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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your aunt's innocent work crush. Ali Ward
Speaker 2: back for another episode of Ologies. Okay, it's time for
Speaker 2: us to come out of our spiral shells and give
Speaker 2: snails a whirl. Now this episode is a big derby
Speaker 2: bag of happy surprises. I have learned so much from
Speaker 2: snails and their origin stories, their adaptability, their non binary
Speaker 2: outlook on life. It's inspiring. I think I love them
Speaker 2: even more now I really love snails. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to say this quickly, thank you to all the patrons
Speaker 2: making the podcast happen and letting me keep it ad
Speaker 2: free since the start. On purpose sofar patreon dot com.
Speaker 2: Slash Ologies is where you can submit your questions to
Speaker 2: ologists before I even record episodes. Also, if you want
Speaker 2: to support by having OLOGI swag on your actual physical body,
Speaker 2: you can go to Ologiesmarch dot com and through July,
Speaker 2: I'm having a summer sale on everything in the shop
Speaker 2: ten percent off, so browse, load up, buy some gifts,
Speaker 2: hold some things for doomsday. The code at checkout is
Speaker 2: camp Ologies. Also, thank you to everyone who rates and
Speaker 2: reviews and subscribes keeping Ologies up in the science charts
Speaker 2: so other people can find it now. If you listen regularly,
Speaker 2: you know Uncle Ali creeps your reviews, and to prove it,
Speaker 2: I read one aloud each week and y'all, I got
Speaker 2: my first shitty review two stars. I mean it is
Speaker 2: better than one. But someone called it a cute commentary
Speaker 2: track on science subjects with the occasional interesting question thrown
Speaker 2: in and didn't like that I had asides on tangents,
Speaker 2: like about rap music. So okay, that's fine, and no,
Speaker 2: I won't stop.
Speaker 3: But thank you to all of you who always leave
Speaker 3: nice reviews.
Speaker 4: Like Nick silver Fangirl said that Ologies is like if
Speaker 4: PBS allowed swearing, and I'm like, nice, don't worry, I
Speaker 4: swear a lot more later. So onto Malacology, the study
Speaker 4: of molluscs. Malacology comes from the Greek word ready for
Speaker 4: this for soft animal, and it deals with mollusks, ranging
Speaker 4: from snails and slugs and bivalves octopuses.
Speaker 2: There are so many mollusks. Malacology really is an umbrella
Speaker 2: term that covers so many. But there are subsets, like
Speaker 2: the amazing tothology. There's an episode on that about squid.
Speaker 2: It's great, she's great. Now there isn't a specific snail ology.
Speaker 2: Lime Ecology is a study of slugs. Slugs get thrownology,
Speaker 2: but snails don't get their own. This episode, which is
Speaker 2: just a carnival of slug and snail facts, we're gonna
Speaker 2: go with the curator's title of malacologist.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 4: This ologist is just wonderfully charming. She's informative and passionate.
Speaker 4: And Frank I was so excited to head to the
Speaker 4: Museum of Natural History in LA to hang out in
Speaker 4: her office, setting my iced latte down on a coffee
Speaker 4: table that turned out to be a slab of fossils
Speaker 4: and shells in rock millions of years old. And when
Speaker 4: she told me, I was like eh, And I asked
Speaker 4: if I should use a coaster, and she said very dryly. Nah,
Speaker 4: it survived a long time through a lot worse. I mean,
Speaker 4: she's got a point. So I love the NHM in
Speaker 4: LA and volunteering there one hundred percent changed my life.
Speaker 4: So I'm thrilled every time I get to walk into
Speaker 4: the marble foyer and see everyone invests in badges and
Speaker 4: kids running around and people looking at dioramas.
Speaker 3: It's one of my favorite places.
Speaker 2: So I got up early and wore something comfortable but cute,
Speaker 2: and I made extra sure to be there on time.
Speaker 3: But there was one issue. Today the forecast is one
Speaker 3: hundred and eleven degrees. I'm walking three blocks from the
Speaker 3: parking garage to the museum.
Speaker 2: And I had to rest under a tree halfway there.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna die. What if this is how I die?
Speaker 4: I die walking free blocks in LA to go interview
Speaker 4: a snail expert.
Speaker 3: If that's how I go, That's how I go. So spoiler,
Speaker 3: I lived.
Speaker 2: But we got to her office and I had to
Speaker 2: decide whether to weather the weather or just keep the
Speaker 2: AC going. So we turned it off for sonic reasons,
Speaker 2: and we made it through. But what resulted was a
Speaker 2: truly wonderful discourse about the most shocking and erotic mating
Speaker 2: rituals I have heard in quite some time. There's gardening tips,
Speaker 2: evolutionary puzzles, there's some gold rush lore, snail slime as
Speaker 2: a beauty mucus by the way, in line with a
Speaker 2: rhinology episode, mucus is one word I can't deal with,
Speaker 2: So all the F words are kept in, but I'm
Speaker 2: bleeping out the M word. That's just that's what I do. Plus,
Speaker 2: I had to grapple with your desire for a giant
Speaker 2: pest nail, So get ready to slug around with snail
Speaker 2: expert in malacologist doctor Jan Vendetti.
Speaker 3: I feel like we might actually die because I don't
Speaker 3: want to have to call the corner in the middle
Speaker 3: of this interview for either one of us. I don't
Speaker 3: want my ghost to call the corner. It's so is
Speaker 3: the hottest it.
Speaker 6: And there is no camera, so it doesn't matter where
Speaker 6: I'm sitting in, what I look like, and what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah you could.
Speaker 4: You could not even be wearing shoes or pants right
Speaker 4: now and no one would care. I oftentime record my
Speaker 4: narration just for all Episode's the best thing about podcast.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Jan has worked as the malacology and Invertebrate
Speaker 2: Paleontology collections curator at the Natural History Museum of La
Speaker 2: County for three years. And I like to picture her
Speaker 2: behind the scenes as the malacology queen, wearing like a
Speaker 2: stiff brown circular cape and a crown with bejeweled eyestalks,
Speaker 2: but she was just down to earth and Khaki's in
Speaker 2: a gray shirt. Like imagine if Anna Kendrick were playing
Speaker 2: a really cool ass museum scientist.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Before she landed in La Jan got a bachelor's in
Speaker 2: biology and geology and a PhD in integrative biology at
Speaker 2: Berkeley before making a glistening path into the garden of
Speaker 2: professional malacology.
Speaker 6: Sure, so I did my bachelor's degree at Colgate University
Speaker 6: in upstate New York, and that I double majored in
Speaker 6: biology and geology. So that gave me a lot of
Speaker 6: crossover with paleobiology, which is what I was very.
Speaker 3: Much interested in.
Speaker 6: So ecosystems, mostly marine ecosystems from the past and today,
Speaker 6: normally paletologies with rocks, right, so the organization goes dead
Speaker 6: things in rocks go with rocks, not with the thing
Speaker 6: that are dead in them, so they don't go into
Speaker 6: a biology department, even though you're studying the biology of
Speaker 6: these things that are dead often. So I was interested
Speaker 6: in paleontology from a more biology perspective, a more paleobiology perspective.
Speaker 6: So UC Berkeley is the only place that had paleontology
Speaker 6: that was being studied by people who trained as biologists.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 6: So anyway, so I went there, got my PhD there
Speaker 6: in integrated biology, and then came down to Los Angeles
Speaker 6: to do a post doc in c slug phylogenetics, so
Speaker 6: sea slugs and their relationships to each.
Speaker 4: Other, I mean, as one does. And then of course
Speaker 4: came the job at the museum here in blistering, hot,
Speaker 4: scorching LA.
Speaker 3: So I stayed in LA.
Speaker 6: And so now I'm in LA and if all goes well,
Speaker 6: I will stay here, which is a surprise because I
Speaker 6: never thought I'd be in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: When you think about LA, it seems so arid. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: We even have snails right.
Speaker 6: Originally studied marine gastropods, but then the museum, this museum
Speaker 6: had a real push for community science or citizen science
Speaker 6: in mostly terrestrial biology, so animals that are living on land.
Speaker 6: So that shifted my research focus to terrestrial gastropods, which
Speaker 6: are mostly which are slugs and snails, and mostly the
Speaker 6: species living in urban environments, which almost nobody's done any
Speaker 6: work on.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: I saw that on I saw that on the website.
Speaker 4: I was like, you deal in urban malacology, which is
Speaker 4: like so bad ass, Like I love that there's like
Speaker 4: city snails on like fixed gear bikes and buy dollar coffees.
Speaker 6: Story right, right, You're never going to buy their houses
Speaker 6: because they spend all their money on avocado TOAs.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the almost nobody study them. And there's this
Speaker 6: interesting phenomenon called synanthropy or sin anthrapy, synanthropy. Synanthropy, something
Speaker 6: can be synanthropic, which means that it lives with it
Speaker 6: lives near or in or because of human habitation. So
Speaker 6: human disturbance of an environment makes uh is good for
Speaker 6: these species.
Speaker 2: Right, So yes, some species actually benefit when big stupid
Speaker 2: naked apes have gone in and torn up the land
Speaker 2: to make houses and lawns and golf courses because there
Speaker 2: are resources that wouldn't otherwise be there. If you know
Speaker 2: then they will.
