaker 1: all about how fast the venom comes out. So for
Speaker 1: the next six days you have to wonder does it
Speaker 1: dribble like fresh blood? Is it ejected out like tiny harpoons?
Speaker 1: Stay tuned?
Speaker 2: Shit gets weirder, I will say, for like slow drifting animals,
Speaker 2: they have their moments mm hmm yeah, badass being really fast.
Speaker 2: You can't really their tentacles contract really quickly and their
Speaker 2: stinging cells fire really fast.
Speaker 1: Ooh okay. Natalie Perkins wants to know can they feel pain?
Speaker 1: Can they sting each other? And can they sting themselves?
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know if they can feel pain. That's
Speaker 2: like actually a really hard philosophy question that even like
Speaker 2: fish biologists can't agree on, Like can fish feel pain?
Speaker 2: No one really knows.
Speaker 1: Really, Okay, God, that's fasting.
Speaker 2: So they definitely do not like things and avoid things,
Speaker 2: so like I feel poka jellyfish, they'll be like, oh
Speaker 2: and swim away. Interpret that how you will over it exactly.
Speaker 2: Jellyfish of different species can sing each other and sometimes
Speaker 2: do eat each other, so they're called meduci wars jellyfish
Speaker 2: that eat other jellyfish.
Speaker 1: I ate his liver with some father beans and a
Speaker 1: nice candy.
Speaker 2: But they can't sing themselves. As far as I know,
Speaker 2: they seem pretty pretty comfy with themselves.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh, that's really good to know. Star. Simple question
Speaker 1: I didn't ask, glad they asked. It is what is
Speaker 1: the clear part that looks like the top of a
Speaker 1: mushroom made out of what is? What is it?
Speaker 2: The technical term is called mesoglia. Okay, it's it's kind
Speaker 2: of like cartilage. It's got a ton of collagen in there.
Speaker 2: Really ever find yourself Like in a you know, Asian market,
Speaker 2: you can actually buy them and eat them.
Speaker 1: Oh you can. Do you cook them first or do
Speaker 1: you just just row dog it like an oyster?
Speaker 2: You know, you got it? So there's like this whole
Speaker 2: preparation process that they go through, so you can actually
Speaker 2: buy them like package, like pre prepared, and then you
Speaker 2: sort of soak them and soak them again and then
Speaker 2: you just sort of slice them up into like little
Speaker 2: rubber bands and then you like make a salad or
Speaker 2: you can bread them some different options. But I they
Speaker 2: kind of they kind of have the same texture as cartilage.
Speaker 2: Like if you've ever gotten like the you know, kind
Speaker 2: of like the grizzle at the end of a chicken bone.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Have you eaten them?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, not a fan, Okay, I.
Speaker 2: Mean morally, and also like culinarily, it's.
Speaker 1: Not good little chewy. Do you put it in barbecue
Speaker 1: sauce or something, you get it like a honey mustard.
Speaker 2: There is a really nice like ams like a soy
Speaker 2: sauce base, the sauce tasting gut. Okay, I mean aside
Speaker 2: from like my deep sadness at eating my favorite thing.
Speaker 2: Like I was kind of like, you know, flavor wise,
Speaker 2: this is not terrible, but like texture wise, this doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yeh yeah, but you're gonna go You're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and pass on.
Speaker 2: That, yes, hard pass.
Speaker 1: Okay. Just a side note, I did look up mesicleia preparation,
Speaker 1: and first off, if you have ever been frustrated that
Speaker 1: you can't eat a breast implant, boy, howdy, have I
Speaker 1: got good news for you. Okay, So, the mesoglia is
Speaker 1: about ninety five percent water the rest protein, and it
Speaker 1: makes a hydrostatic skeleton of jelly that holds things in place.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to inserting this substance in our mouths,
Speaker 1: I scoured food blogs and YouTube videos, and I saw
Speaker 1: its texture described as slimy leather. Some folks said it
Speaker 1: had a mouth feel somewhere between a cucumber and a
Speaker 1: glass noodle, and one taste tester described it as a
Speaker 1: shrimp flavored gusher. Now, in Rebecca's own blog entry from
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, she says, quote my restaurant, jellyfish tasted like
Speaker 1: soy sauce and a balloon. The soy sauce flavor came
Speaker 1: from soy sauce with the jelly, adding that scrumptious balloon equality.
Speaker 1: But she also adds that they're better deep fried, as
Speaker 1: is pretty much everything. But remember, fear is the mind killer.
Speaker 1: Don't be afraid of jellyfish because chicken nuggets are so
Speaker 1: much more terrifying if you saw them made. Don't look
Speaker 1: that up.
Speaker 2: That's what the little clear mushroom top is. It's called musaglia.
Speaker 2: It's just like lots of like cartilage and water.
Speaker 1: Wowow, we learned a new thing.
Speaker 2: No cells, no real cells to speak up. There are
Speaker 2: a couple, you know, like maybe like they're little wandering
Speaker 2: cells that kind of like float through the music lea
Speaker 2: or really they crawl because it's kind of kind of
Speaker 2: thick and jellowy. But it's mostly not cells.
Speaker 1: How is how does it exist? If it's not made
Speaker 1: of the things that a live things are made of.
Speaker 2: It's just got the two It's got two layers of
Speaker 2: cells and that's it. So it has like the outside layer,
Speaker 2: and then it's got the layer around its its stomach
Speaker 2: vascular system love, and then all the middle stuff is
Speaker 2: just like cartilage.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is absolutely nuts. I didn't I would never have.
Speaker 1: I would have thought that that was all just yeah,
Speaker 1: just goo goopy stuff made out of animal cells. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's crazy.
Speaker 2: It's very it's honestly though. It is the way to
Speaker 2: go because like they can just not eat for ages
Speaker 2: because they only have like two cell layers to take
Speaker 2: care of, right, Like, I mean, how many how much
Speaker 2: food is like a layer of cells need not that much?
