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Speaker 2: This one, Eric Patopoff says, I've always loved science and
Speaker 2: learning about the crazy world we live in, but I
Speaker 2: bought into the idea that scientists were all super brainy
Speaker 2: people in lab quotes who preferred sterile labs to dealing
Speaker 2: with normal people. Where did I get that idea from.
Speaker 2: Not only do I love all the ology subjects, but
Speaker 2: each ologist is so gosh darned down to earth and
Speaker 2: knowledgeable and excited and someone I would love to nerd
Speaker 2: out with over a beer. This podcast fills the role
Speaker 2: of the Scholastic book fair from minority element comentary school days. Ericapatopov,
Speaker 2: thank you for reminding me of the soft coover paradise
Speaker 2: that was the Scholastic book Fair. Okay, Scorpiology, Hell to
Speaker 2: the yes, this is a real ology. It's a subset
Speaker 2: of arachnology iraknans, and scorpion comes from the Greek. Are
Speaker 2: you ready for this? For scorpion? Okay, that is not
Speaker 2: something that made me say, oh my god.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So this ologist I met under very, very weird circumstances
Speaker 2: two years ago in a dusty field in the middle
Speaker 2: of nowhere at a festival for burning man types. While
Speaker 2: we were both speaking on a panel about science. We
Speaker 2: were a little wide eyed and just kind of sussing
Speaker 2: things out. I dug her immediately. I've wanted her on
Speaker 2: for so long. Scheduling was difficult, but she was in
Speaker 2: LA for a five hundred Queer Scientist conference and to
Speaker 2: accept the twenty nineteen Walt Weston Award for her support
Speaker 2: that she provides LGBTQ people in stem. This is where
Speaker 2: we're gonna throw some air horns. I think we need
Speaker 2: some air horns for that now. I went to her hotel,
Speaker 2: just kiddaly and I asked her one million questions. We
Speaker 2: covered myths about scorpions, what big pinchers mean, movie magic?
Speaker 2: How lethal are these critters? Where is their butt? Do
Speaker 2: they make out with each other? Parables about scorpions, glow
Speaker 2: in the dark, magic, getting stung, and also why hiding
Speaker 2: under a rock is beneficial for some insects but can
Speaker 2: be very difficult for people emotionally. So bust out your
Speaker 2: black light, keep your ears on alert for STEM advocate,
Speaker 2: science communicator, researcher, expedition leader and curator at the California
Speaker 2: Academy of Sciences. Scorpiologist doctor Lauren Esposito. Okay, so you are.
Speaker 2: I looked this up. You're an a racknologist, yes, but
Speaker 2: I saw that there is a subset that is scorpiology.
Speaker 3: There is scorpiology, So I'm technically speaking a scorpiologist, but
Speaker 3: I've been trying to broaden my horizons and being a
Speaker 3: racknologist study more other kinds of irakanids aside from scorpions.
Speaker 3: So I'm abudding a racknologist, budding, and an accomplished scorpiologist.
Speaker 2: Your business card should say accomplished scorpiologist. Now I met
Speaker 2: you a couple of years ago. Yeah, in the deserts
Speaker 2: at a festival, symbiosis festival. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was like shell shocked. I think when I met you,
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't know what's going on. There's
Speaker 3: so many people, and I'm pretty sure they're all high
Speaker 3: on drugs.
Speaker 2: You know, there were so few pants and shirts worn.
Speaker 3: I remember in the middle was it in the middle
Speaker 3: of our panel or was it I gave it like
Speaker 3: another little talk, so I can't remember which one it was,
Speaker 3: but like a fully naked guy just walking into the
Speaker 3: tent and he was so high and you just walked
Speaker 3: up to the front of the station with just standing
Speaker 3: there like mesmerized, like fully naked.
