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Speaker 3: Oh hey, it's that guy in third period who's always
Speaker 3: drawing in a notepad but never lets anyone see it.
Speaker 3: Ellie Ward back with another episode of Ologies. So behavioral ecology,
Speaker 3: what ding dang cake is it? Well, it's why animals
Speaker 3: such as worms and bugs and your cousin do what
Speaker 3: they do. And what's a better window into this world
Speaker 3: than the steamy porthole of cricket boning. So before we
Speaker 3: get to that sexinist though, a few thank you. So,
Speaker 3: first of all, thank you to patrons at peace dot
Speaker 3: com slash ologies for all the support to make the
Speaker 3: podcast since day one. You allowed me to take a
Speaker 3: trip through the Midwest in April, gathering episodes as I went,
Speaker 3: so this would not exist without your donations this very episode.
Speaker 3: Donations start at twenty five cents an episode if you
Speaker 3: want to join in on that party. Also, thank you
Speaker 3: to everyone who has subscribed, who's rated, or especially who's
Speaker 3: reviewed the podcast. Y'all know I read your reviews on
Speaker 3: dark and stormy nights, and then I pluck a fresh
Speaker 3: one out in gratitude, such as for example, lugubrious disposition,
Speaker 3: says Bob Saggett, used here as an expletive. Ali Ward
Speaker 3: will crawl into your sweet little ear canal, and before
Speaker 3: she leaves, prepare you a veritable feast of fascinating material
Speaker 3: on your ear drum table. Don't resist, let her make
Speaker 3: brain dinner in your head. Thank you, lugubrius disposition for that.
Speaker 3: I hope you're uncomfortably bloated with information. Okay, So behavioral ecology,
Speaker 3: well us get into it. So the word behavioral comes
Speaker 3: from a root for possession, and ecology is the science
Speaker 3: of the relationship of living things to their environment, and
Speaker 3: it comes from the Greek eikos, meaning house or dwelling.
Speaker 3: So being possessed with behavior in relation to your environment.
Speaker 3: Why we do what we do where we do it.
Speaker 3: So this episode was such a lucky fluke. It was
Speaker 3: just a gift from space and time. I was driving
Speaker 3: through the Midwest and I had a cancelation in an interview,
Speaker 3: so I had one extra hour in Omaha. So I tweeted, okay,
Speaker 3: so I happened to have the day open in Omaha.
Speaker 3: Aneologists out there? Or should I just go to the
Speaker 3: Omaha Zoo and lurk around with my equipment? And this
Speaker 3: ologist tweeted back, or you could just come lurk around
Speaker 3: Creaton University, visit my lab and learn all about cricket
Speaker 3: sex and the nasty little horse hair worms that manipulate
Speaker 3: their host behavior in physiology. My response, I'll be there
Speaker 3: in fifteen minutes. So I think she had to postpone
Speaker 3: a ten year review for this which is endearing and
Speaker 3: very punk rock. But I ran into her building excellently
Speaker 3: science Ah dashed into her office and we had a
Speaker 3: breakneck fast interview about her amazing work. So we sat
Speaker 3: down at her desk and had just a scintillating chat
Speaker 3: about what puts crickets in the mood, what kind of
Speaker 3: people behavioral ecologists are, why she likes converting pre meds
Speaker 3: to cricket folks, some nightmarish parasites in breeding that puts
Speaker 3: Game of Thrones to shame, and why crickets and other
Speaker 3: animals such as humans might delay making babies in favor
Speaker 3: of more pressing concerns. So put your stubby wings together
Speaker 3: and make some noise for assistant professor at Creighton University
Speaker 3: and behavioral ecologist, doctor Amy Worthington.
Speaker 2: Worthington.
Speaker 3: Okay, there we go, doctor Worthington, of course, and so
Speaker 3: here we are.
Speaker 2: We're in Omaha.
Speaker 3: I have just completely bulldozed into your workday. They're so
Speaker 3: sorry all.
Speaker 2: The right ways.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for being on Twitter and available
Speaker 3: for me to like just bust into your university.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks for being responsive to my fan tweeting you
Speaker 4: and trying to bull you into coming to Creighton instead
Speaker 4: of the Omahazu.
Speaker 3: Well, I am very obviously familiar with what you do
Speaker 3: because your Twitter banner is two crickets in an tender
Speaker 3: intimate moment they are having sex. Ye, and so now
Speaker 3: you study cricket sex, but in a wider outlook. It's
Speaker 3: reproductive physiology, behavioral ecology, tell me about what you do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So a lot of the research that we do
Speaker 4: in my lab is we focus on the concept that
Speaker 4: there are what we call life history trade offs.
Speaker 3: Again, life history trade offs. Everyone from crickets to squirrels
Speaker 3: to you has to make trade offs.
Speaker 4: So there's kind of every organism has a limited amount
Speaker 4: of resources in terms of energy that they can allocate
Speaker 4: towards different physiological processes, and if you overinvest in one,
Speaker 4: it means that one of those other physiological processes doesn't
Speaker 4: have the energy needed to fuel it. So our big
Speaker 4: trade off that we look at is the trade off
Speaker 4: between the immune response and reproduction. These are two of
Speaker 4: the most energetically costly processes of any individuals.
Speaker 3: So for some individual animals it comes down to remaining
Speaker 3: alive or having shorties. But sometimes I guess animals can't
Speaker 3: decide should I mate and die? Should I literally fuck
Speaker 3: off and die.
Speaker 2: Or live fast, die hard? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Or should I stay alive and maybe not reproduce as much?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and postpone reproduction until you're healthy and you've recovered
Speaker 4: from some type of illness or parasite.
Speaker 3: Absolutely are like finishing school. I don't know ps. Speaking
Speaker 3: of which, Amy got a bachelor's and a master's in
Speaker 3: biology at the University of South Dakota and PhD in
Speaker 3: ecology and evolutionary biology from iOS State University. And she
Speaker 3: says she grew up obsessed with Bill nye Hey and
Speaker 3: her dad always set up science projects like rockets and
Speaker 3: paper lanterns and chemistry experiments. And she says as a kid,
Speaker 3: she would hole up in her room, sometimes taking notes
Speaker 3: on organisms in her animal encyclopedia, which is such adorable dorkiness.
Speaker 3: I want a time machine. I want to go back
Speaker 3: and babysitter. And she said she wanted to be a
Speaker 3: science educator, but didn't realize that she was going to
Speaker 3: be a researcher until after getting her masters, so she
Speaker 3: moved on to her PhD. And so now you're doing
Speaker 3: this kind of under the model of crickets. Yes, Did
Speaker 3: you always like crickets or are they like a really
Speaker 3: fast reproducing, like a good species to study?