Speaker 1: So many Silicon Valley biohackers probably have like holographic notes
Speaker 1: in their brain implants that say, convert flesh to mesoglia.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that they've really figured out life pretty much.
Speaker 2: They'rezen so simple, so zene.
Speaker 1: Okay. Chelsea Primo wants to know do jellyfish have any
Speaker 1: control over their lives or are they like me and
Speaker 1: just at the mercy of the ebb and flow of
Speaker 1: the tides of life.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, yes, and no. I mean I think
Speaker 2: we're all kind of in the same boat right now.
Speaker 2: Some jellyfish, like those box jellyfish, they can totally control
Speaker 2: where they're going. They've got a mission, they're on it.
Speaker 2: But that being said, like it's not like they're really
Speaker 2: good swimmers, and so if the currents even just like
Speaker 2: a little bit strong, then they're probably gonna get swept away.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true for most jellyfish. Like most jellyfish kind
Speaker 2: of have like an I would like to go up,
Speaker 2: or I would like to go down, or you know,
Speaker 2: maybe I would like to go this way or that way.
Speaker 2: But but they're also kind of at the mercy of
Speaker 2: the currents.
Speaker 1: Okay. This next question was asked by Stephanie Hancock, Lily Sakers,
Speaker 1: roxand Parker Andrea marshmall us A Hutton, first time question
Speaker 1: askers Kristen Sea and Mercedes Maitland and Adam Weaver, who
Speaker 1: says about this topic, can we talk about how weird
Speaker 1: it is for a minent? Now, let's talk about a
Speaker 1: lot of people have this question which I had no
Speaker 1: idea this existed before I put this up on Patreon
Speaker 1: and ask for questions. You were talking about currents, what
Speaker 1: about freshwater jellyfish? What the who are they? Where do
Speaker 1: they live? How are they not salty?
Speaker 2: They're beautiful, They live all over. So these little buddies
Speaker 2: are called crasp and a custa, and that's sort of
Speaker 2: like the fancy science term. They are probably maybe we're
Speaker 2: not one hundred percent certain, but you know, until more
Speaker 2: science is done. We'll say, from around the yank Sea
Speaker 2: region in China. And then at some point, like maybe
Speaker 2: a one hundred two hundred years ago, you know, someone
Speaker 2: was like, I really love, you know, this aquatic plant.
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring it back to Europe. And there
Speaker 2: was like a little jellyfish seed stuck on one of
Speaker 2: the plants, you know from those little polyps when they
Speaker 2: leave their little footprints behind, And so that then grew
Speaker 2: into a polyp which started making jellyfish and one pond,
Speaker 2: and then it seeds spread to other ponds, and so
Speaker 2: now they're like all over. So we have them in
Speaker 2: the US. They're in almost every state, and they love
Speaker 2: to live you know, in like cool, calm water, and
Speaker 2: they can be transported between ponds like on shoes or
Speaker 2: kayaks or you know, if a bird like steps out
Speaker 2: a jellyfish seed and then swims to another.
Speaker 1: Pond, Oh my god, And then is that screwing up
Speaker 1: a lot of freshwater ecology?
Speaker 2: Who knows. I mean, they've been there for a while.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of pre freshwater jellyfish pond studies, right,
Speaker 2: Like we're kind of pushing it in terms of American naturalism,
Speaker 2: Like it doesn't go back like so so far right,
Speaker 2: so sort of hard to say, but I mean they've
Speaker 2: been there for a while now, so hopefully it's not
Speaker 2: so bad as far as I know. You know, they
Speaker 2: kind of eat like little pond animals, like the little
Speaker 2: shrimp and water fleas and things like that. They you know,
Speaker 2: will usually show up for like a month or two
Speaker 2: sort of at the end of the summer beginning of
Speaker 2: the fall, at least at least where I live, Like,
Speaker 2: I saw some in of all places, Walden Pond, like
Speaker 2: the Rose pond.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and how how did you see them? Did you
Speaker 1: have to really like focus or were they pretty apparent?
Speaker 2: Well, so the sort of the sort of narrative for
Speaker 2: this was like someone saw one and so of course
Speaker 2: it made the paper because like so weird, right, And
Speaker 2: then I read the paper and was like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Okay, just in aside, I looked us up and they
Speaker 1: were first spotted in September of twenty ten, and headlines
Speaker 1: in Boston papers read Walden Pond invaded by jellyfish and
Speaker 1: mystery blooms on Walden Pond. Now. In one story, an
Speaker 1: aquarium representative was quoted as saying that the freshwater jellies
Speaker 1: were wickedly cool, which is the most twenty ten Bostonian
Speaker 1: way to comment. Anyway, Rebecca describes the wicked cool nickel
Speaker 1: sized floating water bags.
Speaker 2: And so you know, they were all concentrated in one
Speaker 2: side of the pond. So we get to this pond.
Speaker 2: It was beautiful, like all the leaves were turning. It
Speaker 2: was really cold. My friend who was with me was
Speaker 2: like carrying all my gear, right, and I like snorcled
Speaker 2: out in Samava Lake. Holy shit, and yeah, and just
Speaker 2: they after swimming kind of in circles and getting sort
Speaker 2: of frustrated and chilly, you know, I eventually ran into
Speaker 2: someone who's like swimming laps across the lake and they
Speaker 2: were like, I saw them, I run that corner over there,
Speaker 2: and so I like swam over to the lapt corner and
Speaker 2: sure enough it was like no jellyfish, no jelly no jellyfish.
Speaker 2: Then it was just jellyfish everywhere.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, did you take some back to study
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 2: I did. I took some back. And my goal was
Speaker 2: like I am going to start my own freshwater jellyfish
Speaker 2: culture in the last This is gonna be so great.