Speaker 2: It was one of the one of the stranger places
Speaker 2: I think we've communicated science.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's good, right, Like it's like take like
Speaker 3: you gotta you gotta get it in there whenever you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's if you've got a captive audience talk to
Speaker 2: about science. I remember meeting you and you you told
Speaker 2: me you were a scorpion expert, and I was like,
Speaker 2: how many scorpion experts are there? And You're like, not many?
Speaker 2: And I have bragged about you so many times. We're like,
Speaker 2: I met a scorpion expert. There's like ten in the world.
Speaker 2: How many people study scorpions with the depth that you do.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's definitely not many of us. And I would say,
Speaker 3: like people that have a like a PhD in scorpions
Speaker 3: a dozen that most Oh my.
Speaker 2: God, are you ever in the same room rarely?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Scorpion biologists, I think are like kind of like scorpions.
Speaker 3: Like they're like not really particularly keen on meeting each other,
Speaker 3: like slightly combative, but incredibly intelligent and persistent. I mean,
Speaker 3: present company included.
Speaker 2: I guess what drew you to scorpions?
Speaker 3: Well, this is such a complicated question, like nothing, really,
Speaker 3: it was kind of like serendipity. I grew up in
Speaker 3: the in the desert Southwest, so I saw scorpions certainly
Speaker 3: as a kid, but I wasn't particularly like intrigued or
Speaker 3: wanting to dedicate my life to the study of these animals.
Speaker 3: And then I but I was like super into nature,
Speaker 3: and I loved like turning over all the papers in
Speaker 3: my mom's garden and looking for cockroaches and earwigs and stuff,
Speaker 3: which she didn't love but also especially didn't love when
Speaker 3: I brought them inside alive. And my mom's a biologist,
Speaker 3: and eventually she taught me how to make a killing
Speaker 3: jar so that instead of bringing her live cockroaches, I
Speaker 3: would bring her euthanized cockroaches.
Speaker 2: Oh, what is a killing jar?
Speaker 3: Is it just like a cotton ball with cotton No,
Speaker 3: it's a cotton ball with figuring out polish remover and
Speaker 3: like an old peanut butter jar.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it sounds a killing jar sounds so
Speaker 2: much more.
Speaker 3: Sounds like grotesque and morbid.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like here, take this killing jar out and go
Speaker 3: out into the garden. No, but it's and it's euthanasia.
Speaker 3: It's like a humane way of quickly euthanizing insects. And
Speaker 3: so my mom taught me how to make one of these,
Speaker 3: and and I would like collect insects from the garden
Speaker 3: and make an insect collection and old egg cartons. And
Speaker 3: but then I grew up and like forgot that I
Speaker 3: liked that stuff because I was a teenager and was
Speaker 3: mostly into, like I don't know, doing what teenagers do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like like rebel rousing and.
Speaker 2: Getting on people's lawns, turning up the music too loud.
Speaker 3: Yeah, toilet papering, you know those kinds of things. And
Speaker 3: then like halfway through college I I took an entomology
Speaker 3: class and was like, oh my god, I love this.
Speaker 3: And then I applied for a summer internship with the
Speaker 3: American Museum in Natural History, not knowing it was going
Speaker 3: to be an internship studying scorpions, which it was, And
Speaker 3: I got it and I showed up and they like
Speaker 3: dumped me in the lap of a new curator at
Speaker 3: the American Museum, Lorenzo Berndini, who would later become my
Speaker 3: PhD advisor.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: So she and this new curator spent the summer figuring
Speaker 2: out a research system and then for Newbie Lauren, the
Speaker 2: New York City subway system probably, And then when the
Speaker 2: internship was over, she realized she loved science, but she
Speaker 2: didn't want to go to medical school like she thought.
Speaker 2: She'd rather be outdoors and studying nature. So she thought
Speaker 2: graduate school. So she contacted her curator from the internship
Speaker 2: and he said, Yo, come back, get your PhD working
Speaker 2: with me in these freaking scorps so sick. And she
Speaker 2: was like, towyt, I think that was a compo.
Speaker 3: Like, moved to New York and do a PhD. Like absolutely,
Speaker 3: I'll do that.