Speaker 4: Yes to all of the above. Okay, so crickets. You know,
Speaker 4: I didn't grow up loving insects. I was, like most people,
Speaker 4: terrified of them. Huh. I worked in a pet store
Speaker 4: for a long time, and crickets were my first insect
Speaker 4: that I had an intimate relationship with to get them
Speaker 4: to feed their or their animals. So I became really
Speaker 4: familiar with them then. And when I started my PhD,
Speaker 4: there was a project in a lab at Iowa State
Speaker 4: working on crickets, and they're just fabulous organisms. There's a
Speaker 4: surprisingly large research group that focuses on research and crickets,
Speaker 4: especially in the context of evolution and mating and reproduction
Speaker 4: and immune response, and so they're perfect. They reproduce really quickly.
Speaker 4: You could have a lab population of them, so you
Speaker 4: kind of always have.
Speaker 2: Access to them.
Speaker 4: And they're easy to handle, they're easy to rear, they're
Speaker 4: cheap to feed. They eat special Katie cat food from Walmart.
Speaker 2: They do. I didn't know that. And so they're just
Speaker 2: fabulous organisms to work with.
Speaker 3: And each lady cricket can have over two hundred children,
Speaker 3: which smokes the birthrate of both of my Catholic grandmas.
Speaker 3: I asked Amy if her lab said objects ever serenade her.
Speaker 2: The male sing oh, yes, okay.
Speaker 4: So the males rub their wings together, not their legs,
Speaker 4: which is a common misconception.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a flim flam right there. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they rub their the males rub their wings together,
Speaker 4: and it's a mechanism to attract females.
Speaker 2: So they have several different calls, both ones that attract
Speaker 2: females from.
Speaker 4: A long ways away, and then when females get close,
Speaker 4: they change into a different type of song that essentially
Speaker 4: displays how sexy they are.
Speaker 2: You are so friggin' sexy right now.
Speaker 3: At what point did you start to really like embrace
Speaker 3: the cricket and get excited about doing research with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So when I first started my PhD, my first
Speaker 4: year my PhD, I went out.
Speaker 2: In the field and collected these crickets.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that will always stick with
Speaker 4: me is collecting these crickets in the wild is insane, really,
Speaker 4: because you're out at night in a field and you're
Speaker 4: trying to collect these crickets and find them. And half
Speaker 4: the time, when you think you find a cricket, you
Speaker 4: get close and you see one and about two inches
Speaker 4: away there is a spider or a scorpion, some type
Speaker 4: of predator that's just about ready to eat it. Oh,
Speaker 4: and so you start realizing that there are a lot
Speaker 4: of issues at play in terms of these males that
Speaker 4: are calling and they're drawing attention to themselves because they're
Speaker 4: sending out this large auditory queue to the environment, so
Speaker 4: predators can find them easily. And on the flip side,
Speaker 4: you got these females that are out wandering aimlessly trying
Speaker 4: to find these males, and they have to travel fairly
Speaker 4: long distances to find males, and in the process they're
Speaker 4: encountering predators themselves, and parasites and all sorts of different pathogens.
Speaker 4: And it just is amazing that they can be as
Speaker 4: numerous as they are when they have so many challenges
Speaker 4: that are kind of hindering their ability to reproduce.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so what are the biggest challenges that you've
Speaker 3: encountered or how do you study that in the lab,
Speaker 3: because I'm going to guess at your lab doesn't have
Speaker 3: like scorpions and spiders everywhere like an obstacle course, no,
Speaker 3: like a Halloween like horror house for the cricket.
Speaker 2: That would be fabulous.
Speaker 4: But we actually study the effects of this long lived
Speaker 4: parasite called a horse.
Speaker 2: Hair worm, and they are fairly.
Speaker 4: Large parasites that infect crickets as one of their hosts.
Speaker 4: They also infect cockroaches and pragmanteds and things like that.
Speaker 3: All right, so one of the factors of immunity is
Speaker 3: do y'all get parasites? And we're just gonna put our
Speaker 3: blankety blinker on. We're gonna merge real quick onto a
Speaker 3: side street about horse hair worms, because they are bananas
Speaker 3: and they're more nightmarish than any sci fi cgi and
Speaker 3: crickets have to contend with them. But first off, how
Speaker 3: rare are these things?
Speaker 2: The number of people I've had come up to me
Speaker 2: and be like, Okay, I have a question.
Speaker 4: I stepped on a cricket the other day and then
Speaker 4: I say, and a giant worm came out, and they're
Speaker 4: like yes. And so my yoga teacher did that to me,
Speaker 4: and she was surprised that I knew what was coming,
Speaker 4: because she thought it was the most bizarre and I
Speaker 4: wasn't going to believe that it happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm like, well that's what I study. Oh
Speaker 2: my god. So they're actually fairly common.
Speaker 4: I mean they're in those streams that you're driving over
Speaker 4: and that you're kind of ignoring, and so they're they're everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 3: I thought they were super rare because it's there, it's
Speaker 3: disgusting and weird. So I was like, oh, this has
Speaker 3: got to be like one in a million, like finding
Speaker 3: a finding a pearl and an oyster something. So how
Speaker 3: are crickets getting these?
Speaker 2: Have they been cursed by a witch?
Speaker 3: Did they anger a magic troll?
Speaker 4: But they essentially get eaten in a cyst form by
Speaker 4: the crickets, and then these cysts develop inside of these
Speaker 4: hosts for a month and sometimes more, and they when
Speaker 4: they emerge, can be, you know, twenty times longer than
Speaker 4: the length of their host. Oh so it's actually pretty impressive.
Speaker 4: I brought one in justice.
Speaker 2: The horse hair look like she.
Speaker 3: Just produced a vial from her blazer pocket and in
Speaker 3: it it's just this like gunar, This is amazing. This
Speaker 3: looks like my hair all over like car seats and
Speaker 3: in the shower. But it's a thick It's like a
Speaker 3: thick wiry.
Speaker 2: How long is this thing?
Speaker 4: I mean my guess is that one's probably about nine
Speaker 4: to twelve inches long and it came out of a
Speaker 4: you know, like a one inch cricket.
Speaker 2: How does it happen?
Speaker 3: This looks like something that if you found it in
Speaker 3: your omelet, you would definitely sue the diner. This is
Speaker 3: gnar le. So how do they grow so much bigger?