Speaker 2: I just need like one boy jellyfish and one girl
Speaker 2: jellyfish and that's it and I'll be ready to go.
Speaker 2: I collected like three hundred jellyfish and every one was
Speaker 2: female girls only. What every single one? So I think
Speaker 2: what happened in Walden pond and what happens in a
Speaker 2: lot of ponds. This is not an unusual thing for
Speaker 2: freshwater jellyfish, is that like only one of those little
Speaker 2: jellyfish seeds will get into the pond, and then the
Speaker 2: polyps will just split themselves and split themselves and split themselves,
Speaker 2: and eventually, you know, you'll get hundreds of thousands of jellyfish,
Speaker 2: but they're all genetically identical.
Speaker 1: Did you have to run any DNA on any of them?
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't get to run any DNA. But
Speaker 2: that's sort of my suspicion because people have like tracked
Speaker 2: ponds over the years to try to figure out, like
Speaker 2: it's a temperature, like what is it and just get
Speaker 2: one one potential clone line. I mean, it would be
Speaker 2: really cool if someone ran some DNA to see, but
Speaker 2: as far as I know, that hasn't been done yet.
Speaker 2: So there any any like undergrads or grad students looking
Speaker 2: that need a project?
Speaker 1: Also, who's doing laps in a when it's that cold?
Speaker 2: So cold? If you're like a triathlete. Maybe I guess
Speaker 2: they had a wet suit and I did not, And
Speaker 2: I was so jealous.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, the fact when you said you had scuba gear,
Speaker 1: I pictured you in the wet suit and that person
Speaker 1: in a speedo.
Speaker 2: I wish, Oh no, I had like snorkeling gear, like
Speaker 2: I had my little swimsuit and some like pool noodles,
Speaker 2: because I was like, I really need to stay up
Speaker 2: flood and I don't want to have to swim to
Speaker 2: stay afloat. So I was like, yeah, like really sexy
Speaker 2: science right here, like October in Massachusetts with like me,
Speaker 2: You're like floating on a pool noodle in the middle
Speaker 2: of the lake.
Speaker 1: Nope, nope. How big a hot chocolate did you have
Speaker 1: after that?
Speaker 2: Huge? Huge? I was so cold it took like most
Speaker 2: of the drive for me to warm up. It's like
Speaker 2: an hour drive. Oh, you know for jellyfish, for jellyfish,
Speaker 2: but for jellyfish.
Speaker 1: Wow, Oh my god, I'm gonna send you a wet
Speaker 1: suit floating on a pool noodle in October outside. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't swim out to see my boyfriend in those conditions,
Speaker 1: even if there were thousands of clones of him bobbing
Speaker 1: around nude in the water. I'm sorry, Jared, it's just
Speaker 1: too wicked chili. So man, this woman loves jellyfish. Now,
Speaker 1: from ecological pests to pets, who among the patrons had
Speaker 1: captivity questions or wanted to domesticate one and to love
Speaker 1: it and squeeze it and name it. George Well, Karen
Speaker 1: Burnham Diana Wiger, Mark Sweeney, first time question asker Kylie
Speaker 1: Torres and suspiciously asking for a friend wink emoji, Jen Anathys,
Speaker 1: as well as Mariah McGregor, who says that jelly pets
Speaker 1: sound wonderful but also like it might be illegal. Okay,
Speaker 1: question from uh Mariah McGregor wants to know are there
Speaker 1: jellyfish that people could reasonably and responsibly own, like a
Speaker 1: like a little home aquarium like PEPs Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a whole like aquarium industry for
Speaker 2: people that want to start home aquariums. Moon jellyfish are
Speaker 2: the ones to go with.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: They're pretty tough. They can tolerate your moments of forgetfulness, right.
Speaker 2: They're tough in terms of like they don't mind so
Speaker 2: much if their querms a little bit dirty, which a
Speaker 2: lot of jellyfish are like such divas. As soon as
Speaker 2: it's just like the tosh bit dirty, They're just like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna die, I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 2: There's a spot I'm dead. Moon jellyfish are better for
Speaker 2: that for sure. The one thing I will say is like,
Speaker 2: if you get a pet jellyfish, just like with any
Speaker 2: other pet. Don't let it go because there are some
Speaker 2: moon jellyfish from Japan that are now all over you know,
Speaker 2: they're in California and wash and or right like they're
Speaker 2: spreading and so whatever moon jellyfish species you bought, because
Speaker 2: there are tons of moon jellyfish species, you just want
Speaker 2: to make sure that it doesn't get out and then
Speaker 2: like compete with whatever your local beautiful moon jellyfish species is.
Speaker 1: Right, So don't pull like a Florida python situation totally.
Speaker 2: But even more important, like because they they have these
Speaker 2: really tiny embryos, don't even throw the water out, Okay,
Speaker 2: Like you know, when I work with jellyfish and I'm
Speaker 2: close to the ocean, when I clean their water, I'll
Speaker 2: dump the extra water on.
Speaker 1: The dirt, Okay, Like don't even yeah, don't even put
Speaker 1: it in the drain.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it's in the drain. It's probably fine,
Speaker 2: just because it's gonna get diluted and like mixed with
Speaker 2: like a bunch of soap and like other like weird
Speaker 2: things people put down the drain. Right, But but like
Speaker 2: if you're at the ocean and you have like a
Speaker 2: jellyfish tank, and you know you've got maybe like put
Speaker 2: a little seamoni fish or something in there, whatever, and
Speaker 2: you're just gonna toss some water out. Just make sure
Speaker 2: you don't toss it anywhere close to where it could
Speaker 2: get into the ocean.
Speaker 1: Wooh oh, good to know, just tossed on the dirt. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And b Abbot has a question from Lauren who's nine
Speaker 1: and Clark who's seven. Sorry for the swearing number one,
Speaker 1: but they want to know if jellyfish poop. What's the deal.