Speaker 6: So it's like this is sort of the tail of
Speaker 6: invasive or introduced species, which aren't necessarily the same thing.
Speaker 6: But if you have a species that is living somewhere
Speaker 6: that it did not evolve, often those are taxa that
Speaker 6: are really good at living in multiple different places, so
Speaker 6: they're very generalist or like generalist feeders, or they're just
Speaker 6: very good at living somewhere that wasn't exactly the environment
Speaker 6: where they evolved, right, And so that's if you find
Speaker 6: a slug in Los Angeles, nine times out of ten,
Speaker 6: it is not from here.
Speaker 4: Of course, not because we don't The lawns aren't natural here, right,
Speaker 4: we're right scrub brush, Like, what are the snails going
Speaker 4: to do here?
Speaker 3: But they're like, ooh, look at this, that's news, so
Speaker 3: they do really. Yeah, so there's a bunch of snails too.
Speaker 6: That So we've been documenting introduced taxa, which like I said,
Speaker 6: almost nobody's been documenting. USDA cares about that for reasons
Speaker 6: that we should think of as sort of obvious given
Speaker 6: the amount of produce that comes from California, and if
Speaker 6: some of these invasive or introduced snails were to get
Speaker 6: into the Central Valley, that would become a big problem
Speaker 6: for various exports of or domestic and international and there's
Speaker 6: some snails and slugs that are harbors of or vectors
Speaker 6: for diseases, So things that we care about from sort
Speaker 6: of a pragmatic perspective, but then also from an evolutionary
Speaker 6: biologists perspective, it's interesting to me how these animals, whatever
Speaker 6: they are, are living in places that they didn't evolve.
Speaker 6: So how are they interacting with the rest of the
Speaker 6: iron Who's eating them? Who are they eating? Do they
Speaker 6: have any life history changes compared to the population that
Speaker 6: they came from, so what what effects are there of
Speaker 6: something called genetic drift.
Speaker 2: For more on genetic drift, which is kind of like
Speaker 2: rolling a twenty sided die in terms of DNA, listen
Speaker 2: to the Evolutionary Biology episode and then go out and
Speaker 2: say to a snail, Hey, dude, you made it. Who
Speaker 2: it's crazy.
Speaker 6: It's all sorts of fun things that we can ask
Speaker 6: once we sort of know who the players are and
Speaker 6: where they are. And so that's still where we are now,
Speaker 6: trying to figure out which species live here and where.
Speaker 3: And my first question is why snails?
Speaker 4: Why at all?
Speaker 3: Why gas? Why anybody?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: No like in you like? At what point were you like?
Speaker 4: These are the this is the group for me, yes,
Speaker 4: like yeah, because they're so cool. But you like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be a malacologist.
Speaker 3: It's happening right.
Speaker 6: Well, for any young person who's looking to become a malacologist,
Speaker 6: they should know that there are no malacology programs in
Speaker 6: the US or really anywhere as far as I know.
Speaker 3: So yeah, so.
Speaker 6: It's not a it's not a path that has been
Speaker 6: tread by future or ancestral generations of scientists.
Speaker 2: So you got to make your own slime trail future
Speaker 2: malacologists because instead of there being programs about molluscs specifically,
Speaker 2: you kind of come at it from the side, like
Speaker 2: a side door, like hello, and.
Speaker 3: Did you get here?
Speaker 6: How did I become that? Because there was no program
Speaker 6: to study it specifically. I took courses in invertebrates, right,
Speaker 6: so paleontological focused courses. It sort of just so happened
Speaker 6: that I ended up working with somebody who did sea
Speaker 6: slugs because they were totally awesome.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to do sea slugs and that was
Speaker 3: also a malis.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe gastropods would have like a crappy fossil
Speaker 2: record because they're squishy as hell, But duh, I mean
Speaker 2: I forgot a lot of them have shells, which big
Speaker 2: news here. Not squishy. That's a whole godamn point of
Speaker 2: a shell. They're squishless. Also, now, the way that some
Speaker 2: shells are perfectly coiled is because of math and because
Speaker 2: lopsided protein production when building their shells causes them to
Speaker 2: coil up. When one side of something is shorter than
Speaker 2: the other, it tends to twist and turn like that.
Speaker 2: But back to the shell fossil record.
Speaker 6: So they can tell you a lot about trends in
Speaker 6: evolution and rates of change and things like that because
Speaker 6: there are lots of them, where it's harder to do
Speaker 6: that with say, dinosaurs, because they're although they're much more
Speaker 6: charismatic in people's minds, right, and much more compelling in
Speaker 6: as skeletons there, they can be somewhat data poor in
Speaker 6: giving you lots of there'sn't that many of them, so
Speaker 6: the data points are fewer, whereas snails you have, and
Speaker 6: clams and things you've got millions and millions of data
Speaker 6: points in the fossil record.
Speaker 4: Right, Everyone that lives and dies is like boop, here's michelle, yep,
Speaker 4: have a look at it later.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go die but find now did you love
Speaker 2: snails and slugs.
Speaker 3: As a kid? I liked intertitle.
Speaker 6: I like tidepools as a kid, so I spent a
Speaker 6: lot of time in tidepools invertebrates. So I could just
Speaker 6: sit in a tide pool and that was what I
Speaker 6: was interested in, and I just stayed interested in that.
Speaker 3: So you did not grow up in like Nebraska.
Speaker 6: No, I grew up in New Jersey. But no, not really.
Speaker 6: They have the shore shot.
Speaker 4: But okay, sorry, let's get to snails now. So let's
Speaker 4: get to the most obvious question. And one million patrons
Speaker 4: asked us questions. I'm just going to condense it to
Speaker 4: my one of my first what is the difference between
Speaker 4: a snail and a slug? What is the difference a
Speaker 4: snail and a slug? Clearly went as a shell. They're
Speaker 4: both gastropods, that's right, which means that they have a
Speaker 4: foot on their stomach. Right in Latin, they're belly footers
Speaker 4: kind of right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, I mean that's that's what the term means.
Speaker 6: What's the difference between snails and slugs?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I know that seems like an obvious question, a good question,
Speaker 6: So I get asked that question a lot, and people
Speaker 6: often think or I've encountered people who thought that slugs
Speaker 6: are just snails that have kind of cast off their shell,
Speaker 6: like I'm done with this shell and now I'll be
Speaker 6: a slug, so.
Speaker 3: Like it's a goth face. That's not how it works.
Speaker 4: So I'm so sorry for the screaming. That just totally
Speaker 4: that threw me because it's so cute. But I love
Speaker 4: the idea that slugs maybe go through like a breakup
Speaker 4: and then just dish their shells like people cut bangs
Speaker 4: they have.
Speaker 6: So I've explained that that snails and slugs are both,
Speaker 6: like you said, gastropods, but there's lineages multiple places, multiple times.
Speaker 6: A slug is just the name for a snail whose
Speaker 6: shell is either absent or so small that the snail
Speaker 6: cannot retract into it fully. So there are things called
Speaker 6: semi slugs that have like little almost like the stigial shells,
Speaker 6: like this little dinky shell on it that it can't
Speaker 6: do anything with.
Speaker 2: I like to picture this type of shell as a tiny,
Speaker 2: non functional hat, like one worn at a steampunk Edwardian ball,
Speaker 2: or like a Jean Paul Gotier runway show or a
Speaker 2: royal wedding, and it turns out that tiny nonfunctional hats
Speaker 2: have a name. They're literally called fascinators, which, by the bye,
Speaker 2: comes from the Latin word for to cast a spell on,
Speaker 2: which comes from an earlier word for a dick shaped
Speaker 2: amulet worn to do witchcraft. So semi slugs just slugging
Speaker 2: around in bewitching tiny hats, like what's this. Oh yes,
Speaker 2: evolutionary biology is my milner and this took several million
Speaker 2: years to kraft.
Speaker 3: It's just still there.
Speaker 6: Others have an internal shell which is like a little
Speaker 6: disc that sometimes you can even see when you're looking
Speaker 6: down at a sort of semi translucent slug, which we
Speaker 6: have in Los Angeles from Europe, you can see like
Speaker 6: a little disc sort of in the middle of its body,
Speaker 6: and that's its tiny little remnant shell. So snails and
Speaker 6: slugs are both gastropods. Snails obviously what we usually call
Speaker 6: snails have shells. Slugs have a remnant shell or have
Speaker 6: completely lost their shell, but they can't regain it like
Speaker 6: during their life, and they have.
Speaker 3: Never lost it during their life. They were born that way.
Speaker 4: And so are slugs more evolved in some ways than
Speaker 4: snails because they over generations and generations are like I
Speaker 4: don't even need the shell, right.
Speaker 6: No, I'd say that not more evolved, just differently evolved.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's hard to say more or less, right
Speaker 6: because everything is always evolving, like every lineage is always evolving.
Speaker 6: Some gas dropods have extremely elaborate denticals or you could
Speaker 6: call them teeth that are at the margin of their aperture,
Speaker 6: so the opening of the shell, which makes their bodies
Speaker 6: able to get out but very difficult for other things
Speaker 6: to get in.
Speaker 4: So next time you see those insane tire knife strips
Speaker 4: near like the exit of a rental car place, just
Speaker 4: think a snail is that hardcore?
Speaker 3: They will shred you.