Speaker 3: And what's the difference in mass?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this is what's kind of crazy, is that
Speaker 4: these parasites grow from something that you have to basically
Speaker 4: see under a microscope into a warm this large. They
Speaker 4: do it over about the course of a month, which
Speaker 4: is a significant portion of the cricket's life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Crickets generally live.
Speaker 4: From maybe two to three months in the wild and
Speaker 4: that's it.
Speaker 2: So for half to a third.
Speaker 4: Of a cricket's life, they have this terrible parasite that's
Speaker 4: growing like crazy inside them. And the only thing that
Speaker 4: these parasites can rely on for their own growth is
Speaker 4: essentially eating up the fat reserves of their host.
Speaker 3: No so quick aside. Not only that, but certain species
Speaker 3: can zombify the host's brain, making them seek water, fling
Speaker 3: themselves in and drown so that the horsehair worm can
Speaker 3: make a graceful exit out of its dead anus to
Speaker 3: go make more babies in the water. And just as
Speaker 3: I was relishing in the comfort of not being a cricket,
Speaker 3: I did stumble upon a paper in a scientific journal
Speaker 3: about a few people in Japan who have been infected
Speaker 3: with horse hair worms, and now I have to bleach
Speaker 3: my eyeballs anyway, behavior licology, life history tradeoffs.
Speaker 4: So getting back into what I generally study in terms
Speaker 4: of these life history tradeoffs. Obviously, in this case, the
Speaker 4: host cricket potentially would like to have an immune response
Speaker 4: and mounta an immune response against these parasites to kill
Speaker 4: them off. And we've been trying to figure out how
Speaker 4: it is that the parasites actually avoid being detected by
Speaker 4: the immunier's response of the cricket. And then on top
Speaker 4: of that being that it looks like the crickets aren't
Speaker 4: necessarily able to mount a response against them. But one
Speaker 4: of the drawbacks to that is that these parasites now
Speaker 4: actively eat and take up all of the fat reserves
Speaker 4: of the cricket, which otherwise these crickets are trying to
Speaker 4: build up for their own reproductive purposes, So they're using
Speaker 4: that fat in order to grow larger. They're investing that
Speaker 4: fat and those energy resources into creating very large testes.
Speaker 4: You may not know this, but crickets have some of
Speaker 4: the largest testes per body size.
Speaker 2: The animal in the animal kingdom. Really they're giant, very large.
Speaker 2: Why And it's because they have a lot of sex.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they do so much sex.
Speaker 4: So on average, some recent studies have shown that individuals
Speaker 4: mate up to like seven or eight times per night.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, with the same cricket or just like.
Speaker 2: Usually it can be the same.
Speaker 4: And they also will go out and actively find other
Speaker 4: partners to mate with.
Speaker 2: Why are they so horny? So horny? They get a
Speaker 2: lot of benefit out of it.
Speaker 4: So obviously, for males, the more they mate, the more
Speaker 4: tickets in the lottery so to speak, they have for
Speaker 4: you know, providing sperm to fertilize the female's eggs. And
Speaker 4: for females, some of my PhD work actually showed that
Speaker 4: females that made early and often actually have higher fecundity,
Speaker 4: so they're able to lay more eggs and have more
Speaker 4: offspring themselves.
Speaker 3: Like a use it or lose it kind of a thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So both males and females mate at high rates
Speaker 4: and they get fitness benefits from doing so.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So then is this also like we're going to need
Speaker 3: more baby crickets out there if we're going to have
Speaker 3: scorpions trying to hunt us when we're out doing our songs, Like,
Speaker 3: is this also just strengthen numbers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit of that, you know. Like animals
Speaker 2: in the wild, their main goal is.
Speaker 4: To produce the maximum amount offspring as possible, and individuals
Speaker 4: that can produce more offspring than other individuals of their
Speaker 4: same species have higher fitness, they pass on more of
Speaker 4: their genes, and in terms of evolutionary time periods, they
Speaker 4: have a bigger effect in terms of which genes are
Speaker 4: a part of that pool.
Speaker 3: So provided they have the resources themselves to survive, animals
Speaker 3: are typically wired to pass along more of themselves. But
Speaker 3: even Charles Darwin was like, why though he wrote in
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty two, we do not even in the least
Speaker 3: know the final cause of sexuality, why new beings should
Speaker 3: be produced by the union of the two sexual elements.
Speaker 3: The whole subject is as yet hidden in darkness. A
Speaker 3: study published in Nature twenty fifteen shone a light on it,
Speaker 3: and it dealt with flower beetles and essentially in bread
Speaker 3: them for several generations, kind of like royalty, until they
Speaker 3: could no longer go on and survive. And the study
Speaker 3: found that it was pretty key for the males to
Speaker 3: compete for reproduction and females to choose, and the authors wrote, quote,
Speaker 3: our findings revealed that sexual selection improves population viability in
Speaker 3: the face of genetic stress. So I suppose just know,
Speaker 3: the choosier you are today, the better off our entire
Speaker 3: species tomorrow. So keep swiping. And So with your research,
Speaker 3: are you looking at how often the crickets are mating,
Speaker 3: what resources they need, what have you been able to
Speaker 3: determine from that? And does it apply to any other
Speaker 3: bugs or any other species?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we've got some pretty crazy evidence from my PhD.
Speaker 4: And this is actually one of the coolest things that
Speaker 4: I came across. And why I am now like so
Speaker 4: unbelievably passionate about crickets is that during my PhD we
Speaker 4: were trying to look.
Speaker 2: At, Okay, well, why what.
Speaker 4: Benefits do females get from mating. We know that if
Speaker 4: they mate more, they lay more eggs and have more offspring.
Speaker 4: But males don't provide anything. They give like this teeny
Speaker 4: tiny little spermataphor, which is just a capsule containing sperm
Speaker 4: and some seminal fluids, and.
Speaker 2: Then they're off. There's no parental care.
Speaker 4: They don't give anything to the females. In fact, sometimes
Speaker 4: they can injure the females because they're kind of jerksy.
Speaker 4: Females are having more babies when they mate more, and
Speaker 4: so we started looking at what exactly is in that
Speaker 4: spermatophor aside from sperm, and one trend that had been
Speaker 4: building not only in crickets but across a variety of
Speaker 4: different taxa are that females that mate more or that
Speaker 4: have made it have stronger immune systems.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Which there's a lot of explanations for that, but when
Speaker 4: you get down to these crickets that are basically just
Speaker 4: passing seminal fluid and that's it, we don't really know
Speaker 4: why they would have a stronger immune response and essentially
Speaker 4: have increased survival. And so for my work, I ended
Speaker 4: up looking into that and found that there are part
Speaker 4: twoular chemicals that are passed on in that seminal fluid
Speaker 4: that are both major modulators of female reproduction.