Speaker 2: Well, they don't really have butts exactly, so it's more
Speaker 2: like we call this is not the official scientific term,
Speaker 2: but among my like jellyfish and C and M and
Speaker 2: E friends, we call it throoping because they kind of
Speaker 2: throw up poop but they do not digest. Oh no, yeah,
Speaker 2: so they threw out their maynas.
Speaker 1: Is it their maus? Is it like a gelatinous also
Speaker 1: or is it just like fish poop.
Speaker 2: It's more like just leftover, like it would be like
Speaker 2: if you peel the shrimp.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's not really like a pellet of pooh, right,
Speaker 2: it's just sort of like if you peel the shrimp,
Speaker 2: or if you you know, like debone to fish, right,
Speaker 2: that stuff just kind of comes out the mouth. Again.
Speaker 1: Ooh, that's what way to do it? Man? Yeah, so simple,
Speaker 1: y'all they throw up poop from their mouth.
Speaker 2: Heinous.
Speaker 1: You sauntered into this episode not having any idea you'd
Speaker 1: be walking a lap around the park or harvesting radishes
Speaker 1: in the backyard or filing paperwork. Hearing the term throughping
Speaker 1: out my manis and yet is there anything more efficient,
Speaker 1: more aspirational than a manus throup? Sounds clean and easy. Also,
Speaker 1: this next question we will cover in great detail in
Speaker 1: next week's Venomous Toxinology episode with real life toxinologist, But
Speaker 1: here is a topical preview with Rebecca. Have you been stung? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes, like a lot stung maybe half a dozen times.
Speaker 1: How that is it?
Speaker 2: So it depends on the species. Okay, Like some species
Speaker 2: kind of tickle and they're kind of itchy. So like
Speaker 2: the moon jellyfish that I was stung by, it sort
Speaker 2: of felt like I was being like very mildly electrocuted. Whoa, yeah,
Speaker 2: so like I wouldn't like really put it on like
Speaker 2: the pleasant end of the spectrum. But it wasn't like terrible,
Speaker 2: Like it wasn't like I'm never doing that again kind
Speaker 2: of a moment. It was just like, I'm gonna think
Speaker 2: harder about the next time I like touch the moon jellyfish.
Speaker 2: There are stinging nettles and they stink. They do not
Speaker 2: they I would not ever recommend grabbing a stinging nettle,
Speaker 2: And I totally made this mistake and it was so embarrassing.
Speaker 2: So most of the time when I grow jellyfish, for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, when we grow them in the lab, they
Speaker 2: just don't really sting that bad, oh don't. I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's because they're just like happy and well
Speaker 2: fed or if they're just like not eating the right stuff.
Speaker 2: But it's fine. And so this one time I was
Speaker 2: on a boat with a bunch of people and I
Speaker 2: was like, you know, my first time like really out
Speaker 2: collecting jellyfish in the wild, and I was like trying to,
Speaker 2: you know, be like cool, like I knew what I
Speaker 2: was doing, and I saw jellyfish as I just like
Speaker 2: plunged my hand in the water and grabbed it. Oh
Speaker 2: like I instantly regretted it. But it's sort of like
Speaker 2: you know when you take a bite of too hot soup,
Speaker 2: Like it's really not clear what the best solution is
Speaker 2: like do you swallow it? Do you spit it out?
Speaker 2: You just don't really know. And so like I had
Speaker 2: this jellyfish in my hand and I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: like bucket or ocean bucket or ocean, right, and so
Speaker 2: put it in the bucket, you know, kind of tried
Speaker 2: to pretend like it wasn't that big a deal, but
Speaker 2: everyone was just looking at me like I thought you
Speaker 2: were a jellyfish biology what's wrong with you? It was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I promise this is this looks really bad.
Speaker 2: But I know what I'm doing. So what did you do?
Speaker 1: Did you throw it in the bucket?
Speaker 2: I in the bucket? Yeah, I mean I was like,
Speaker 2: just okay, well I've already been stung. I might as
Speaker 2: well get something from it, you know, So put the
Speaker 2: jellyfish in the bucket. But it bruised. It bruised for
Speaker 2: a while. I will say, like the third time I
Speaker 2: was stung, I was kayaking by myself, and afterwards I
Speaker 2: was like, you know, I've heard this pee thing and
Speaker 2: I just don't know if it's true, but I want
Speaker 2: to try it and I can personally and professionally tell
Speaker 2: you it does not work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh no, oh jeez, where were you stung?
Speaker 2: Hands? Always on the hands? Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: That's easy to pee on. It's you. I'd be like,
Speaker 1: good luck with that, you know.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I was honestly thinking about that
Speaker 2: when I was like, you know, having this like really
Speaker 2: weird moment of peeing on myself. Is like, how do
Speaker 2: people do this? When you're like stung on the abdomen?
Speaker 2: Does someone else have to pee on you? That's just
Speaker 2: like I don't even know.
Speaker 1: I guess it's like a splash bath. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like a sink bath. I don't know, I'll look bad.
Speaker 2: Would it have to feel in order to pee on yourself?
Speaker 2: Like like, it's one thing to just you know, kind
Speaker 2: of be peeing and just kind of like be like
Speaker 2: like boop, But it's another thing to be like I'm
Speaker 2: going to collect this pee and then like flash it
Speaker 2: on my body. I mean that must really I'm so
Speaker 2: sorry for the people who have been stung that bad
Speaker 2: because that takes like thought and effort and energy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and even horse it's not really that effective. So you're
Speaker 2: just like, Okay, well now I'm just like covered in
Speaker 2: pea and still hearts.
Speaker 1: Bad day at the office. Little.
Speaker 2: The temperature though, Like so it turns out that like warm,
Speaker 2: like warm hot but not so hot that it burns,
Speaker 2: really helps in activate some of those like bad jellyfish
Speaker 2: venom proteins that make it hurt so bad. So like
Speaker 2: the pea itself is like not necessary, but the fact
Speaker 2: that it's it's warm, Wow, it might actually be like
Speaker 2: part of why people keep peeing on themselves.