Speaker 6: And some one might argue that that is a highly
Speaker 6: evolved trait that is an anti predator trait or series
Speaker 6: of And slugs will evolve toxins on their body that
Speaker 6: make them unpalatable, right because if you imagine a slug
Speaker 6: has nothing.
Speaker 3: To it's just slugging along.
Speaker 6: And it's just clearly something that something could just eat. Right,
Speaker 6: But like a banana slug for example, since we're in California,
Speaker 6: like banana slugs have all kinds of compounds on their
Speaker 6: bodies and that has all sorts of chemicals in it
Speaker 6: that make them highly unpalatable to predators.
Speaker 2: Oh, slugs turning birds everywhere into feathery Gordon Ramses.
Speaker 3: Jesus sauce is hideous.
Speaker 5: That is fucking disgusting.
Speaker 3: That's why they can do slime around without anything eating them.
Speaker 3: They can slim around. I love that that's a verb.
Speaker 4: And I imagine also that might have that yellow color
Speaker 4: might be a warning sign you.
Speaker 6: Might, yeah, I mean some of them are brown, so
Speaker 6: it seems like some of them are using color for camouflage.
Speaker 6: But some of them are bright, which yeah, might be
Speaker 6: like in colorations and don't eat me.
Speaker 3: I'm disgusting.
Speaker 6: But there are people who who have their whole research
Speaker 6: program is banana slugs because they're really weird and fascinating.
Speaker 2: So side note, I got thirsty for some weird banana
Speaker 2: slug facts, like maybe they like the sound of whistling,
Speaker 2: or they're all sagittariuses. But what did I find? That
Speaker 2: Their scientific name means big penis, and their members can
Speaker 2: be the length of their entire body, sprouting from their heads,
Speaker 2: and they can jump off another's penis. Like okay, you cool,
Speaker 2: You done with that? So boy, howdy this really whoa
Speaker 2: This convo was about to take a turn.
Speaker 3: I can tell you the weirdest thing about slugs in general.
Speaker 6: They have highly, highly elaborate reproductive morphology. That was one
Speaker 6: of my first questions, which which is I mean to
Speaker 6: be like very specific about that they have giant, elaborate penises.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what they've got. One of my first questions.
Speaker 4: My first question is why why why snails? My second
Speaker 4: question is love making all smells and slugs terrestrial. Almost
Speaker 4: all the very vast majority I have both reproductive male
Speaker 4: and female reproductive parts, so we call that hermaphroditic.
Speaker 3: And they.
Speaker 6: When they mate, they simul usually will simultaneously impregnate each other,
Speaker 6: which means that they're giant penises or however, not always giant,
Speaker 6: but they can have very elaborate reproductive systems, specifically penises to.
Speaker 3: Sort of get the job done.
Speaker 6: And then they both leave that mating encounter and go
Speaker 6: off and lay eggs fertilized eggs. So it's a very
Speaker 6: efficient system. Right, you don't have one sex that cannot
Speaker 6: lay eggs. Both sexes can do both things. It's very
Speaker 6: efficient and for a lot of reasons they've evolved these
Speaker 6: like very elaborate reproductive. I mean it's even called courtship.
Speaker 6: Like they'll different species will follow each other. They're around
Speaker 6: in very stereotypical ways and like touch each other and then.
Speaker 3: Like slime around each other.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this is something that is somewhat new to
Speaker 6: me because I did. It's not what I originally studied,
Speaker 6: but I've become I have studied it since working here.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating and strange and wonderful.
Speaker 6: And if you wanted to find the best video ever,
Speaker 6: if there can be such a thing. David Attenborough narrating
Speaker 6: leopard slug. Leopard slug sex Climax maximus ONEX maximus is
Speaker 6: this species.
Speaker 4: It's called a leopard slug, more like Climax maximus.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was looking all this up in a
Speaker 2: Chicago coffee shop this week and I had to like
Speaker 2: ankle my laptop screen because technically I was watching slug
Speaker 2: porn in public. And I won't lie. It was very sensual.
Speaker 3: Here's how it works.
Speaker 2: So one slug is DTF and leaves a saucy little
Speaker 2: tray of pheromones, and another slug smells it and is like, hey, what.
Speaker 5: Up you be the pursuer to confirm that it's there
Speaker 5: and ready to mate. Gives the pursued a nibble.
Speaker 2: The pair climbs a tree and then they wrap themselves
Speaker 2: around each other and they descend on a cord of
Speaker 2: thick slime. They kind of drop down and hang like
Speaker 2: a Moroccan lantern at a Bohemian styled Airbnb.
Speaker 6: Yes, they'll sort of intertwine themselves and make sticky and
Speaker 6: then slide down a string from a tree and wind
Speaker 6: themselves around each other and then extend their giant penises
Speaker 6: that intertwine with each other and are blue and translucent,
Speaker 6: and it is wild.
Speaker 5: They fan out to form a translucent flower like globe.
Speaker 5: And now I've lost sperm prosses from one slug to
Speaker 5: the other.
Speaker 6: And David Attenborough does a very David Attenborough job of
Speaker 6: describing this incredible phenomenon with.
Speaker 3: Like warm objectivity.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, sounds like if you went to an electric
Speaker 4: daisy carnival and you had a really wickedly slash.
Speaker 6: Blue penises and yep, yeah, they're uh yeah, they do
Speaker 6: all sorts of weird stuff.
Speaker 3: Why do they have such monster donks?
Speaker 6: Well, there is there's probably a better answer than I
Speaker 6: can give. But the answer that I can give, which
Speaker 6: sort of partially answers that question, is that species differences
Speaker 6: are what your your reproductive parts look like.
Speaker 3: Which are on the inside most of the time.
Speaker 6: So when there's reproductive isolation, so when one group becomes isolated,
Speaker 6: and then over time they accumulate differences that then make
Speaker 6: them different enough so that if they were to ever
Speaker 6: encounter that other species, they wouldn't be able to mate.
Speaker 6: They'refore whatever reason, their reproductive morphology evolves quickly, relatively quickly,
Speaker 6: more quickly than their.
Speaker 3: Body structure on the surface.
Speaker 6: If you look at what looks like one species, right,
Speaker 6: it's a black slug with an orange foot, all right,
Speaker 6: that it can look that way, and there can be
Speaker 6: a whole bunch of species that look the same way,
Speaker 6: but inside the reproductive morphology or their penis morphology is
Speaker 6: very different. So that means that they are now reproductively
Speaker 6: isolated from each other. That keeps them reproductively isolated or
Speaker 6: as one distinct species from these other species. That makes sense,
Speaker 6: doesn't exactly answer your question, doesn't exactly answer why.
Speaker 2: So slugs tiny shell or no shell, but big dick
Speaker 2: energy for days, probably because they don't have the expense
Speaker 2: of making a shell.
Speaker 4: I really don't know. And now let's talk a little
Speaker 4: bit about anyone can get pregnant, that it's just knocked up,
Speaker 4: free for all.
Speaker 3: Why don't we have that in other species? Please? Huh? Yeah?
Speaker 6: One to answer the the first part, why are more
Speaker 6: organisms not hermaphroditic or have both male and female reproductive parts.
Speaker 3: Part of it is that.
Speaker 6: There is an advantage, but a bigger disadvantage to self fertilize.
Speaker 6: So sometimes if you have both parts, you can fertilize yourself.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's so narcissistic, right, So.
Speaker 6: Then you can make you can make offspring that you are.
Speaker 3: You are both a mother and the father.
Speaker 6: They're not clones, but they are your offspring with no partner, right,
Speaker 6: So that can be problematic because you don't get variations.
Speaker 6: The scientific consensus generally is that if you are self fertilizing,
Speaker 6: that's not a great system in the long run for
Speaker 6: genetic diversity, and when environments change, you always need genetic diversity,
Speaker 6: otherwise your lineage will just go extinct. The more genetically
Speaker 6: diverse all not in all situations, but yeah, in most
Speaker 6: the more genetically diverse you are as a population within
Speaker 6: a species, the better you are essentially equipped to handle
Speaker 6: environmental change. Right, So if things change some individuals, your
Speaker 6: environment changes, some individuals in that group will be able to.
Speaker 3: Survive and then have offspring. Right, So that's usually a
Speaker 3: good thing.
Speaker 2: So diversity helps make populations stronger. If certain political powers
Speaker 2: were as intelligent as slugs, they could comprehend this.
Speaker 3: And why not more hermaphroditic.
Speaker 6: It's just possible that it didn't evolve in some groups,
Speaker 6: and the groups that it did evolve in, sometimes it continues.
Speaker 6: It seems like sometimes hermaphroditic reproductive systems continue to be
Speaker 6: how that system evolves or that species evolves. But anytime
Speaker 6: you have any mutation that changes that knocks out either
Speaker 6: them female or male reproductive system.
Speaker 3: Then you have one.
Speaker 6: And then that could be after that you're on the
Speaker 6: road to separate sexes. Could be that having separate sexes
Speaker 6: is good. It's possible that you get more variation when
Speaker 6: you have males, possibly, and that's usually one of the
Speaker 6: the sort of the go to explanations that males are like.
Speaker 6: I give a lecture in an evolutionary biology course that
Speaker 6: is called why males.
Speaker 3: And that's for the purposes of the course.
Speaker 6: The reason we have that lecture is because why would
Speaker 6: you ever have a sex that does not have eggs?