Speaker 3: So secon thing in the sperm capsule. What is in
Speaker 3: the sperm capsule is pixie dust? Is it a do
Speaker 3: drop of red.
Speaker 4: Bull So as males provide they're called prostaglandins. As males
Speaker 4: provide prostaglandins. It helps females produce more eggs and it
Speaker 4: stimulates them to lay more eggs.
Speaker 2: But this chemical is also one of the major modulators
Speaker 2: of the immune response.
Speaker 3: Oh so, if you are out there you're getting more
Speaker 3: cricket tail and you're a lady, does that mean that
Speaker 3: you're less likely to get like a horse hair worm?
Speaker 2: Potentially?
Speaker 4: Okay, definitely seems like you're less likely to dive from
Speaker 4: some of the other diseases such as like bacterial infections.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. You might also be able to fight off ectoparasites.
Speaker 4: More ooh yeah, and so there's all of these things
Speaker 4: that go together in terms of you know, as individuals mate,
Speaker 4: they gain fitness and they can lay more eggs and
Speaker 4: have more offspring. But it also seems you know, we
Speaker 4: generally think of okay, if you overinvest in reproduction, well,
Speaker 4: now you don't have as much energy to invest in
Speaker 4: immune response.
Speaker 3: Which would make sense because making other beings is expensive,
Speaker 3: and more so when you're not a cricket and you
Speaker 3: can't just bury a hundred of your babies in loose
Speaker 3: soil and be like me're bye, good luck, gonna go
Speaker 3: find some new dads, But how does it affect crickets?
Speaker 4: And yet here we are finding females that are having
Speaker 4: increased fitness and laying more babies and also having a
Speaker 4: stronger immune response.
Speaker 2: So it goes.
Speaker 4: Against the ideas of these trade offs that we kind
Speaker 4: of innately think exist.
Speaker 3: What about the males, Do they lose anything by mating more?
Speaker 3: Are they gaining anything other than better chances of having
Speaker 3: more bibiz But are they gaining anything from an immune
Speaker 3: standpoint at all?
Speaker 4: No, And that's one of the things that I was
Speaker 4: trying to look at, and I never quite got to
Speaker 4: answer this question yet. Okay, but if males are providing
Speaker 4: this this prossegland in to help females lay eggs and
Speaker 4: to help them survive better potentially until they lay their eggs,
Speaker 4: is that taking away prosseaglandin that males need to modulate
Speaker 4: their immune response.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll regulate that.
Speaker 4: And so that's something that is a current question that
Speaker 4: we have and that we're still interested in looking into.
Speaker 3: So not only do males compete to be like I'm
Speaker 3: the best, trust me, Look how hard I will sink
Speaker 3: for you, I will find a scorpion, but also female
Speaker 3: crickets can be choosy, not just at the time of
Speaker 3: the bonking, So during mating, males insert this spermatophor into
Speaker 3: a female's reproductive track and it drains into her for
Speaker 3: the next forty or so minutes. But there's also something
Speaker 3: called fertilization bias or directional post mating female mate choice.
Speaker 3: This is also called cryptic because it's like, what's going
Speaker 3: on in there? And in some species certain sperm may
Speaker 3: not be stored, so she's like, thinks it was so
Speaker 3: fun nah, And then this can protect the species from inbreeding.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: In a study titled Female Crickets Assess relatedness during mate
Speaker 3: guarding and bias storage of sperm toward unrelated males, this
Speaker 3: boiling hot tea was spilled, okay, So it says that
Speaker 3: while sperm are being transferred from the spermatophore to the
Speaker 3: female's reproductive tract, the mated male remains with and guards
Speaker 3: the female because females often attempt to leave unattractive males
Speaker 3: and go remove the spermatophores before the sperm drips in
Speaker 3: and it has been transferred, and then the guarding males
Speaker 3: try to prevent the females from doing so, So the
Speaker 3: guarding can represent a period of sexual conflict over insemination.
Speaker 3: Males attempt to subvert the female mate choice decision. Dudes
Speaker 3: are like now keep mine, keep it cap it, and
Speaker 3: the females like, I don't even like you that much?
Speaker 2: Interesting? Do you ever apply.
Speaker 3: Any of your cricket knowledge to your own love life
Speaker 3: or your friend's love life?
Speaker 4: In terms of this, when I give this research talk,
Speaker 4: I do make it clear that prostaglandin.
Speaker 2: Is a component of seminal fluids.
Speaker 4: Across all animals, and it was originally given its name
Speaker 4: because it was found in the human prostate. Oh so
Speaker 4: prostaglandin mediates reproductive physiology in humans and immunophysiology.
Speaker 2: In humans as well. So it has kind of.
Speaker 4: Conserved functions from crickets all the way up to humans.
Speaker 3: And is it easier to study it kind of in
Speaker 3: a model with crickets and then perhaps other you know,
Speaker 3: going on up the food chain, it'll be looked at
Speaker 3: in a different way because of what you can kind
Speaker 3: of prove or detecting crickets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, So what we learn in crickets is, you know,
Speaker 4: creates are a very basic model, but they're super easy
Speaker 4: and incredibly cheap to work with, and so we can
Speaker 4: learn a lot about them, and we can do a
Speaker 4: lot of manipulations experimentally that are unethical when you get
Speaker 4: to kind of these higher order animals. So the second
Speaker 4: something has a backbone, all of a sudden, it's more
Speaker 4: likely to feel pain, especially more intensely, and so there's
Speaker 4: a lot more restrictions there in terms of not only
Speaker 4: what you can do, but kind of what you feel
Speaker 4: comfortable doing as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do your experiments look like? Are there cages
Speaker 3: of different crickets and they're checking each other out, like,
Speaker 3: how do you sex a cricket?
Speaker 2: What does lab work look like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so when we are doing mating type trials, which
Speaker 4: is something we'll be doing a lot of this summer
Speaker 4: to look at the effects of these ridiculous horse hair
Speaker 4: worms and whether they makes males unsexy to females.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine watching The Bachelorette and a dude is
Speaker 3: eliminated for having a giant, eighteen foot long worm coming
Speaker 3: out of his ass? I can. I can imagine it,
Speaker 3: and it's riveting.