Speaker 1: Take a thermos with you instead, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Make some tea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hold on to yourmatus is because there will be
Speaker 1: so much more on this next week. This was a
Speaker 1: great question Edward Rice wants to know. First time question asker,
Speaker 1: do they sleep?
Speaker 2: Maybe? Okay, maybe so some evidence that they sleep so
Speaker 2: And I actually learned this too, and I read the paper.
Speaker 2: There are lots of different criteria that you have to
Speaker 2: use to determine whether something is sleep or whether something
Speaker 2: is part of what we call a circadian rhythm, which
Speaker 2: is basically that sort of natural cycle of I don't
Speaker 2: want to do anything, and I want to do things
Speaker 2: that happens to all animals and for us is like
Speaker 2: jet lag. You can only think about the fact that
Speaker 2: you have this natural cycle of like doing stuff and
Speaker 2: not doing stuff, but we do, and we feel it
Speaker 2: when we get jet lag and we're suddenly like it's
Speaker 2: three o'clock in the afternoon, You're like, I just don't
Speaker 2: want to do anything right now.
Speaker 1: Said okay. Side note for more on this, see the
Speaker 1: chronobiology episode that went up with now doctor Catherine Hatcher.
Speaker 1: It's going to change your life in probably your bedtime.
Speaker 2: So even things that don't sleep, like plants, have this
Speaker 2: circadian rhythm, and so it's hard to figure out if
Speaker 2: something's sleeping or something's just having the same natural day
Speaker 2: night cycle rhythm. Jellyfish do show some additional signs that
Speaker 2: they might be sleeping, like if you disturb them a
Speaker 2: bunch during the night, then their next rest period will
Speaker 2: be longer. But they don't show all the science. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I think there's some compelling evidence that they
Speaker 2: have like a sleep like thing going on. But you know,
Speaker 2: are they like dreaming? Do they drool? Right? Like? How
Speaker 2: sleepy is it? No? Really, no one really knows.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, And obviously they don't write in their diaries
Speaker 1: that you can read or anything.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, I know, so they know they know it's
Speaker 2: so obvious to them and we're just like desperately trying
Speaker 2: to figure it out.
Speaker 1: Okay, ooh, jellyfish experts figure it out. This is the
Speaker 1: blobby gossip that the world needs. Also, this next question
Speaker 1: was asked by Ari liebrook Ford Gonzalez, Emma Hendrickson, Ellen Skelton,
Speaker 1: and Elena Clemenkin. Charles, we had a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who asked about their population explosions with ocean acidification. What
Speaker 1: is happening with jellies? Are they having a good time
Speaker 1: bad time?
Speaker 2: You know, they're kind of like everybody else, they're sort
Speaker 2: of having like a mixed time. Okay, So you sort
Speaker 2: of think about jellyfish like the same way we talk
Speaker 2: about like mammals, Like it's a huge category, but most
Speaker 2: jellyfish people never see. And so it's kind of like
Speaker 2: if the only mammals people saw were like rats and squirrels,
Speaker 2: you know, we would be like, oh my god, Like
Speaker 2: mammals are going to take over the world, right, Like
Speaker 2: if you live in a big city, you're just like
Speaker 2: these are everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the future is just gonna be like
Speaker 2: nothing but rats and squirrels, you know, But actually, like
Speaker 2: a lot of mammals, they're having a tough go of it,
Speaker 2: Like it's not been great for tigers. You know, elephants
Speaker 2: are sort of plus minus, right, like they're not having
Speaker 2: the best century. And it's similar for jellyfish, Like some
Speaker 2: jellyfish are like the rat and squirrels of jellyfish. Moon
Speaker 2: jellyfish are a great example. You know, we'll call them
Speaker 2: squirrels because squirrels are really cute, and moon jellyfish are
Speaker 2: really cute, right, But they're they're prolific, they are seem
Speaker 2: to be doing well in a wide variety of conditions.
Speaker 2: But then there are a lot of jellyfish that are
Speaker 2: like the tigers, right, that are just they're really having
Speaker 2: a rough time. This whole changing ocean thing. This you know,
Speaker 2: tons of ships suddenly parking where like my polyps used
Speaker 2: to live kind of thing. It's not it's not been great. Okay,
Speaker 2: So the narrative from like ten years ago was like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, it seems to be that jellyfish are
Speaker 2: taking over. But it turns out that they were really
Speaker 2: just looking at the squirrel and rat equivalents of jellyfish.
Speaker 2: And now that we've taken like this much closer look,
Speaker 2: we've realized that Some jellyfish aren't doing great. Some seem
Speaker 2: to be doing better. I don't think any single jellyfish
Speaker 2: is going to like take over because they're part of
Speaker 2: a food chain, right. Tons of things love to eat jellyfish.
Speaker 2: There are tons of fish that love eating jellyfish. Birds
Speaker 2: love eating jellyfish. Jellyfish are never going to be like
Speaker 2: that abundant because whatever eats them is then going to
Speaker 2: become more abundant and just eat more.
Speaker 1: Just a buffet, just a buffet at jelly's exactly. I
Speaker 1: thought this was a great question. Lee wants to know.
Speaker 1: Are they ticklish? Are they what ticklish?
Speaker 2: Oh? I was like, I think she said ticklish, But
Speaker 2: that can't be right because I never really thought about
Speaker 2: that before. No, I'd love that. That's so great. I mean, possibly, possibly, possibly,
Speaker 2: I could see some things tickling. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: there are lots of so so on the scale of
Speaker 2: things jellyfish do you to do, not like right, like
Speaker 2: a gentle.
Speaker 1: Boop uh huh.