Speaker 2: Are there even scorpions in New York?
Speaker 3: No, there's no scorpions in New York. I didn't think
Speaker 3: there's none at all. I mean, there's a museum full
Speaker 3: of probably the world's greatest collection of scorpions, but there's
Speaker 3: certainly no living scorpions. But the good news is you
Speaker 3: can hop on a plane from New York and get
Speaker 3: just about anywhere in the world relatively quickly, and I did.
Speaker 3: It was scorpions are die.
Speaker 2: Which I feel like scorpions does. They do have a
Speaker 2: high stakes reputation pretty much like that.
Speaker 3: I think scorpions like kind of like even more so
Speaker 3: than spiders. Everybody's like, oh, they're They're definitely gonna kill you.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, any encounter will be lethal for you for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If you see a scorpion from six feet away,
Speaker 2: you will drop dead later that day, even if you
Speaker 2: have no contact.
Speaker 3: It's gonna jump across the room and go flying like
Speaker 3: like wings are going to come out of its body,
Speaker 3: and it will try to kill you no matter what.
Speaker 3: Are ruthless, secretive and highly organized.
Speaker 2: They are not. We will address this later. No, at
Speaker 2: what point when you were studying them, did you say,
Speaker 2: holy shit, these are cool?
Speaker 3: You know? It was really it started when I was
Speaker 3: doing that undergraduate internship and I realize, like, man, scorpions
Speaker 3: are amazing for so many reasons.
Speaker 2: Oo, boy, how do you get ready for this. Oh, okay,
Speaker 2: here we go, Here we go.
Speaker 3: One. They were the first terrestrial arthropod predators, So before
Speaker 3: anything else was on land, scorpions came on land. These
Speaker 3: little beasts, they weren't little then. They were like the
Speaker 3: ancestors of scorpions were like a meter. They were huge
Speaker 3: three feet yeah, three feet maybe even bigger, maybe five
Speaker 3: in some cases.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: And they were these like underwater marine predators that were
Speaker 3: like ruling the oceans at the time. And eventually some
Speaker 3: people have hypothesized that because we found these ancient trackways
Speaker 3: alongside rivers of scorpions, so they were little footprints embedded
Speaker 3: in rock. Well it was mud that turned into rock
Speaker 3: over time, and they've hypothesized that they were actually became
Speaker 3: amphibious and were coming up on the land to eat
Speaker 3: spawning fish. Oh like grizzlies, right, you know, grizzlies like
Speaker 3: come in the river and eat the spawning fish. They
Speaker 3: were doing the same thing, but they were like the
Speaker 3: size of grizzlies, and they were scorpions.
Speaker 1: Comes to scorpions, the bigger the better.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. I literally am having like vertigo, like
Speaker 2: I can't just imagining a scorpion the size of like
Speaker 2: a kiddie pool.
Speaker 4: Just.
Speaker 2: Like like a crazy like an alligator.
Speaker 3: Basically like an alligator. They were these things. They were
Speaker 3: called eurypterids, the ancestors of scorpions, and eventually the gills
Speaker 3: that they had to breathe underwater were internalized and that
Speaker 3: allowed them to live on land. And so the scorpions
Speaker 3: of today basically look identical to the scorpions of four
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million years ago. So they've been on
Speaker 3: Earth forever, right, So we can ask all kinds of
Speaker 3: crazy questions about what happened on Earth in the last
Speaker 3: four hundred and fifty million years by trying to understand
Speaker 3: the evolutionary history of scorpions.
Speaker 2: And so, how do you think they got and.
Speaker 3: Littler well, there's like the main driving factor behind why
Speaker 3: insects and arachnids are not as big as they used
Speaker 3: to be, as big as the fossils we find is
Speaker 3: the oxygen percentage in the air in the atmosphere. Oh,
Speaker 3: because scorpions and spiders and insects all basically passively respire,
Speaker 3: so they don't breathe, they don't have lungs where they're
Speaker 3: breathing in and out, and they don't have closed circulatory systems.