Speaker 4: But we essentially go into this very warm, humid dark
Speaker 4: room and we turn on the red lights and pair
Speaker 4: crickets together and watch them have sex.
Speaker 3: What kind of notes do you have to make on
Speaker 3: a clipboard?
Speaker 2: Like, are you like how long it lasts? Like how
Speaker 2: many partners?
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, how long it took may so? How long
Speaker 4: it took females to mount their males?
Speaker 2: How long it ladies?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's another really cool thing about crickets is a lot.
Speaker 2: Of animals you find. You know, males get.
Speaker 4: A lot out of mating. They have a really high
Speaker 4: reproductive capacity. So the more females they mate with, the
Speaker 4: higher their fitness. And that's generally not the rule with females.
Speaker 4: So females can mate with lots of males, but they
Speaker 4: generally don't can't ever obtain as high as fitness as
Speaker 4: males because they have a limited number of eggs. Well,
Speaker 4: a lot of animals will. Males will coerce females into mating. Essentially,
Speaker 4: that's like the non anthropomorphic way to say that they
Speaker 4: rape them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Science sometimes pretty awful, and by science I mean life.
Speaker 4: And male crickets can't do that. So males have to
Speaker 4: all to females if you're ready. Females have to accept
Speaker 4: them as a mate, and females have to mount them
Speaker 4: in order for males to transfer their ejaculate. Oh and
Speaker 4: so that gets to why are females mating so frequently
Speaker 4: If they don't necessarily have to, there's nothing forcing them
Speaker 4: to do it, so there's obviously some benefit for that.
Speaker 3: Do you think that there's anything innately that they can
Speaker 3: sense themselves getting stronger because of their immune response.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there's definitely going to be different propensities to remate,
Speaker 4: and that might be dependent on, you know, previous mate experiences.
Speaker 4: So if you've mated before and your previous mate was
Speaker 4: kind of low quality, you probably.
Speaker 2: Have a higher propensity to mate again.
Speaker 4: Also condition so depending on if you have a lot
Speaker 4: of resources and a lot of eggs available, you're probably
Speaker 4: likely to mate to make sure you have enough sperm
Speaker 4: to fertilize them, Whereas if you're kind of in the
Speaker 4: process of deducing eggs and there's nothing to lay, you
Speaker 4: might avoid it. Because mating is pretty costly, females frequently
Speaker 4: get injured late, they lose eggs, they get sexually transmitted diseases.
Speaker 3: Making babies pretty costly in so many ways.
Speaker 4: So one of the more common ones are there are
Speaker 4: these little nematodes that essentially kind of get passed around,
Speaker 4: and so they kind of hide up by the genitalia
Speaker 4: and they can get passed from one cricket to the next.
Speaker 3: Jenny Worms are the worst, just the worst. I wonder
Speaker 3: if their tinder bios have to be like ps I
Speaker 3: have jenny worms. It's not a big deal. So when
Speaker 3: you're watching them, how do you know which female is which?
Speaker 2: Are they wearing different colored vests? What's the Oh, if.
Speaker 4: We have multiple females that we're watching, we just use
Speaker 4: little paint markers so we can mark their promotem pronotums
Speaker 4: and they can have different little colors associated with them,
Speaker 4: or we keep them in different deli cups, so those
Speaker 4: things that you bring all your leftovers home the restaurant.
Speaker 2: That's what we do wear cricket matings in.
Speaker 3: Do you put one on one together at a time
Speaker 3: or do you like put several together and see what happens.
Speaker 4: Yeah, usually, if we're trying to actually do behavioral essays,
Speaker 4: we will put one male one female in together.
Speaker 3: So heteronormative, poor crickets. Just another reason to be glad
Speaker 3: you're not a cricket and you can be who you
Speaker 3: want to be, love who you want to love, you
Speaker 3: get to eat snow cones and ride in fast trains
Speaker 3: staring at the horizon, and your life span is longer
Speaker 3: than three months. And then does how do you know
Speaker 3: if that couple mates and then they're like, okay, I'm
Speaker 3: onto the next one, like I'm ready to Oh, it's
Speaker 3: actually really easy.
Speaker 4: So if you say like look away and you write
Speaker 4: a note and they quick do it, you can check.
Speaker 4: Because males when they transfer their kind of spermatophor, it's
Speaker 4: retained externally, so it kind of.
Speaker 2: Gets glued on.
Speaker 4: It gets like threaded into the female's genital track, and
Speaker 4: then they like glue it on and so it sticks
Speaker 4: out and you can see this tiny little hardened white
Speaker 4: capsule sticking out of the rear end of the female.
Speaker 3: Yep, this up and it's like a big old white
Speaker 3: butt glob, kind of like if you were wearing a
Speaker 3: clear Fannie pack full of mayonnaise.
Speaker 2: And then does she kind of absorb that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so she'll essentially like pump her abdomen, so
Speaker 4: she'll use her muscles to kind of start sucking that
Speaker 4: out and move that seminal fluid and sperm from the
Speaker 4: spermatophore into her spermatica, which is her sperm storage organ.
Speaker 2: And then how long does she store that. She can
Speaker 2: store it for quite a long time.
Speaker 4: I haven't done tests to see exactly how long it
Speaker 4: stays in there, but there's evidence that she can use
Speaker 4: the sperm contained in the spermathka for at least two weeks,
Speaker 4: potentially a little bit longer.
Speaker 2: Give me a fool night.
Speaker 3: Does she get to choose like, okay, this is Harold,
Speaker 3: this is like you know, Jeffreys, Like does she know
Speaker 3: who's is who's.
Speaker 4: We don't really have evidence of that in crickets because
Speaker 4: there's spermathika is like one large balloon, So all the
Speaker 4: sperm goes into this one large area and then it
Speaker 4: kind of gets mixed, so it's more of you know,
Speaker 4: who has more sperm there they get to fertilize that
Speaker 4: proportion of the eggs.
Speaker 2: But yeah, things like dungflies have a variety of.
Speaker 4: Different sperm storage organs and they can store sperm in
Speaker 4: different compartments.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, so yes, in crickets, once it's in
Speaker 3: her lady balloon, perhaps it's fair game. But she may
Speaker 3: get to pop it out first, like spitting some grizzly
Speaker 3: meat into a napkin at dinner. But other insects have
Speaker 3: internal dad pockets and they can mix and match depending
Speaker 3: on who they dig the most. What a beautiful thing. Now,
Speaker 3: speaking of beautiful things, each week we donate to a
Speaker 3: charity of the ologists choosing, and this week doctor Worthington
Speaker 3: chows Fontanelle Forest. It's one of Nebraska's oldest conservation organizations
Speaker 3: and one of the largest private nature centers in the nation.