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 6: From an evolutionary perspective, why would you ever have a
Speaker 6: sex that can't lay eggs?
Speaker 3: No, that's buddy, that it's like males. What's the point, right, So.
Speaker 6: We need someone to explain, right, Yeah, so from an
Speaker 6: evolutionary perspective, they're the reason that the answer is that
Speaker 6: males provide genetic differentiation. They provide variation to the population,
Speaker 6: whereas females do too. But having males just be males,
Speaker 6: there's also of than dynamics that can happen if you
Speaker 6: have males that don't males as males, which by definition
Speaker 6: cannot procreate with eggs.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess males are just like a genetic storehouse. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like a gammyt confetti gun. Yeah, you know, just get
Speaker 4: it out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I mean, that's one way to think of it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, here we are toiling internally like I made.
Speaker 6: One baby, Yes, I mean that, yeah, and that's a
Speaker 6: whole Yeah, that's a very interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very interesting. They're like males and the number.
Speaker 6: Of offspring a male can have versus a female, which
Speaker 6: is totally different if you're hermaphroditic, right, which is totally
Speaker 6: different yep, because it's much more egalitarian sort of by definition,
Speaker 6: if you're hermaphroditic and you're a slug. Because there is
Speaker 6: no light, there are no separate sexes. Everybody's everybody's reproductively
Speaker 6: the same.
Speaker 3: It sounds like socialism is the best form.
Speaker 2: Now, let's bone up on detail about the gas lighty
Speaker 2: romance of snail love making.
Speaker 6: One is in land snails, and they have these structures.
Speaker 6: Not all land snails have them, but the ones that
Speaker 6: do have structures called love darts. Have you heard about this?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: Okay, So our common European garden snail, which is I
Speaker 6: call it the wet sidewalk snail. Like if it rains,
Speaker 6: when it rains in Los Angeles on a sidewalk, you'll
Speaker 6: see a snail and it's probably ninety nine percent of
Speaker 6: the time. If you live in urban suburban parts of
Speaker 6: Los Angeles or southern California, it'll be this snail. It's
Speaker 6: a European snail. It just like a brown brownish light brown,
Speaker 6: dark brown, modeled sort of shell. It just looks very
Speaker 6: like boring. It just looks like a snail.
Speaker 3: And it's a helix. What is it?
Speaker 6: It's right, it used to be helix aspersa. Now it's
Speaker 6: corner with spursa. They changed the genus.
Speaker 3: Name a while ago. Really, yeah, but that's not uncommon. Okay, Yes,
Speaker 3: that's the snail.
Speaker 6: So that snail and others when as they're mating, they
Speaker 6: can deploy a dart and it's it's a calcareous or kiteness,
Speaker 6: like if you imagine a corneous person of common European
Speaker 6: garden snails about the size of like a half dollar,
Speaker 6: like a like one and a half times the size
Speaker 6: of a quarter in size.
Speaker 3: It's shooting a dart.
Speaker 6: The dart is probably like the length of your middle
Speaker 6: finger nail. Okay, So it's it's not inc it's not microscopic.
Speaker 6: It's a macroscopic. And they'll shoot that at each other,
Speaker 6: sometimes to the detriment of the other snail and sometimes
Speaker 6: killing the other snail, which it's not that's not the
Speaker 6: intent of it. But what it does is it it
Speaker 6: influences the body. I think hormonally, so I think it's
Speaker 6: this dart that's got a lot of hormone laden around it,
Speaker 6: and it influences the the receiving snail, the snail that
Speaker 6: gets the dart to impregnate its eggs with the sperm
Speaker 6: using the sperm of or fertilize its eggs using the
Speaker 6: sperm of the dart giving individual.
Speaker 2: So, for obvious reasons, many scholars believe that the lore
Speaker 2: of matchmaking Cupid was based on these very love darts
Speaker 2: of our horny snail friends. So the individual that gets
Speaker 2: the dart is more likely to digest in its body
Speaker 2: any leftover sperm it had from a recent boning. Now,
Speaker 2: can you imagine if Cupid had stayed like a little
Speaker 2: more true to form, and instead of being a silky
Speaker 2: skinned human infant, was actually a snail just somehow using
Speaker 2: its big slickfoot to perform some really well intentioned, endearingly
Speaker 2: cock blocky archery.
Speaker 3: So the dart is like a dib's.
Speaker 4: Like it's almost like an aphrodisiac where they're like, I
Speaker 4: don't care about all the others, that's right, sperm, I god,
Speaker 4: this is the one I'm into.
Speaker 3: That's right. It's like a DIBs. It's like soulmates, like
Speaker 3: a soulmate arrow. Yeah, so it's called a love dart.
Speaker 6: I mean it's kind of an named Yeah themerroology.
Speaker 3: Is there oxytocin a play or does that even happen?
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's a hormone.
Speaker 6: I don't know what hormones though, and someone does someone
Speaker 6: knows about snail hormones.
Speaker 3: I do not.
Speaker 2: So apparently the slick goo covering this little love spear
Speaker 2: has an allo hormone, which is a substance that causes
Speaker 2: the female reproductive organs to not digest the dart tosser's
Speaker 2: sperm and to also keep the reproductive track open. So
Speaker 2: it's essentially like a stabby message meant to convey, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be your baby's dad in a minute. Let's
Speaker 2: put a pin in this.
Speaker 6: In terrestrial snails, slugs don't seem to do that as
Speaker 6: far as I know. Snails a bunch of snails and
Speaker 6: the helicids, the helicid.
Speaker 3: Snails will do it.
Speaker 6: And in sea slugs there are a bunch of different
Speaker 6: species I know of in the Saccaglossa, which are there
Speaker 6: the sap sucking slugs.
Speaker 3: There's sea slugs that some of them.
Speaker 6: Can incorporate chloroplasts from the algae that they eat and
Speaker 6: put it in their body where it continues to photosynthesize.
Speaker 6: That makes them one of the well, if not the
Speaker 6: only photosynthetic animal.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: It's not indogenous, right, it's not that they are. They've
Speaker 6: evolved photosynthesis, but they can use something that's photosynthetic. They're
Speaker 6: taking a chloroplast, right, the photosynthetic machinery of an alga,
Speaker 6: and taking just that organelle and putting it in their body,
Speaker 6: which is really wild.
Speaker 3: That's resourceful as well. Yeah, right, so they can.
Speaker 6: Some of those species and other ones related to them
Speaker 6: that don't necessarily have the ability to what's called kleptoplasty,
Speaker 6: they can't grab chloroplasts and.
Speaker 2: Keep them kleptoplasty. I will never not relate these sea
Speaker 2: slugs to shoplifters tucking chloropast organelles into their pants.
Speaker 6: But in that group sack of glossa they can. They
Speaker 6: have a penis with a little barb on it, like
Speaker 6: a little it's called a stylet, like a little sword
Speaker 6: ending and they can go around and they're a homaphroditic, right,
Speaker 6: So anyone who's acting as a male at that moment,
Speaker 6: which is anything anytime you use your penis, you can.
Speaker 3: Poke or stab.
Speaker 6: You can stab a potential partner and inseminate them that way.
Speaker 6: So it's called hypodermic insemination. Oh my god, which is
Speaker 6: exactly what it sounds like. But every individual is able
Speaker 6: to do that hypodermic hypodermic because it's like a like
Speaker 6: hypodermic insemination.
Speaker 3: That's like a whole new play on needle dick inside.
Speaker 4: Because you're like, no for real though, oh my god,
Speaker 4: so are you ever at cocktail parties and someone's like, hey,
Speaker 4: jan this conversations more, get over here.
Speaker 6: I have two little kids, so I'm rarely at cocktail parties.
Speaker 6: But my postdoc advisor has been at cocktail parties and
Speaker 6: started telling the hypodermic insemination story, which, as you might imagine,
Speaker 6: really gets a lot of interest.
Speaker 2: Okay, moving on from slug dicks. So many people have
Speaker 2: this question. Can you give me, in a nutshell the
Speaker 2: difference between terrestrial and aquatic snails and slugs?
Speaker 3: What's the deal? Why can some of them hang out?
Speaker 6: Sure? Yeah, right, So terrestrial means lives on land, and
Speaker 6: obviously aquatic means lives in freshwater or if it's the ocean,
Speaker 6: we would normally call it marine. And then from the
Speaker 6: marine realm, different lineages have evolved, most of them like
Speaker 6: it was a big introduction once or a big evolutionary
Speaker 6: innovation that one lineage evolved to be terrestrial, and then
Speaker 6: once they were terrestrial, they really sort of exploded in diversity.
Speaker 6: So there's a bunch of different pathways that they've taken
Speaker 6: to kind of you could call it invade these different ecosystems,
Speaker 6: and it's considered one of the biggest evolutionary innovations in
Speaker 6: the evolution of animals is and doesn't seem like it
Speaker 6: because not that many people think or talk about gastropods,
Speaker 6: but gastropods evolving or snails evolving from the ocean to
Speaker 6: the land is considered one of the biggest evolutionary innovations
Speaker 6: in the history of.
Speaker 3: Life because it's so hard to do.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, your whole europhysiology has to accommodate oxygen
Speaker 6: instead and air instead of water, which is.
Speaker 3: A big, big difference.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine if it just the air just had
Speaker 4: floating jellyfish in it, just like puffing.