Speaker 2: They seem to be not too terribly offended by So
Speaker 2: that's kind of like the equivalent of a tickle, right
Speaker 2: where it's like a more aggressive like poke. They're just like,
Speaker 2: oh no, and they'll swim away, so maybe maybe you
Speaker 2: could just get a little boop. I don't know if
Speaker 2: they're ticklish. You'd have to ask a jellyfish.
Speaker 1: But okay, hey, any jellyfish listening, just please let us know.
Speaker 1: Just come forward, make a statement with your mouth butt.
Speaker 1: Our ears are open for it. Last patron question, Davis
Speaker 1: Bourne wants to know what is the cutest jelly and
Speaker 1: why is it? The sea walnut?
Speaker 2: My god, are the cutest jelly? There are so many
Speaker 2: cute jellies. Oh gosh, this one is hard. So like,
Speaker 2: first of all, any baby jelly okay, and my favorite
Speaker 2: cute baby jellies are from a species called the mob stinger.
Speaker 2: The scientific name is Pelagia noctaluca. Well, I know, very fancy, yeah,
Speaker 2: and they are. They're like as adult jellies are very fancy,
Speaker 2: but their babies look like little pacmand ghosts.
Speaker 1: Oh stop.
Speaker 2: So they're like the size of like a sugar crystal,
Speaker 2: and they're shaped like little pacmand ghosts. And their little
Speaker 2: sort of like ghost arms actually do pulse just like
Speaker 2: little jellyfish. Oh my god, those are so cute.
Speaker 1: Okay, so of course I looked up Pelagia noctaluca, and
Speaker 1: as adults they are wearing a Marie Antoinette dress of
Speaker 1: elegant ruffles and tendrils and gorgeousness and excess. But as
Speaker 1: little beebie bluffs, yes, they look like little awkward pac
Speaker 1: Man ghosts with no brain but tiny weapon legs. Also,
Speaker 1: Google image search pulled up a whole bunch of jellyfish
Speaker 1: sting scars, and I just want you to know that
Speaker 1: if you were out there listening to this and you
Speaker 1: have a jellyfish stingscar, I think that is rat as
Speaker 1: hell a very bad ass. I say this as a
Speaker 1: person who was legit maimed by a department store escalator.
Speaker 1: So just own those jelly ribbon memories. Also, I kind
Speaker 1: of want to see a picture it is, provided it's
Speaker 1: not in your bathing suit area. And then what is
Speaker 1: a sea walnut?
Speaker 2: A sea walnut? A sea walnut is a comb jelly,
Speaker 2: which I'm just like so impressed whoever looked at that
Speaker 2: thing and said walnut. It's just like I would love
Speaker 2: to talk to them about how they came to that.
Speaker 2: I can kind of see it. You know, maybe you
Speaker 2: just don't spend that much time around walnuts.
Speaker 1: I looked these up too, and wordy comb jellies or
Speaker 1: sea walnuts. I could not find the history on who
Speaker 1: was responsible for these names. And they do not resemble
Speaker 1: a walnut to me, I mean, honest to frogs. A
Speaker 1: sea walnut kind of looks like. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: ate a papaya and then it's three to four inch
Speaker 1: ghost haunted your kitchen, but instead of seeds, it had
Speaker 1: a few glow sticks that, when agitated, began to blink
Speaker 1: at you. Also, these rainbow hearted papaya ghosts are not
Speaker 1: even actual jellyfish, and they do have a butthole, and
Speaker 1: it's called a transient anus because when their gut fills up,
Speaker 1: it just balloons out and it forms a poop shoot
Speaker 1: through its skin that then vanishes like it never happened,
Speaker 1: which is how most boys think girls poop. Oh. Speaking
Speaker 1: of and now, shittiest thing about a jellyfish? What's the
Speaker 1: most annoying thing about your work? Other than swimming in
Speaker 1: Walden palm and in October in a bikini? What sucks
Speaker 1: the most?
Speaker 2: I think the two things that are really frustrating are
Speaker 2: that you just never know if you're going to find
Speaker 2: them when you like go on your jellyfishing expedition, uh huh,
Speaker 2: which is like not a huge deal if you live
Speaker 2: by the ocean, but like I don't A lot of
Speaker 2: jellyfish biologists don't, right, And so you're like, all right,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with Florida in June and I'm
Speaker 2: going to get some jellyfish. They're there every year, it's
Speaker 2: going to be great and go and they're just not
Speaker 2: there that year. That is always such a bummer.
Speaker 1: And that's why. Is that just weather tides?
Speaker 2: We don't know? So, like with those by the wind sailors,
Speaker 2: which is sort of the I guess the last big
Speaker 2: research project I have going, Like, I just got so
Speaker 2: frustrated that I actually started working with a collaborator who
Speaker 2: studies ocean currents to see if we can figure out
Speaker 2: when do they show up when they do? Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's been so fun. I've learned so much. It turns out,
Speaker 2: like I know about things that live in the ocean,
Speaker 2: I do not know a lot about like the water
Speaker 2: of the ocean. So it's been really fun. So it
Speaker 2: could be tides, it could be currents, it could be
Speaker 2: in the case of those little by the windsailors, they
Speaker 2: had the little sail on top, so they seemed to
Speaker 2: be concentrated by wind, but it could also be seasons.
Speaker 2: So I remember the first time I went jellyfishing in
Speaker 2: graduate school. I was in Rhode Island, and so I
Speaker 2: was like, I'm going to go to Cape Cod and
Speaker 2: I'm going to go jellyfishing. And like, keep in mind,
Speaker 2: I'm from Arizona. I went to college in Florida. Like
Speaker 2: I'm kind of like as sort of a warm climate
Speaker 2: person at that point. And so this was like December January.