Speaker 3: They just kind of have blood that like gets pumped
Speaker 3: around by a heart, just open up in their body.
Speaker 3: And so the rate at which oxygen can get to
Speaker 3: all their tissues that they need for walking around and
Speaker 3: moving and eating and doing all the things is limited
Speaker 3: by how much a concentration of oxygen there is in
Speaker 3: the air. And over time the oxygen concentration has gone down.
Speaker 2: So Laurene explained that when life started coming on land
Speaker 2: and there were more and more air breathing critters, the
Speaker 2: carbon dioxide output increased and the oxygen levels went down.
Speaker 2: So when you have less fuel, you downsize. So think
Speaker 2: of turning in a hummer for a Fiat, but slowly
Speaker 2: as a result of evolution and all of your relatives
Speaker 2: dying off before you. Okay, So, apart from the last
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty million years of history, where can
Speaker 2: we find scorpions? And so where do scorpions live? Clearly
Speaker 2: not in New York City.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. They live basically everywhere that there's not
Speaker 3: major freezes for long parts of the year. Okay, So,
Speaker 3: like like imagine a place the scorpions and you're not
Speaker 3: unaware there's probably scorpions there. They're not in Antarctica because
Speaker 3: there's really nothing, I mean, aside from like penguins and
Speaker 3: things in the ocean, and there's not much in Antarctica bacteria.
Speaker 3: They're also not in the Arctic because it's cold. It's
Speaker 3: like snow on the ground all year round. But they
Speaker 3: are in places like the Alps, so you wouldn't expect
Speaker 3: them to be in the Alps or like the upper
Speaker 3: reaches of the Andes, like in Argentina, there's scorpions. My
Speaker 3: real area of speciality is the Neotropics, so I go
Speaker 3: to the Caribbeans, the Central America, South America, but I've
Speaker 3: been to places like islands off the coast of Equatorial Africa,
Speaker 3: Southeast Asia. I don't know, I've been like all over
Speaker 3: the world looking for those little buggers. At the point
Speaker 3: when I decided to do a PhD, I think that
Speaker 3: that was part of the intrigue for me, was that
Speaker 3: there was this potential to travel the world doing science
Speaker 3: and incorporating two things that I love, which is traveling
Speaker 3: and science. But you know what's kind of funny is
Speaker 3: is like recently I remembered this thing that happened to
Speaker 3: me when I was a kid, and it was in
Speaker 3: the sixth grade, and I had a homeroom teacher who
Speaker 3: gave us this assignment. And assignment was to write an
Speaker 3: essay about what you want to do when you grew up?
Speaker 3: Like pretty straightforward, right, Like I feel like that happens
Speaker 3: all the time in school. But I was so upset
Speaker 3: about it because I didn't know what I wanted to be,
Speaker 3: and like I remember even like crying at home over
Speaker 3: this assignment because it was like so frustrating for me
Speaker 3: that I had to write what, like, no, at this
Speaker 3: age of I don't know how old are you in
Speaker 3: sixth grade, ten or eleven, what I should want? What
Speaker 3: I should do when I grew up. I knew lots
Speaker 3: of things I didn't want to do, but I didn't
Speaker 3: know what I did want to do, And eventually I
Speaker 3: settled on I wasn't sure, but I knew I either
Speaker 3: wanted to be a rocket scientist or a hobo. And
Speaker 3: I mean hobo in the sense of like like train travel,
Speaker 3: see the world hobo, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just freewheeling quick aside to learn you on some
Speaker 2: hobo facts. Cool cool, Okay, So the word hobo is
Speaker 2: of unknown origin, but it may be from homeward bound
Speaker 2: like hobo or homeless boy hobo or from ho boy
Speaker 2: meaning like a farm hand who would travel riding the
Speaker 2: rails looking for jobs. Can I just tell you a
Speaker 2: little bit more about hobo? Okay?
Speaker 1: Great?