Speaker 3: By flying, and it was like nothing that jellyfishing was
Speaker 3: having the face.
Speaker 4: Now, what is it about terrestrial snails and slugs? Is
Speaker 4: it like a byom, like bring your own mass on
Speaker 4: land and then just like cover yourself in a moisturel
Speaker 4: air and you're good to go.
Speaker 6: That lets them start to survive when it went in
Speaker 6: like arid conditions at all. So if you have a
Speaker 6: shell and your marine, then you have something you can
Speaker 6: pull into and keep yourself safe and from drying out.
Speaker 6: So it's like it had two different functions. If the
Speaker 6: first function in the marine realm or where they're living
Speaker 6: in the ocean was for protection, its secondary function was
Speaker 6: as as a to prevent desiccation, whether it was necessary
Speaker 6: for that organism when it first evolved or not.
Speaker 3: So that allowed them This is why.
Speaker 6: We call it preadapt which like I said, has some
Speaker 6: kind of problematic implications, but the idea is that they
Speaker 6: had this trade already and that trade ended up having
Speaker 6: a really important secondary function that allowed them to make
Speaker 6: this big transition onto land. So if you have a shell,
Speaker 6: your shell can be where you pull into and keep
Speaker 6: yourself from drying out. So that's what they do. So
Speaker 6: that's one of the reasons that that big evolutionary innovation
Speaker 6: could happen in the first place, that makes sense. But
Speaker 6: for slugs, they obviously don't have that. So you mostly
Speaker 6: see slugs in wet environments, which is why you see
Speaker 6: banana slugs in parts of the Greater Bay Area, because
Speaker 6: you've got lots of wet, foggy redwood forests where they
Speaker 6: get a lot of moisture all the time just from
Speaker 6: the air, right, so you have very There are very few,
Speaker 6: only probably two or three species of native slug in
Speaker 6: all of southern California, and it's because it's dry, so
Speaker 6: you just don't find them. You only find them in little,
Speaker 6: tiny habitats that are probably refuge habitats that are still
Speaker 6: wetter than on the tops of mountains, in places where
Speaker 6: during the Pleistocene there used to be a lot more
Speaker 6: water that they're these little relics of when it used
Speaker 6: to be much wetter.
Speaker 4: Now, let's debunk some flint flamb is Are there any
Speaker 4: myths about snails or slugs that.
Speaker 3: You're like, that is not the case, people.
Speaker 6: What I don't know if i'd say now that I
Speaker 6: could think of, but there used to be quite a
Speaker 6: lot of snails and slugs used convergently by different native
Speaker 6: peoples of different lands for medicinal purposes. So people from
Speaker 6: like the Puritans, which were not native to North America,
Speaker 6: but the Puritans and Native Americans in say the American West,
Speaker 6: would use snails and slugs to cure things, cure like
Speaker 6: sore throats or ooh problems, other problems that were probably
Speaker 6: physical ailments.
Speaker 2: Okay, like you got a souristic snail on it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, which is interesting, and that's happened around the world,
Speaker 6: and there are some there is some research now. This
Speaker 6: is sort of like when folk wisdom ends up having
Speaker 6: there is some truth to it, right, like ethnobotany, like
Speaker 6: a lot of ethnobotany, Like what do people think plants do? Like,
Speaker 6: plants are full of chemicals, so yes, they do do things,
Speaker 6: and sometimes people often people have figured out how to use.
Speaker 3: Plants to do things medicinally.
Speaker 6: So there is some research now that slug and snail
Speaker 6: slime can be healing for human skin in various ways.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I because that is one of the most
Speaker 4: asked questions from Patreon is is snail goop really good
Speaker 4: for your skin?
Speaker 3: Clement Lauren Edgart Crowe kabar Lei yep.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of South Korea has a lot
Speaker 6: of snail slime products, a lot of Southeast Asia has
Speaker 6: a lot of snail slime products or yes for everything
Speaker 6: from like curing acne scars to just general beautification.
Speaker 2: So side note, A quick google opens the doors into
Speaker 2: the world of gleaming slime streaks and glistening promises of
Speaker 2: self repair and faded acney scars and hydrated under ibags.
Speaker 3: If you're up for it.
Speaker 2: There's a procedure called scar glow that involves thousands of
Speaker 2: tiny needle pricks into your face, followed by snail foot
Speaker 2: secretions oozed into your open wounds. It costs three hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy five dollars a session, partly because we'll pay
Speaker 2: for anything, apparently, and partly because the snails are meticulously
Speaker 2: cared for and receive daily showers with fresh water and
Speaker 2: a feast of fresh fruits and vegetables. So by the bye,
Speaker 2: stay tuned for an episode on calology, which is the
Speaker 2: study of human beauty standards and how they affect our psychology.
Speaker 2: I just recorded it this past week in Chicago. It's fascinating,
Speaker 2: it's also enraging. So more on that in a few weeks. AnyWho,
Speaker 2: this snail musin may possibly be effective at hydrating.
Speaker 6: But and I did spend some time looking at the
Speaker 6: patents of some of these, so I am I'm not
Speaker 6: a biochemist, and this is more a biochemistry question. But
Speaker 6: there does seem like there is there could be some
Speaker 6: benefit to putting something that is water rich on your skin, right,
Speaker 6: But I don't know how that would be very different
Speaker 6: than like alo or anything else that is like an emulient, right,
Speaker 6: Like something that has a lot of water in it
Speaker 6: or keeps water in your skin that's generally going to
Speaker 6: make your skin look better.
Speaker 3: So I don't really have an answer.
Speaker 6: It does look like there is some promising research that
Speaker 6: slug or mostly snail slime can improve your skin snake.
Speaker 4: It's funny though, because we talk about snake oil. But
Speaker 4: literally now if someone were like snail slime, yeah, someone
Speaker 4: now would be like, well, I could see how snake
Speaker 4: oil could be right, that's like it's a set mask.
Speaker 4: It would be like awesome, it's part of a ten
Speaker 4: step skincare system.
Speaker 6: I think that the problem is, well, it's not safe
Speaker 6: to just put snails on your face because they can
Speaker 6: host parasites.
Speaker 3: And I don't think that that.
Speaker 6: I think that the ick factors a little too much
Speaker 6: for most people, even if they were clean snails. So
Speaker 6: that's sort of that's one thing. But then two for
Speaker 6: a lot of the face masks and creams, there.
Speaker 4: Is no.
Speaker 6: Regulated I mean, this is the thing with like what
Speaker 6: they call pharmaceuticals right there. There is no regulated amount
Speaker 6: that you have to have in a product to say
Speaker 6: that it is going to be effective. But they do
Speaker 6: it with the snail. That is the law Los Angeles
Speaker 6: wet sidewalk snail.
Speaker 3: That's realal yep.
Speaker 6: So the patent says, and you can look up there's
Speaker 6: multiple patents. One of the patents has a very detailed
Speaker 6: explanation of basically a salad spinner, and the cornuous spursum,
Speaker 6: which is the species we're talking about, is given various
Speaker 6: I mean, if you look on the labels of some
Speaker 6: of these products, it will say all these exotic names
Speaker 6: like Chilean earth snail, like black something snail like there's
Speaker 6: there are nobody is really using cornuous spursum, or sometimes
Speaker 6: they are, but they'll I think it maybe ups the
Speaker 6: buy in of people if you call it something that
Speaker 6: sounds extremely exotic, not the snail that's literally outside right
Speaker 6: now eating my pumpkin patch. Like those snails are the
Speaker 6: snails they're talking about. And what they did was they
Speaker 6: put a bunch of them into a salad spinner and
Speaker 6: the agitation caused the snails to produce a bunch of as.
Speaker 3: A probably protective measure.
Speaker 6: I mean, if they're in imagine that that's not something
Speaker 6: that evolution is really put a big mark on for
Speaker 6: snails because they're usually not being spun around, right, so
Speaker 6: some but you know, to protect themselves in some way,
Speaker 6: they produce a bunch of and a net is collected
Speaker 6: and filtered somehow and then added to these products. And
Speaker 6: then they did test it in some various number of
Speaker 6: ways to see if it did seem to improve cell
Speaker 6: repair and things like that.
Speaker 2: So if you're looking for like a less snaily, less
Speaker 2: expensive hack, check out something else with hyaluronic acid, which,
Speaker 2: if you remember from the Glycobiology episode about carbs, hyaluronic
Speaker 2: acid is just a sugar that can hold up to
Speaker 2: a thousand times its weight in water, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of it in snail slime because they got a
Speaker 2: bit of gliding to do. So this next part is crazy.
Speaker 2: I didn't know this at all. So what is snail slime?
Speaker 2: It's mostly water.
Speaker 6: It's mostly water, and it is a One way of
Speaker 6: describing it is as a liquid crystal. And this is
Speaker 6: outside of my realm of expertise. But there's ways that
Speaker 6: it can be sticky and fluid very quickly and move
Speaker 6: from sticky fluid to semi fluid, and that the ability
Speaker 6: to do that can put you in a category as
Speaker 6: a biological product called a liquid crystal.
Speaker 3: Ps.
Speaker 2: Liquid crystal means that the molecules follow orderly patterns like
Speaker 2: a solid, but it flows like a liquid. So another
Speaker 2: liquid crystal soapy water?