Speaker 2: So like I got my bucket and I got my net,
Speaker 2: and I like drove to Cape Cod and it just
Speaker 2: didn't even occur to me that the ocean froze.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And so I walk out on the dock and I'm
Speaker 2: just like the entire dock and like all the water
Speaker 2: around the dock for like thirty feet it's frozen.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that it did that. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest with you. Born in Raising, California, You're upset.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that. I thought it was like vodka
Speaker 1: in the freezer. I thought there was too much salt
Speaker 1: to do that.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, me too, Thank you. Thank you, because
Speaker 2: like when I told people what I was trying to do,
Speaker 2: they were like, hello, dull like the ocean freeze, I
Speaker 2: did not know. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I kind of ever see a frozen ocean.
Speaker 2: Like conceptually, like I guess that's kind of what like
Speaker 2: the Arctic is.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I suppose, but that's the Arctic, you know,
Speaker 1: I just really far away. Yeah I would. I would not.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. So and obviously you didn't go walk
Speaker 1: it out there.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't get any It was an unsuccessful mission,
Speaker 2: so that is probably like frustrating thing. One. It's just
Speaker 2: like you don't know where they are when they are,
Speaker 2: And I feel like that's probably how a lot of
Speaker 2: people feel. Like if you knew that jellyfish were going
Speaker 2: to be at the beach during your beach vacation, yeah,
Speaker 2: just reschedule.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. So use the I Naturalist
Speaker 1: app and if you see j ellies, if you see
Speaker 1: something reported to I Naturalists, you'll help people like you though,
Speaker 1: or go to jellywatch dot org.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, Thank you so much. Yeah, and we're working
Speaker 2: on these questions. So there are people who are like
Speaker 2: I'm going to make like a jellyfish predictor, and for
Speaker 2: some places there are jellyfish predictors and they're pretty darned
Speaker 2: good nice. So the more people report when they see
Speaker 2: jellyfish and also just as helpful when you don't, okay jellyfish,
Speaker 2: then that just makes it so much easier for scientists
Speaker 2: to then try to like come up with, you know,
Speaker 2: like the fancy math algorithms and stuff that fancy predictive
Speaker 2: biologists do to figure out when and where jellyfish are
Speaker 2: going to be right.
Speaker 1: But how do you say, like, I didn't see this
Speaker 1: thing that's literally clear and invisible?
Speaker 2: You know, Well, on jelly Watch, there is like a
Speaker 2: little option of like all's clear today, you know, because
Speaker 2: you just like click the little box and you're like, look,
Speaker 2: it was a beautiful empty day at the beat trait.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, she said two things. So what was the
Speaker 1: second sucky thing about the jellies? Oh, Rebecca says, it's
Speaker 1: said they do not make great pets. Well, the older,
Speaker 1: sexier ones. Why are they so hard to keep?
Speaker 2: They are very fragile. They're just very fragile. Some of
Speaker 2: them are a little bit easier than others, but you know,
Speaker 2: they spend their whole lives like out in the middle
Speaker 2: of the open ocean. If we went to their habitat,
Speaker 2: like we would be so screwed, right, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 2: they're really adapted to live in this world that's just
Speaker 2: so different from ours that, you know, even hard surfaces,
Speaker 2: it's like too much. Right, I've never had this happen
Speaker 2: to me before. I've like never bumped into a thing
Speaker 2: in my life, and I just can't handle it.
Speaker 1: I've heard that even on corners of tanks that can
Speaker 1: just rip them up.
Speaker 2: Oh, corners are the worst. Yes, they just don't know
Speaker 2: what to do in a corner. You just watch them
Speaker 2: and they're just like perpetually swimming in this corner and
Speaker 2: you're like, do not know that this is like that
Speaker 2: you can't get past? But they don't. They don't because
Speaker 2: they've never had a corner.
Speaker 1: And so that's why they have to be in bowls
Speaker 1: or in cylinders.
Speaker 2: Exactly Like you want a constant current kind of keeping
Speaker 2: them in this like pretend open ocean environment, okay, where
Speaker 2: they sort of feel like they can go in any
Speaker 2: direction because if they get too close to the wall
Speaker 2: then the current will kind of sweep them back. In
Speaker 2: the middle.
Speaker 1: And then what about keeping polyps? Can you just do
Speaker 1: that easy peasy?
Speaker 2: Oh, polyps are so great. Yes, you can keep them
Speaker 2: in like a little pepperware. Oh and you just feed
Speaker 2: them sea monkeys like once a week, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're very happy. Like I've moved like all over the place.
Speaker 2: I just put my little polyps like in the foot
Speaker 2: well of my car.
Speaker 1: And how many you said you have twenty species? How
Speaker 1: many polyps do you think you have in your home
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: Like individual polyps?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you had to just wing it, maybe a
Speaker 1: thousand oh my god, oh no babies.
Speaker 2: And a cat. So I feel like a thousand plants
Speaker 2: and a cat and a fish tank. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: strange new world we live in.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a party. That's like a rape.
Speaker 1: That's a monster polyp rave right there.
Speaker 2: It's a it's for sure for sure. And they're just like,
Speaker 2: what what is even happening right now? So we've got
Speaker 2: their own little room. So there's like the polyp room,
Speaker 2: and then there's like the you know, the bedroom and
Speaker 2: the living room and the bathroom. Like they get their
Speaker 2: own whole place.
Speaker 1: I love that. You're like, we have a jellyfish den
Speaker 1: down the hall MTVS.
Speaker 2: You know, I realized when I said it, I was like,
Speaker 2: there are only two rooms. Like, it's not like I'm
Speaker 2: living in a mansion, right, They're like eighty rooms. They
Speaker 2: got they They've got one room and then you know,
Speaker 2: the cat and me and the plants and the fish
Speaker 2: get everywhere else.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. You have a polyp parlor is what you.
Speaker 2: From now until the end of time. That is what
Speaker 2: it will be called forever, the polyp parlor. I love it.
Speaker 1: Every modern home should have one. Oh my god. And
Speaker 1: now this is going to be such a typical question.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite thing about jellyfish? Do you even know?