Speaker 3: They say it's a place where people can experience and
Speaker 3: enjoy the quiet, wild of nature, and it's located in Bellevue, Nebraska,
Speaker 3: just south of Omaha. So thank you Amy for choosing that.
Speaker 3: And there will be a link in the show notes
Speaker 3: to find out more about them. And thank you to
Speaker 3: our sponsors this week for making these donates possible. Now
Speaker 3: a few words kind words about those sponsors.
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Speaker 3: Okay, we're back. Oh, I should need to ask you
Speaker 3: Patreon questions.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 3: Connie Snow wants to know what's the best way to
Speaker 3: get rid of crickets that come into your house.
Speaker 2: Let's not leave cat food out.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, that's hard because I try so hard to
Speaker 4: attract them. Yeah, I generally don't try and get rid
Speaker 4: of them. Okay, yeah, I don't have a good answer
Speaker 4: for that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I look this up and apparently crickets love molasses.
Speaker 3: Who knew. So you can set out a bowl with
Speaker 3: a few teaspoons of molasses covered in a cup or
Speaker 3: two of water, and they'll be like, m some molasses,
Speaker 3: and they'll come and hop in, and I'm guessing that
Speaker 3: they die in bliss. I don't know what you do
Speaker 3: about the ant infestation you might get afterward. Maybe you
Speaker 3: like ants more than crickets. I don't know. You could
Speaker 3: also make sure to seal all your windows and doors
Speaker 3: with calking. Or you could adopt a free range gecko
Speaker 3: that lives in your house and eats them, but don't
Speaker 3: let the gecko out, or else people will be asking
Speaker 3: me how to control their gecko populations. So another option
Speaker 3: is just to love the crickets and consider them tiny
Speaker 3: roommates who only get to live for a few months.
Speaker 3: Amy understands your plate.
Speaker 4: I also have them keep me up at night, more
Speaker 4: so for me because when I hear them calling, it
Speaker 4: reminds me of all the research I have to do.
Speaker 3: Oh God, do you ever to take some home in
Speaker 3: your backpack and be like, huh, how'd you get out?
Speaker 4: I frequently have empty Deli cups that I can around
Speaker 4: in case I come across crickets in the wild that
Speaker 4: I need to catch. And then yeah, when we're doing
Speaker 4: collections out in the field, I frequently will accidentally have
Speaker 4: crickets that like, somehow we're in a Deli cup and
Speaker 4: they got like stuck in the bottom of.
Speaker 2: My backpath pack.
Speaker 4: And then I'll come across them a couple of days
Speaker 4: later and they're just hungry, And it's very surprising when
Speaker 4: that happens.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, hello, buddy, is there a particular species
Speaker 3: that you tend to do your research with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mostly work with species from the southern
Speaker 4: half of the United States. So currently we're working on
Speaker 4: Grillis Firmas, which is a sand cricket. But I've also
Speaker 4: worked on the field cricket, which is the Texas field cricket,
Speaker 4: so Grillis tex sensus. Oh.
Speaker 3: I want to ask how you feel about eating them,
Speaker 3: but someone may have asked that already.
Speaker 2: They're fabulous.
Speaker 4: I actually have some suckers up there with crickets on
Speaker 4: them if you'd like one.
Speaker 3: Okay, So for more on this, see the entomophagy Anthropology episode,
Speaker 3: which is all about bug eating as a sustainable protein source.
Speaker 3: Mariko Shane wants to know, I'm really interested in getting
Speaker 3: into behavioral ecology. What should I expect with school and
Speaker 3: jobs in the next few years.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, actually, there's a lot of opportunities in terms of
Speaker 4: the field of behavioral ecology, and it's really just about
Speaker 4: finding your interest, So you know, going out there reading papers,
Speaker 4: figuring out what really piques your interests, and then digging
Speaker 4: in and contacting those labs.
Speaker 2: Okay, if you really love behavioral ecology.
Speaker 4: The more you get into it, the more passionate you become,
Speaker 4: and so everything just generally kind of falls into place.
Speaker 1: I feel.
Speaker 4: On top of that, you know, like the field of
Speaker 4: behavioral ecology. The people who are a part of this
Speaker 4: field are awesome. So there's a really strong community and
Speaker 4: people are very pretty, they're you know, accepting, and they're
Speaker 4: very friendly.
Speaker 2: They're very laid back.
Speaker 4: So you know, the conferences that you go to as
Speaker 4: a behavioral ecologist, rather than everybody dressing up in these
Speaker 4: suits and ties, you know, you got keenes with socks underneath,
Speaker 4: and everybody's wearing a Hawaiian print T shirt.
Speaker 2: So's it's a very friendly field, I think.
Speaker 4: Oh so yes, and yes to behavioral a cology. Yes,
Speaker 4: Oh it's fabulous, Oh yay ps.
Speaker 3: Behavioral ecologists can study all kinds of things, from why
Speaker 3: birds fly information to why meerkats pop up all cute,
Speaker 3: to parental care and penguins to frog calls. So much more.
Speaker 3: It's a study of why do you do that and
Speaker 3: how does it help?
Speaker 2: And it's rad.
Speaker 3: Now less rad to some people is the appearance of
Speaker 3: a certain type of cricket, long, wispy legs, like if
Speaker 3: Slenderman had been turned into a bug, let's unpack it.
Speaker 3: Sidney Brown wants to know why are cave crickets so
Speaker 3: frightening to so many people?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would They're a bizarre shape. I think, yeah,
Speaker 4: they've got they're pretty spindily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that that does a lot.
Speaker 4: I think anything unfamiliar is hard for people, especially when
Speaker 4: it comes to insects. The more spindily and insect is,
Speaker 4: the more fear it generally and kind of creepy Crawley's
Speaker 4: it instils.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the Jerusalem cricket is as rolling poly boopeddupe
Speaker 3: and people.
Speaker 4: Oh but they're huge and like bulbous and yeah, they're
Speaker 4: they're larger than people want to look at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I love them and Cydney Brown also
Speaker 3: asked what's the most common parasite of crickets.
Speaker 4: Oh, I would say that that's probably I imagine most crickets.
Speaker 2: There's there's a lot of different.
Speaker 4: Types of parasites depending on what type of or what
Speaker 4: SPECSI of cricket you're looking at.
Speaker 2: Ectoparasites are very common, so there's kind of.