Speaker 3: Who knew me? And it just helps for mostly mobility
Speaker 3: and protection. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 6: So you can as a snail or a slug, you
Speaker 6: could make multiple kinds of slime for various purposes. Right,
Speaker 6: so your moving slime would be different than your protection slime. Right, so,
Speaker 6: the cells on your foot would make slippery slimes you
Speaker 6: can move around, or very sticky slime to stick you
Speaker 6: to something. And then your body, right, the dorsal part
Speaker 6: of your body would make maybe chemical rich, protective, unpalatable slime.
Speaker 3: It seems like risky to have essentially a trail of
Speaker 3: breadcrumbs leading to your location, Like hey, yeah, here's here's
Speaker 3: an actual map to find out where I'm writing. So
Speaker 3: there's yes, it does that.
Speaker 6: There's sort of Maybe I could think of two reasons
Speaker 6: why that would be a good thing. One, it might
Speaker 6: advertise the chemicals that are in you. That would be
Speaker 6: so you could have anti predator slime in your foot slime.
Speaker 6: Two that says predator this I smell disgusting, or I
Speaker 6: smell extremely impalatable or something right that makes them. But
Speaker 6: not all slugs are unpalatable, like raccoons and skunks have
Speaker 6: a field day.
Speaker 3: Well so so some of them aren't.
Speaker 2: So I just watched a video of a raccoon eating
Speaker 2: slugs like they were a bag of stretchy gummy candy,
Speaker 2: and it was imagery that will stay with me for life.
Speaker 2: Don't watch it. Also, side note, don't eat any raw
Speaker 2: snails or slugs because they may carry rat lungworm, which
Speaker 2: is a worm that burrows into your brain and can
Speaker 2: kill you. So serious illnesses have happened in a few
Speaker 2: countries and even in the southern United States, mostly in
Speaker 2: boys and young men who have been dared by friends
Speaker 2: to eat a raw slug or snail, So please don't
Speaker 2: do that. Cook them if you have to. So just
Speaker 2: like in case the taste wasn't enough to not make
Speaker 2: you want a gnaw on a live molluscs, there's the
Speaker 2: rat long worm.
Speaker 3: And it also can tell.
Speaker 6: So if you're a snail or a slug, you might
Speaker 6: have trouble finding a mate, and your slime trail may
Speaker 6: be a path to you from somebody else who would
Speaker 6: be your potential mate. So it's like your breadcrumb trail.
Speaker 6: That's your romantic breadcrumb trail. Here I am because it's
Speaker 6: they have eyes on the top of tiny little eyestalks.
Speaker 6: They probably are not seeing very very well. They're probably
Speaker 6: all influenced. Most of their senses are probably pheromones. So
Speaker 6: what pheromones do they have? Do other snails have? And
Speaker 6: how do they know navigate and find each other? Which
Speaker 6: is sometimes if you're a snail or a slug, sometimes
Speaker 6: the only time you can find someone to mate with
Speaker 6: is when it rains.
Speaker 3: Oh, oh, it happen when it rains.
Speaker 6: Right. If you think of an environment where they're estivating
Speaker 6: or they're in like snail hibernation, for a while, or
Speaker 6: they're underground and their slugs and they come out at
Speaker 6: night and then they want to find somebody to mate with.
Speaker 6: They have to they have to find them, probably using
Speaker 6: these little pheromone trails.
Speaker 4: And let's talk about their Martian googly eyes, because like
Speaker 4: it's so weird.
Speaker 3: I feel like we're so used to it, but yeah,
Speaker 3: they're yeah weird. You have two sticks they grow out
Speaker 3: of your head from moment to moment, what the hell's
Speaker 3: going on?
Speaker 6: And they can also pull them into their head and
Speaker 6: then pop them back out. And marine snails, most marine
Speaker 6: snails don't have that. Most marine snails their eyes are
Speaker 6: on their face, okay, and then they have little sticking
Speaker 6: things that are sort of like their sensory tentacles, right,
Speaker 6: but they don't have eyes on the end of them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: So if you ever see like cartoons, like, it's easy
Speaker 6: to tell who knows their snail biology by a cartoon,
Speaker 6: because terrestrial snails almost always have two sets, an upper
Speaker 6: optical set of tentacles and the lower sensories set of tentacles,
Speaker 6: and marine snails almost always have at least one set
Speaker 6: of tentacles that have no eyes on the top. Their
Speaker 6: eyes on there on their face, if you will, are
Speaker 6: on their head, And how are.
Speaker 4: These terrestrial eyestalks even working? And also side note, don't
Speaker 4: they have crazy tongues? Yes, yes they do, Yes, they do.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So the eye is on a muscle.
Speaker 6: And if you were to look at a snail and
Speaker 6: you were to poke at its eyestalk, it'll pull its
Speaker 6: eye in, but its eye is pendent of its eyestalk,
Speaker 6: so we can pull its eye in on a muscle
Speaker 6: first before the rest of the stalk. Oh right, So
Speaker 6: it's like having a foot in a sock, Like you
Speaker 6: could pull your foot out of your sock and your sock.
Speaker 3: Is still there, so they can do that. Hey, kiddos,
Speaker 3: don't poke snail eyes.
Speaker 6: Okay, all right, So they have I think an image
Speaker 6: forming eye, but there's no reason to think that they're
Speaker 6: making a lot of sense out of what they're seeing.
Speaker 3: What about their weird tongues, Yeah, they're weird tongues.
Speaker 6: So their tongues are called radula or one radula two
Speaker 6: ragually and I tell people.
Speaker 3: It's like it's like a cat tongue.
Speaker 6: So if you imagine if you have ever been licked
Speaker 6: by a cat, right, it's that really rough tongue, so
Speaker 6: their ragula is like a cat tongue, and all of
Speaker 6: those little the bit that makes it extremely effective are
Speaker 6: little like teeth, little teeth with it on the tongue,
Speaker 6: so it's like a strip that moves in and out,
Speaker 6: and the mouth kind of shoots it out and scrapes
Speaker 6: and pulls it back in, and shoots it out and
Speaker 6: scrapes and pulls it back in.
Speaker 2: So a snail tongue is made up of hundreds to
Speaker 2: thousands of tiny little teeth that have different shapes and
Speaker 2: sizes depending on the species. So if you watch a
Speaker 2: video of a snail licking glass, it's like a tiny
Speaker 2: wet sarlac pit from the nineteen eighty three version.
Speaker 4: Of Return to the Jedi. It's just like a whole
Speaker 4: lined with teeth. It's a miniature nightmare. Now, on the
Speaker 4: topic of arid horrors, what happens when a snail gets dry?
Speaker 4: You had mentioned hibernation, and I know this question, I
Speaker 4: feel like before I even knew I was doing this episode,
Speaker 4: But why can they sometimes just hang out, sealed off
Speaker 4: in their shell for like months?
Speaker 6: Right, Well, that's one of the reasons that they're good
Speaker 6: at the snails that can do that are good at
Speaker 6: living in environments where they didn't evolve and that can
Speaker 6: be very hot and dry. That they survive because they
Speaker 6: can do that very thing. It's called estivation. So it's
Speaker 6: hibernation essentially. And so they find a spot and they
Speaker 6: can put out a sp she'll that will stick their
Speaker 6: shell to a surface, so like the side of a house,
Speaker 6: and then they can pull their body back in and
Speaker 6: make another layer that covers their body and has.
Speaker 3: A little hole as an air hole. Oh my god.
Speaker 6: And then they can sit there and wait, I have
Speaker 6: one estimating, Like I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker 3: It's sitting over there. I can show you. Yes, I
Speaker 3: see it in a jar, just like gone fishing. I
Speaker 3: love that. You just have a jar with a snail
Speaker 3: in it. How long has it been kicking it? So
Speaker 3: these have been here a couple of weeks. I gave
Speaker 3: them water.
Speaker 2: They're just yeah, sure, I'll baby talk a gastropod. So
Speaker 2: what so a snail seals itself into its shell during
Speaker 2: hot or dry periods, kind of like how you would
Speaker 2: barricade yourself indoors during the summer in Arizona. And there's
Speaker 2: like a tiny little hole and they're sealed off slime
Speaker 2: wall kind of like a mail slot through which you
Speaker 2: would accept air or pizzas even though snails are fasting.
Speaker 6: So they estivate for weeks to months, days to weeks,
Speaker 6: two months and then don't get hungry.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess when they do.
Speaker 6: I mean if they if they have no resources, they
Speaker 6: would just die eventually, right, they would just drown die.
Speaker 3: But once they have rain, then they'll find.
Speaker 6: Each other and mate and find something to eat and
Speaker 6: then go back to estivating.
Speaker 3: So it's like there.
Speaker 6: I guess once they have enough resources, they'll just go
Speaker 6: to sleep and like they'll slow down their metabolism and
Speaker 6: stay like that for Yeah, they can stay like that
Speaker 6: for a really long time, which also extends their their lives.
Speaker 6: Like people have asked how long do they live, and
Speaker 6: I said, I they could live for five plus years. Really,
Speaker 6: I think so because most of their especially if a
Speaker 6: lot of their life is just estivating, right, so they're
Speaker 6: not doing anything, they're just waiting, So they can kind
Speaker 6: of extend their lives and also live in a place
Speaker 6: that's really dry, so like snail's pace is kind of
Speaker 6: legit there. Yeah, Yeah, how do you feel about the
Speaker 6: term snail's pace. And how do you feel about the
Speaker 6: term snail mail?