Speaker 2: So they had specialized lingo, such as, for example, to
Speaker 2: flip meant to board a moving train, and a mulligan
Speaker 2: is a type of community stew created by several hobos
Speaker 2: combining whatever food they had into one big pot. Also,
Speaker 2: a jungle was a hobo camp. And to catch the
Speaker 2: westbound meant to die? Is that not poetry? Catching the westbound? Also,
Speaker 2: they made a code of conduct for hobos at the
Speaker 2: National Hobo Convention in eighteen eighty nine, and the code
Speaker 2: of conduct is legit, starting with one, decide your own life.
Speaker 2: Don't let another person run or rule you.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 2: When in town, always respect the local law and officials.
Speaker 2: Try to be a gentleman at all times sexist but
Speaker 2: a good rule. Three, don't take advantage of someone who
Speaker 2: was in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hoboes.
Speaker 3: Four.
Speaker 2: Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always
Speaker 2: seek out jobs nobody wants They also had codes of
Speaker 2: contact to stay clean, to report anyone who harmed children.
Speaker 2: We should all be as decent as hobos. Also, they
Speaker 2: had these symbols that they would leave to guide other hoboes.
Speaker 2: This led me to a web page for the National
Speaker 2: Cryptologic Museum in Maryland, which, yes, I now have to
Speaker 2: do a cryptology episode, so bad. Okay. So in closing,
Speaker 2: hobos clean, kindly, respectful folks who traveled for work and
Speaker 2: saw the land, and so for Lauren is either that
Speaker 2: or be a rocket scientist.
Speaker 3: And I feel like, actually, I like hit that that
Speaker 3: like intersection, you know, like I'm doing science. I'm like
Speaker 3: using like like technological tools like genetics and genomics and
Speaker 3: at the same time traveling the world. So I am
Speaker 3: exactly in the middle of rocket scientists and hope, oh
Speaker 3: my god, like nailed it.
Speaker 2: And now tell me a little bit about the basic
Speaker 2: structure of a scorpion, Like what are we dealing with?
Speaker 2: Because I feel like they got crab in the front,
Speaker 2: they got snake face in the back with the venom, like.
Speaker 3: They got the business end in the back. Yeah, what
Speaker 3: it's like a mullet, right, So, so scorpions, like all
Speaker 3: arachnids have two primary body parts. They have a pro soma,
Speaker 3: which is like the head, and they have a pistosoma,
Speaker 3: which is like the body. So the picture a spider,
Speaker 3: there's two main chunks, but scorpions have this extra little
Speaker 3: business end, which is the tail, and their pro soma
Speaker 3: and epistosoma are sort of fused, so there's not like
Speaker 3: a real delineation between the head and the body. And
Speaker 3: then up in the front they have two pairs of appendages.
Speaker 3: They have callissary, which are their mouth parts, and they
Speaker 3: have these chewing mouthparts that they use basically to like
Speaker 3: rip up meat roma before they get it down their gullet.
Speaker 3: And then they have claws that they use mostly for
Speaker 3: grabbing onto prey. Like in some scorpions, they just use
Speaker 3: the claus to grab their prey. They don't ever actually
Speaker 3: need to sing them because they have these big, chunky
Speaker 3: claws like picture those big black imper scorpions that you
Speaker 3: see in the movies all the time. They have these
Speaker 3: huge claws up front and they almost never use their tail,
Speaker 3: and their venoms not very toxic. But other scorpions have
Speaker 3: these really slender, thin claws and they really just use
Speaker 3: those for manipulating prey items, and mostly use the tail
Speaker 3: and really powerful super toxic venom for disabling their prey
Speaker 3: and escaping predators. Steady stabby claws in the front, tail
Speaker 3: in the back, and at the very end of the
Speaker 3: tail is the stinger, and the stinger is a looks
Speaker 3: kind of like a bulb, like a light bulb, and
Speaker 3: at the end of that is a hypodermic needle, And
Speaker 3: inside of the bulb is a layer of secretory cells,
Speaker 3: so cells that crete toxins, and it's surrounded by muscle
Speaker 3: that allows them to squeeze those toxins out of the
Speaker 3: cells into the hypodermic needle that they use inject into
Speaker 3: their prey.