Speaker 4: These large red parasites that kind of stick onto the
Speaker 4: soft parts on the outside of crickets. But then there's
Speaker 4: also you know, nematodes are fairly.
Speaker 3: Common ps and nematode is how you formally address around
Speaker 3: worm like mis nematode, No, please call me roundy dubes.
Speaker 4: Gregorines are another type of kind of intestinal parasite. Those
Speaker 4: are incredibly common as well. Where cently finding out that
Speaker 4: hairworms are more and more common.
Speaker 3: So Chrispurer wants to know do crickets have a mating chirp?
Speaker 3: And obviously that's a yes. The males do, and it's
Speaker 3: different species to species.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, so in a lot of cases there's kind
Speaker 4: of overlapping species nearby and they are able to identify
Speaker 4: their mates using their particular calls. Oh well, yeah, so
Speaker 4: they're very species specific and it helps prevent hybridization in
Speaker 4: closely related species that overlap in geographic area.
Speaker 3: Can you tell the difference of different chirps or is
Speaker 3: that like a completely different field.
Speaker 4: I have not spent a lot of time comparing one
Speaker 4: species to the next.
Speaker 2: I can definitely tell the.
Speaker 4: Difference between the species, like the ground crickets that we
Speaker 4: have in the area versus myfield crickets that I work on.
Speaker 2: Huh. They have very different calls.
Speaker 4: They're different pitches, and they're kind of different frequencies, and
Speaker 4: so the ones nearby go really kind of fast and high.
Speaker 2: They also were calling during the day.
Speaker 3: Oh, and my.
Speaker 4: Crickets generally are calling either you know, like immediately after
Speaker 4: dusk or right before dawn.
Speaker 2: Oh, so they're crepuscular.
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh, and that's is that when they are out
Speaker 3: just feeding in general, or is that with their mating time.
Speaker 4: That's generally when they're trying to attract mates.
Speaker 3: Is that because it's a safer time for them or
Speaker 3: in part?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there's not as many birds out and about,
Speaker 4: which are our major predators, although they're definitely starting to
Speaker 4: get up and moving as well. Because they rely on
Speaker 4: acoustic calls, they don't have to have light available in
Speaker 4: order to attract mates, and so that makes it a
Speaker 4: little easier for them to make use of those nighttime hours.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so smart.
Speaker 3: This next question is one that's on all of our minds, probably.
Speaker 2: All the time.
Speaker 3: J Anathos wants to note what behavioral ecology principles are
Speaker 3: as true with humans as animals.
Speaker 4: Oh goodness, you know, so I will say that like
Speaker 4: in terms.
Speaker 2: Of what I study.
Speaker 4: I study these life history trade offs, and my lab
Speaker 4: gets together and we read all these papers together and
Speaker 4: kind of look through them. And at the beginning of
Speaker 4: the semester we read a paper about these life history
Speaker 4: tradeoffs in humans and how there's trade offs within the
Speaker 4: between the immune response and these different reproductive hormones and
Speaker 4: other processes of the body. And so we have those
Speaker 4: same principles that are at play with us. The idea
Speaker 4: that you only have a limited amount of resources, and
Speaker 4: we generally think that well, most of us are well
Speaker 4: off enough to be able to go out and buy
Speaker 4: more food if we need it. But the problem is
Speaker 4: is that there's still constraints within our own bodies. We
Speaker 4: still have a limited amount of proteins that are able
Speaker 4: to shuttle different nutererients around our body, and therefore, in
Speaker 4: a lot of cases, we still are seeing the same
Speaker 4: exact types of trade offs between the immune system and
Speaker 4: growth and health and reproduction as any other animal that
Speaker 4: lives out there.
Speaker 3: Birth rates in the US side note, had a little
Speaker 3: peak in two thousand and seven, just before the recession hit,
Speaker 3: and they've been dropping for ten years, which is maybe
Speaker 3: not a co Winky dink And do you notice that
Speaker 3: trends maybe with people waiting to have kids until they're older,
Speaker 3: until they have more money to pay for the kids
Speaker 3: college or is there anything trend wise that you look
Speaker 3: at where like you see millennials aren't having as many
Speaker 3: children and you're like, well, economy or like, does that ever.
Speaker 2: Happen with you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean you think about the amount of
Speaker 4: debt that millennials have nowadays in terms of college or
Speaker 4: trying to buy a house or pretty much anything, and
Speaker 4: earning potentials way down, and so yeah, there's just fewer resources.
Speaker 4: And so I think that cultural changes have allowed for
Speaker 4: there to be a shift away from this immediate kind
Speaker 4: of push to reproduce early and fast, and so that
Speaker 4: has contributed to this. But there's also resource trade offs,
Speaker 4: and as humans, one of those resources is money. It's
Speaker 4: not just the amount of fat that we have available
Speaker 4: or the amount of food that we have available. And
Speaker 4: so yeah, absolutely, we just have to kind of extend
Speaker 4: these principles into that monetary realm to understand some of
Speaker 4: the things that we're seeing that are occurring today in society.
Speaker 3: And what about with second and third wave feminism, perhaps
Speaker 3: with women being like, no, I'd like to have a
Speaker 3: job and not just make bibies. Is that behavioral ecology
Speaker 3: as well?
Speaker 2: I mean yes in a respect.
Speaker 4: Right, So it's behavioral ecology is kind of the study
Speaker 4: of individuals and how they interact with their environments. And
Speaker 4: so yeah, there's going to be different pushes in terms
Speaker 4: of when to reproduce and how much to reproduce.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it gets a little tricky.
Speaker 4: It's not as easy to kind of directly relate everything
Speaker 4: to humans, at least not as easy as we'd want
Speaker 4: it to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, but it is a good thing to start
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 3: If an aunt or a grandma asks you when you're
Speaker 3: going to start having children, you can just go into
Speaker 3: a whole big reproductive physiology behavioral ecology ran.
Speaker 2: Just for her more not asking And are.
Speaker 3: There any movies about crickets, any any characters that you're
Speaker 3: or do you see things like Jimmy Crickett, You're like,
Speaker 3: stop rubbing your legs together at number one, Jimmy Crickett.
Speaker 3: If you're if you see a cricket cartoon calling, essentially
Speaker 3: that's a cricket with a boner being like anyone out there?
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so no, there's I will have to say, like,
Speaker 4: Disney does a fabulous job of getting the biology right
Speaker 4: in a lot of respects and a lot of those
Speaker 4: other animated films. So I'm still completely in love with A.
Speaker 2: Bugs life, my friends, is the sound of a.