Speaker 3: Snail mail? I don't really care. Yeah, it's all right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Do you feel like as a malacologists who study snails,
Speaker 4: people expect you to get things back to them slower
Speaker 4: just on a subconscious level?
Speaker 3: I would?
Speaker 6: I wish that that were the case. That's that would
Speaker 6: be great if that were the case, because that's kind
Speaker 6: of how I operate, So you know what I mean,
Speaker 6: if it were that it was that the expectation would
Speaker 6: be that it was slower, that would be a good thing.
Speaker 4: There have to be people who studied cheetahs and people
Speaker 4: are disappointed that they don't return emails faster, just subconsciously,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: Can I hit you with some Patreon questions? Yeah, okay, sure,
Speaker 4: But before we take questions from you, our beloved listeners,
Speaker 4: we're going to take a quick break for sponsors of
Speaker 4: the show.
Speaker 3: Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do?
Speaker 4: They help us give money to different charities every week.
Speaker 4: So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money,
Speaker 4: you can go to Aliward dot com and look for
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Speaker 4: Okay, your questions, this is a rapid fire around. You
Speaker 4: can answer as fast as you want, Sarah question, great question.
Speaker 4: A few people ask us where do all the shells
Speaker 4: come from? Are they making them? Are they finding them?
Speaker 4: What the shell's going on making?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're making them. So I say that it's like
Speaker 3: a turtle.
Speaker 6: Right, So a turtle makes its shell and it lives
Speaker 6: in its and it's attached to its shell, and it
Speaker 6: can't somehow like cast it off and get another one.
Speaker 6: A snail is in that sense exactly the same. Okay,
Speaker 6: it makes its shell when it's a little tiny baby,
Speaker 6: it has a tiny little shell.
Speaker 3: As it grows, it adds to its shell. So it's
Speaker 3: like a turtle.
Speaker 6: Like a turtle doesn't just it's not like naked when
Speaker 6: it's born and then finds a shell.
Speaker 3: It's the same thing with snails. They make their shell.
Speaker 6: So every shell that you've ever seen was made by
Speaker 6: a snail. And the only organisms that like find shells
Speaker 6: and then get new shells or hermit crabs, which are
Speaker 6: naked on their abdomen, right, So they are these weird
Speaker 6: little crabs that have this totally naked abdomen and then
Speaker 6: grab onto a shell and hold it because they need
Speaker 6: some sort of protection.
Speaker 2: Nude hermit crabs, by the way, are one of the
Speaker 2: most sweetly revolting sites. Their butts look like a coiled,
Speaker 2: boneless finger. And then when they grow, they sometimes have
Speaker 2: to swap shells with other hermit crabs, and they line
Speaker 2: up in an orderly fashion and everyone at once moves
Speaker 2: a size up into the warm, freshly vacated shell of
Speaker 2: the one ahead. Now this is just a side note.
Speaker 2: Whenever I'm feeling like emotionally vulnerable or scared to reveal something,
Speaker 2: or if I'm about to risk rejection, I think of
Speaker 2: these naked hermit crab butts and how important it is
Speaker 2: to make that risk and switch into the larger shell
Speaker 2: to have more room to grow and live your life.
Speaker 2: Also thanks to dead snails for growing these shells out
Speaker 2: of their bodies in the first place. I don't know
Speaker 2: where that takes my metaphor, but whatever, right, But snails
Speaker 2: are like, no, I made this, Yes, I made this.
Speaker 3: That's right. This is you're looking at my butt right now.
Speaker 3: It's like their.
Speaker 6: House, like, yes, they carry their house on their back
Speaker 6: right as the saying goes yeah.
Speaker 3: Dustin Mills wants to know. Are their fast snails? M Yes,
Speaker 3: fast in certain aspects.
Speaker 6: Yes, Cone snails which are famous for having ConA toxins,
Speaker 6: the special toxins that they use.
Speaker 3: To kill their prey.
Speaker 6: The way that they do that is they have a radula, right,
Speaker 6: the feeding structure that is that has evolved to be
Speaker 6: a spear type shape, and they can in milliseconds shoot
Speaker 6: out this spear into fish, polykeat worms or other mollusks,
Speaker 6: and that process of shooting it, Like, if there's a fish,
Speaker 6: you've got to be pretty quick to such a fish.
Speaker 6: So a cone snail that eats fish can shoot out
Speaker 6: this barb in milliseconds and paralyze its prey a most
Speaker 6: instantaneously and then engulf it and eat it.
Speaker 3: So that's fast. That's real fast.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine being like, oh, what happened to Gary?
Speaker 3: And it's like he got taken out by a snail.
Speaker 3: It's so embarrassing. Yeah, I feel like, oh you lost.
Speaker 4: Brooke Bosone asked a good question. What's a humane way
Speaker 4: to discourage snails from eating the things in my garden?
Speaker 4: Is there something like an axe body spray?
Speaker 3: I can use it. We'll discuss them and get them
Speaker 3: to stop eating my plants. Oh, I wish there were.
Speaker 3: I wish there were.
Speaker 6: You can pick them off by hand and put them
Speaker 6: somewhere else, But that's not really that's a very proximate solution.
Speaker 4: Also, it's not emotional. You've got to be out there
Speaker 4: at three in the morning especial, right.
Speaker 3: That's right, who's doing that?
Speaker 6: No, you can humane no, not really beer like shallow
Speaker 6: dishes of beer. They're attracted to that and will sometimes
Speaker 6: drown themselves.
Speaker 3: Not humane.
Speaker 2: Your Garden is a Lifetime movie about a frat house tragedy.
Speaker 3: Kyle Crows and Heather Crowd.
Speaker 4: They're both asked what is it about beer that attracts
Speaker 4: snails and beer traps?
Speaker 3: Why do they like it so much?
Speaker 4: And have there been any studies to see if snails
Speaker 4: enjoy craft beer over domestic.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know why.
Speaker 6: It could be that fermentation, something that is fermenting smells
Speaker 6: like something that is good to eat, right, So if
Speaker 6: you imagine your generalist snail and you're looking for something
Speaker 6: to eat, something that smells like it's dying or dead
Speaker 6: and sort of decomposing, which is not exactly what fermentation.
Speaker 3: Is, but sort of similar.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as I type this, I was drinking this vinegary
Speaker 4: kombucha and I kept picturing snails dying into it, which,
Speaker 4: if you ever wondered how to make kombucha.
Speaker 3: Harder to swallow, just do that.
Speaker 2: Also, I looked it up and apparently slugs do like
Speaker 2: the yeast in the beer. So if you want to
Speaker 2: spare a beer, some sugar water and baking yeast will
Speaker 2: do the trick. I watched this time lapse video of
Speaker 2: slugs just popping off at a beer trap, and a
Speaker 2: lot of them will take a sip and make off fine.
Speaker 2: They're like thanks, buye. But there are others who slip
Speaker 2: right into it like a bathtub filled with wine coolers
Speaker 2: and just blissfully surrender to the grim reaper right then
Speaker 2: and there.
Speaker 4: Mike Kamanikowski, great question, is farming helix snails for escargo
Speaker 4: and environmentally sustainable form of agriculture? And do you eat
Speaker 4: snails cone snails?
Speaker 6: Right? I don't so helix so he's talking about for ESCO.
Speaker 6: There's a couple of species that are, yeah, are good
Speaker 6: escargo snails that I have never eaten. One is our
Speaker 6: Los Angeles wet sidewalk snail. So in addition to making
Speaker 6: the slime that's used in snail beautification products, they also
Speaker 6: are a maybe second tier escargo snail. Okay, is it
Speaker 6: environmentally sustainable as a form of protein? I would say
Speaker 6: probably more than other forms of protein. I mean they
Speaker 6: can they can build up a lot of body.
Speaker 3: Mass on very few ingredients.
Speaker 6: They could also eat like refuse of from you know,
Speaker 6: they could eat. They could be instead of your your
Speaker 6: compost bin, you could have snails thriving and eating your compost,
Speaker 6: and then you could eat your snails. That was kind
Speaker 6: of how the corny whispers some wet side sidewalk snail
Speaker 6: was introduced to California in the first place.
Speaker 3: Right, wasn't it gold Rush?
Speaker 6: There was a Frenchman who in eighteen I mean some things,
Speaker 6: I'm not sure if it was for the gold Rush,
Speaker 6: could have.
Speaker 4: Been fact check this story, and yes, is delightfully, endearingly,
Speaker 4: bizarreingly true.
Speaker 6: A Frenchman in California who asked his someone in his family,
Speaker 6: his mother perhaps to send him snails from France to
Speaker 6: California because he wanted to have a supply of snails
Speaker 6: to eat, and so he made an enclosure for them
Speaker 6: so he could breathe these snails, to have them whenever
Speaker 6: he wanted. And the little babies are just millimeters big
Speaker 6: and crawled out of the mesh or presumably whatever structure
Speaker 6: he had for them. And then that was one of
Speaker 6: the ways that snails were first perhaps the first way
Speaker 6: that snails were introduced to California. But they this same
Speaker 6: snail has been introduced all around the world and lives.