Speaker 2: You know? I love that. No matter how much I
Speaker 2: know about jellies, I'm almost always surprised by something new
Speaker 2: every time I go to the ocean. So it's just
Speaker 2: like there's constantly something weird or unusual or bizarre that
Speaker 2: you're just like, I didn't even think, what's it doing?
Speaker 2: How's it happening? But who? Right? Like love I love that.
Speaker 2: And you know, not a lot of people have studied jellyfish, right, Like,
Speaker 2: there are certain things that if you're like I really
Speaker 2: want to study this it's like, well, okay, like you
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand other people, right, like I really want
Speaker 2: to study fruit flies. Well, there is like a lot
Speaker 2: of work done on fruitflies, which isn't to say that
Speaker 2: there's not new stuff to be done. There's always new
Speaker 2: stuff to be done, but we have to like really
Speaker 2: dig deep. There's with jellyfish, you know, you just kind
Speaker 2: of look at it and you're like, huh, I don't
Speaker 2: know what that. Do you know what that? No? No,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is either. Let's just study it.
Speaker 2: So that's awesome. I also, I feel like jellyfish are
Speaker 2: very much like my aspirational kind of like like state
Speaker 2: of being. I'm so neurotic and they're just so so chill.
Speaker 1: They are so soothing to look at. I wonder if
Speaker 1: they've ever done like human physiology tests while looking at jellyfish,
Speaker 1: like heart rate and respiration rate like slows.
Speaker 2: I I will volunteer, saying to study let me know,
Speaker 2: I will sign up because I feel, you know, very
Speaker 2: like very calmed by jellyfish. And I think I don't know,
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of people seem to get
Speaker 2: kind of like well well zoned out.
Speaker 1: I hope you know, this has been one of the
Speaker 1: most delightful interviews I have ever done. I you are amazing.
Speaker 2: This has been so much fun. Also, I have a
Speaker 2: friend who has been asking me for like a year.
Speaker 2: He's like, have you have you reached out yet? Like,
Speaker 2: do you have you talk to Alie? I think you
Speaker 2: should really go to Oligisa. I'm like, I'm too scared
Speaker 2: because I also listen to your podcast and it's.
Speaker 1: Like, this has been so fun. You are just amazing.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan and this has been so awesome.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, So ask smart people silly jelly questions
Speaker 1: because we're all just a bunch of talking heaps meet
Speaker 1: Nothing matters anyway. Now that you are firmly, thoroughly obsessed
Speaker 1: with doctor Rebecca Helm, please find more of her work
Speaker 1: at jellybiologists dot com. She's also on Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 1: at Rebecca r. Helm. You gotta love a consistent handle
Speaker 1: across multiple platforms. Do follow her. Also, thank you to
Speaker 1: Rebecca's friend, science illustrator Julie Johnson for urging her to
Speaker 1: tweet at me about being on. Julie Johnson's science illustration
Speaker 1: website is Life Science Studios dot com. FYI the world
Speaker 1: owes you both a debt of gratitude. The world owes
Speaker 1: you both a debt of gude. So we are at
Speaker 1: Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm on both as Ali
Speaker 1: Ward with one L, and you can find more links
Speaker 1: to sponsors of the show and the places that we
Speaker 1: donate to in the show notes for each episode or
Speaker 1: up at alleywar dot com. Ologies Merch is also available
Speaker 1: at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you to Shannon Feltis and
Speaker 1: birthday Girl Bonnie Dutch for managing that they are sisters
Speaker 1: who are hilarious. They host the comedy podcast You Are That,
Speaker 1: which you should definitely listen to. You'll love them. Thank
Speaker 1: you to Aaron Talbert who admins the wonderful Facebook group.
Speaker 1: Thank you to all the transcribers and professional word recorder
Speaker 1: Emily White for all the transcript work. I love you all.
Speaker 1: Thank you Caleb Patten for bleeping episodes. Transcripts and bleeped
Speaker 1: KidSafe episodes are up at Alleyward dot com slash Ologies
Speaker 1: Dash Extras. There's a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Noel Dilworth for keeping my schedule on track.
Speaker 1: Kelly Dwyer, who makes my website and assistant editor Jared Sleeper, who,
Speaker 1: upon further reflection, Yes, I would absolutely swim in Walden
Speaker 1: Pond in October if it were filled with thousands of
Speaker 1: your clones, even without pool Noodle and to the peanut butter,
Speaker 1: to our jellies. Lead editor Steven Ray Morris, who also
Speaker 1: hosts the kiddy themed podcast The per Cast and the
Speaker 1: dino themed sea Jurassic Right for stitching these episodes together.
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn did the music. He's in a band called Islands,
Speaker 1: a very good band. Also special shout out to Sarah
Speaker 1: McCarthy and her mom Beth. Beth, I hope you see
Speaker 1: Sarah and all of the wonders of nature that's around
Speaker 1: us now if you sit through the whole episode, I
Speaker 1: tell you a secret. And this week, my wonderful Pop
Speaker 1: is in the hospital. And when he goes to the hospital,
Speaker 1: he leaves his trusty gold TIMEX behind and I have
Speaker 1: this secret pleasure of cleaning it for him because it's
Speaker 1: a very sweet item that he wears every day and
Speaker 1: I want to somehow care for him in that way.
Speaker 1: But also because those metal wrist bands gather kind of
Speaker 1: a lot of gunk and it's just fun as hell
Speaker 1: to sit there with a little toothpick scrape off in
Speaker 1: between the links, in like a watching Instagram videos of
Speaker 1: steam cleaning carpets kind of way, and just shine it up.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all the well wishes and the congrats
Speaker 1: and the patients this past week. Here y'all, just just
Speaker 1: a bunch of sweeties. Okay, next week, venom toxinology. Okay,
Speaker 1: Bye bye