Speaker 4: You know, all the things that those individuals do are
Speaker 4: just awesome, and yet I just I love seeing real
Speaker 4: science in the films, especially for.
Speaker 2: Young kids, especially now that I have.
Speaker 4: I have a two year old daughter at home, and
Speaker 4: just watching her learn and pick up on these things
Speaker 4: from movies makes me realize how important it is to
Speaker 4: have everything right because kids learn from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're picking it up. I mean, stop with the
Speaker 2: male bees for you know what. I Oh, my gosh,
Speaker 2: the b movie just kills me. I can't do it.
Speaker 2: I know, how dare they? And even in ant Man
Speaker 2: it was like a male ant I think, and You're like,
Speaker 2: this is it basic? This is such an easy get Just.
Speaker 3: A side note, y'all could have named her antonia so easy.
Speaker 3: My god, As long as I'm pissed, let's just stay
Speaker 3: negative for a second. What is the shittiest thing about
Speaker 3: crickets or about your job? What's the suckiest thing?
Speaker 2: Well, dead crickets smell worse than rotten potatoes. No, I
Speaker 2: don't have any metric for rotten potatoes. Don't ever forget
Speaker 2: one in the bottom of your pantry.
Speaker 4: No, Dead crickets are terrible, and they're juicy and they're
Speaker 4: just disgusting.
Speaker 2: So that's the.
Speaker 4: Worst is when you're cleaning out cricket bins and you
Speaker 4: accidentally touch one that just.
Speaker 2: Like explodes in your hand. But other than that, I
Speaker 2: mean they're great.
Speaker 4: They rarely bite, so you don't have to really worry
Speaker 4: about that, but they do bite.
Speaker 2: They can bite, Yeah, they can draw blood. Normally you
Speaker 2: have to be doing something to deserve it, Okay, like
Speaker 2: you're trying.
Speaker 4: To like knock them out and give them an injection
Speaker 4: or tear out their testes or something like that.
Speaker 2: They buy you You're like, well played, Yes, yeah, they're
Speaker 2: like I deserve it. It's fine.
Speaker 3: What about the best thing about your job or about crickets.
Speaker 4: I would say the best thing about my job is
Speaker 4: I get to do work with a bunch of undergraduate researchers,
Speaker 4: and the vast majority of them come into my lab saying,
Speaker 4: you know, they want to go into prehealth professions, so
Speaker 4: they want to go into be you know, a dentistry
Speaker 4: or to be become a medical doctor. And then they're
Speaker 4: doing research on crickets, which they obviously don't have interest in,
Speaker 4: and getting to watch their love for these insects grow,
Speaker 4: you know, watching them the first time they interact with
Speaker 4: the cricket and how kind of jumpy they are and tentative.
Speaker 4: And then by the time my students leave the lab,
Speaker 4: they they're very proud that they work with crickets.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a badge of honor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that, like they can pick them up and just
Speaker 4: throw them in We're whatever bins they need to. There's
Speaker 4: you know, they're not using gloves, They're fine using their
Speaker 4: hands now. I mean, it's really fun. And then watching
Speaker 4: them explain their research in like the most engaging and
Speaker 4: amazing way. So I should say this because my current
Speaker 4: one of my current students is giving her first oral
Speaker 4: presentation on her research in over the horse hairworm and crickets.
Speaker 2: Her name's Emily Harder's and.
Speaker 4: She would kill me if I didn't mention her on
Speaker 4: here because she is your biggest fan.
Speaker 3: Oh hey, shout out to at Emily Harder on Twitter.
Speaker 3: You can follow her for more ghastly information on horse
Speaker 3: hair worms. It's really a sight to behold.
Speaker 4: We still scream and glee when we allow the horse
Speaker 4: hair worms to emerge from the crickets and you just
Speaker 4: watch as like three or four of these emerge from
Speaker 4: a single cricket, and it is still like you're in
Speaker 4: the movie Alien.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't believe it. It's real. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: It's like watch out, doctor pimple Popper, because that's pretty cathartics.
Speaker 2: I'm so much much better.
Speaker 3: Yes, this has been so informative. I'm never going to
Speaker 3: hear a cricket song quite the same. It's essentially I'm being.
Speaker 2: Like anyone to have sizeady. That is absolutely my goal.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Yes, thank you. I love this.
Speaker 3: So. To follow doctor Amy Worthington find her on Twitter
Speaker 3: at worthington Lab, or you can check out her blog
Speaker 3: Amymworthington dot WordPress dot com. To find ologies, We're at
Speaker 3: ologies on Twitter and Instagram. Come say hello, I'm at
Speaker 3: ali Ward with one L on both and to submit
Speaker 3: questions via Patreon. Join up for as little as one
Speaker 3: dollar a month. My heart is very cheap and usually
Speaker 3: I get to ask way more questions. And say way
Speaker 3: more names, but this was so rush just san okay.
Speaker 3: For Ologies Merch, go to ologiesmerch dot com and you
Speaker 3: can tag your pictures Ologies Merch on Instagram so I
Speaker 3: can post you on merch Mondays. Thank you Shannon Feltus
Speaker 3: and Bonnie Dutch for managing all that, and thank you
Speaker 3: Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admining the Facebook Ologies
Speaker 3: podcast group, which is a great place for curious non jerks.
Speaker 3: Assistant editing was done by Jarrett Sleeper of my Jam Media,
Speaker 3: who hosts two podcasts, Fight Stuff about combat sports so
Speaker 3: funny and My Good Bad Brain about mental health. And
Speaker 3: thank you as always to Stephen Ray Morris for stitching
Speaker 3: these episodes together, and for more on him, you can
Speaker 3: listen to his podcast The per Cast about kiddies, or
Speaker 3: see Jurassic Right, which is about dinosaurs. The theme song
Speaker 3: was written and performed by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: If you stick around the end of the episode, you
Speaker 3: know I tell a secret, and this week's secret is
Speaker 3: that I sobbed so hard this week in Walmart after
Speaker 3: losing my wallet and it's still missing, and let's just
Speaker 3: say it's spit a rough week, giddos, But I have
Speaker 3: canceled my cards and I have blocked off a date
Speaker 3: in the next few weeks to go to the desert
Speaker 3: and just stare into space. So maybe that'll fix me anyway,
Speaker 3: what you want to do, keep singing and hopping around.
Speaker 3: Bye bye, pacodermatology, hobbiology, crypto zoology.
Speaker 2: Lithology, new technology.
Speaker 3: Meteorology, rotology, ethology, seriology, philology.
Speaker 4: Where