Speaker 6: I mean in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia. It's really
Speaker 6: good at living where people live.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you could.
Speaker 6: I have a colleague at the museum who collects snails
Speaker 6: at night around Los Angeles and feeds them corn meal
Speaker 6: for a.
Speaker 3: While to like clean out their.
Speaker 6: System, and then I guess sautez them up, steams them however,
Speaker 6: and eats them.
Speaker 3: My mom used to do that. My grandma, my great
Speaker 3: grandma non me, she used to do that.
Speaker 4: She would send my mom and my aunt out to
Speaker 4: the graveyard with a burlap sack and they'd have to
Speaker 4: take the Muni in San Francisco with this dripping easy
Speaker 4: sack of and then she'd feed them cornmeal.
Speaker 6: She was a North Beach was this like Italian grandma
Speaker 6: from North Beach Yealy lived in North Beach and that's
Speaker 6: where they that's where all the Italians live.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so my mom would would have to amazing,
Speaker 4: she said. She was mortified as a teenager. You know,
Speaker 4: she'd be taking this subway with a burlap sack full
Speaker 4: of just and then so do you.
Speaker 3: But you don't eat gastropods.
Speaker 6: I mean I have not not the escargo variety. But
Speaker 6: I have on a couple occasions. But it's not like
Speaker 6: I don't seek that out to eat rights for any
Speaker 6: particular reason.
Speaker 3: It's just not really my really, my thing.
Speaker 4: Not your jammed chewy yeah, very chewy skype. A scientist
Speaker 4: has a great question, Oh, is there any good reason
Speaker 4: that I should not have a giant African land snail
Speaker 4: as a pet?
Speaker 6: Yes, Tina Fica, Yes there are many reasons. Okay, there
Speaker 6: are many. The only places that those snails, they're called
Speaker 6: giant African land snails, which are nicknamed gals gls.
Speaker 2: So gals epitomize. The haters will say it's photoshopped meme.
Speaker 2: There is a picture going around of a woman cradling
Speaker 2: a huge snail, and it's so bunny like in scale,
Speaker 2: and with its two eyestalks, it really looks like you
Speaker 2: woke up into James and the Giant Peach alternate universe
Speaker 2: where all rabbits were replaced by snails, and it's so
Speaker 2: cute but also horrifying, and you'll find yourself just staring
Speaker 2: at it and questioning reality.
Speaker 6: Gals are potentially highly, highly invasive, and highly destructive in
Speaker 6: environments where there isn't a cold winter that can kill
Speaker 6: them off. So yes, the short answer is you should
Speaker 6: absolutely not. And if you do have them, the answer
Speaker 6: is not, oh my gosh, I have them. I'm going
Speaker 6: to let them loose in like Echo Park and then
Speaker 6: I don't have them anymore. The answer is call like
Speaker 6: contact me at the museum or somebody from USDA. And
Speaker 6: what is that when you when you give up you
Speaker 6: can you can give up your snails without any.
Speaker 3: Oh you have impunity.
Speaker 6: Yes, I believe you are. Just you can say I
Speaker 6: have these, I'm not supposed to have them. I'm not
Speaker 6: going to let them loose in Griffith Park or anywhere else.
Speaker 6: I'm going to give them to you somebody who's going
Speaker 6: to deal with them right so that they do not
Speaker 6: become an agricultural pest. So it's like leaving a baby
Speaker 6: at a fire station. Yes, you are allowed. That's right,
Speaker 6: you are allowed to do that. You need to do
Speaker 6: that just for your yes, for everybody's benefit. With with gals,
Speaker 6: because they could become a many many, multi like tens
Speaker 6: of millions of dollars easily in around medication efforts in
Speaker 6: California if they were to become established. Florida is dealing
Speaker 6: with populations of gals that are highly highly destructive and
Speaker 6: can also carry certain parasites that can cause meningitis.
Speaker 3: Like, oh yeah, that's a hell no.
Speaker 6: So so yeah, there are reasons that for health reasons,
Speaker 6: you wouldn't necessarily want to have them.
Speaker 3: I have an idea.
Speaker 4: What if you just get a hairless chihuahua and you
Speaker 4: put baby oil on it and put a hat on it,
Speaker 4: and you pretend it's a gal.
Speaker 3: You could That's right. I bet somebody has done that.
Speaker 3: I fixed it there, that's right.
Speaker 4: So even though that hey, should I get a pet
Speaker 4: snail question maybe wasn't one hundred percent serious. Really though, like,
Speaker 4: nobody get one.
Speaker 2: It's like a very slow paced movie about how.
Speaker 3: The apocalypse started.
Speaker 2: So spray some pam on a hairless cat and then
Speaker 2: make it a decorative fascinator.
Speaker 3: Call it a day.
Speaker 2: Okay, now that I fix the world's snail problems.
Speaker 3: Let's wrap this up. And now, what is the suckiest
Speaker 3: thing about your job? Suckiest thing? I guess I wouldn't say.
Speaker 6: It's sucky, but like a lot of jobs, there's a
Speaker 6: lot of sitting at my computer and doing writing and
Speaker 6: emailing and just just general like sit at your desk
Speaker 6: kind of work. There's a small part of the job
Speaker 6: that is going out and collecting or being in collections.
Speaker 6: So that's one of the cool things about being at
Speaker 6: a museum is that if I want to go into
Speaker 6: the field, as it were, my field site might be
Speaker 6: down the hall in the malcologic collection, right, so opening
Speaker 6: drawers in the collection. So that part is I always
Speaker 6: like that part to be more than it is. But
Speaker 6: as it ends up, there's a lot of time that's writing, revising,
Speaker 6: doing analyzes, trying to figure ure out how to get
Speaker 6: analysis to work, trying to you know, figure out how
Speaker 6: to do something analytical to answer a question. It's not
Speaker 6: the times that we're out doing expeditions. That's all very exciting,
Speaker 6: but not not so much the sitting.
Speaker 3: And what is your favorite part about your job or
Speaker 3: do you have a.
Speaker 4: Favorite moment in malacology where you discovered something or you
Speaker 4: were in Hawaii on a bluff and found a species,
Speaker 4: anything crazy like that happened.
Speaker 3: I would I would say it's it's not one moment.
Speaker 6: It's I think, like a lot of scientists, if you
Speaker 6: get to do the work that you like to do,
Speaker 6: and this sounds sentimental, and I don't mean it to
Speaker 6: sound to sound as sentimental as it's going to sound.
Speaker 6: But every day, almost literally every day, there is something
Speaker 6: new that I learn that is amazing to me. And
Speaker 6: it wouldn't I understand it wouldn't be amazing to everybody, right,
Speaker 6: But I think that you know when you're in the
Speaker 6: right kind of job when something that you encounter as
Speaker 6: part of your job is is awesome, Like this is amazing,
Speaker 6: and I didn't know anything about that, like I am.
Speaker 6: I've had training for a decent number of years. I've
Speaker 6: done I've worked on a bunch of different species, and
Speaker 6: still there are so many stories about evolution that you
Speaker 6: can see, uh in organisms that are just absolutely like breathtaking.
Speaker 6: So it's a really in that sense, it's a really
Speaker 6: amazing every day there is the potential for something to
Speaker 6: be absolutely mind blowing, and that's opening a drawer. And
Speaker 6: evolution is my absolute favorite thing to think about and
Speaker 6: talk about and write about.
Speaker 3: So it's just amazing. Oh that's great sentimental, No, I
Speaker 3: love it, Come on, gets snail mental. It's wonderful. It
Speaker 3: is amazing. Oh my god, thank you so good, You're welcome.
Speaker 2: So just keep asking smart people stupid questions, because how
Speaker 2: else does anyone learn anything?
Speaker 3: Ever?
Speaker 2: Really, and just being curious is like the smartest thing
Speaker 2: you can do. Now. To learn more about jan Bendetti,
Speaker 2: you can see her in interviews with the ologies ichthyologist
Speaker 2: guest Chris Thacker. We all loved her on her NHM
Speaker 2: web series The Curiosity Show, and you can also follow
Speaker 2: along with the Citizens Science Malacology role call where they
Speaker 2: go out and count snails in LA. Just check out
Speaker 2: the hashtag snail Blitz. There's also the Slime Project at
Speaker 2: NHM dot org.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Ologies is on Twitter and Instagram at Ologies I'm on
Speaker 2: both at Ali Ward with one L and there's shirts,
Speaker 2: bathing suits, hats and tots and pins are at ologiesmerch
Speaker 2: dot com so sales support the making of the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you Bonnie Dutch and Shannon Feltis for managing that.
Speaker 2: And you can join the Ologies podcast Facebook group for
Speaker 2: nice people in Weird Science that's moderated by Aaron Talbert
Speaker 2: and Hannah Liippo. Thank you admins. Thank you always to
Speaker 2: Stephen Ray Morris. Music is by Nick Thorburn of the
Speaker 2: band Islands, and if you listen to the end of
Speaker 2: the show show By now you know that I divulge
Speaker 2: a secret. And this week when I go to the
Speaker 2: movies with my friend Catherine, she makes us get separate
Speaker 2: popcorn buckets because I eat so much, so fast, and
Speaker 2: I just can't stop myself until I hit the end.
Speaker 2: But I won't eat her share if it's in a
Speaker 2: separate bucket. Okay, bye bye,