Speaker 2: Okay, so their venom bulb, it's kind of like one
Speaker 2: of those little squirty things you would jam into your
Speaker 2: ear hole to flesh out funky chunks, only it's a
Speaker 2: nerve toxin made by DNA that they probably had for
Speaker 2: something else but evolved it to become venom. So what
Speaker 2: is in this exactly?
Speaker 3: But the really crazy thing is that their venom is
Speaker 3: not just one thing. It's actually a complex cocktail of
Speaker 3: all sorts of different components, and they have things like
Speaker 3: antimicrobials in there, enzymes that break open tissue and help
Speaker 3: them digest, and then they also have these complex neuropeptides.
Speaker 3: And neuropeptides are basically things that, when they interact with
Speaker 3: your nervous system, tell your nerves to either send a
Speaker 3: signal when there's not supposed to be sending a signal,
Speaker 3: or they inhibit the transmission of signals between cells.
Speaker 2: Neuropeptides, by the bio are chains of amino acids that
Speaker 2: form these protein like molecules that your nervous system uses
Speaker 2: to communicate, and the neuropeptides bind to receptors and activate
Speaker 2: a bunch of events inside a neuron. The neuropeptides and
Speaker 2: venom can jack that system by cutting off the neurons
Speaker 2: from talking to each other or sending signals when they
Speaker 2: shouldn't be talking. So venom is like when someone grabs
Speaker 2: your phone and starts dming people it shouldn't, or withholding
Speaker 2: a text from your boss. Okay, what if you're like
Speaker 2: a cricket and you don't have a boss or a phone.
Speaker 2: What does that do if you're prey?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if your prey, what it might do is
Speaker 3: disable you keep you from moving, send you into a seizure,
Speaker 3: really just dis incapacitate you very quickly so that you
Speaker 3: can be eaten and make baby scorpions mm hmm with
Speaker 3: the energy that you get from your prey. But if
Speaker 3: you're a predator, what it does is it sends pain
Speaker 3: signals to your brain, telling your brain that you're on fire.
Speaker 2: Oh my, we're hiring on fire sale.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, when you're really not. And that pause,
Speaker 3: that signal interruption caused by the scorpion venom allows the
Speaker 3: scorpion a moment to escape from the prey while the
Speaker 3: predators reacting to this signal that it's forcing its body
Speaker 3: to send to itself.
Speaker 2: What types of scorpions have venom that is powerful enough
Speaker 2: to say incapacity like a dog or a human? Like,
Speaker 2: how much do they get a bad rep?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well they get a pretty bad rep. I would say. Overall,
Speaker 3: there's like, so far, we've discovered about twenty five hundred
Speaker 3: species of scorpions, give or take, and about twenty five
Speaker 3: of those are something that are a concern for a
Speaker 3: healthy human and there's you know, maybe a dozen or
Speaker 3: two more that are a concern for people that have
Speaker 3: a compromise immune system, or are elderly or very young.
Speaker 3: So the majority of scorpions, that means like less than
Speaker 3: ten percent of all scorpions are something that are really
Speaker 3: dangerous that we need to be worried about. Said, all
Speaker 3: scorpions do have a stinger, and they can jab it
Speaker 3: into your body, and they can inject things that are
Speaker 3: in their venom, but oftentimes those things are more mild
Speaker 3: than a beasting or wasp sing.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, what happens if you do get stung by
Speaker 2: a scorpion? Well, has that ever happened to you?
Speaker 3: It's happened one time. For a long time. I got
Speaker 3: to say, no, okay, I'm a professional, and I take precaution.
Speaker 2: Suit of armor.
Speaker 3: But like a year ago now, yeah, actually almost exactly
Speaker 3: one year ago, I was at this event and I
Speaker 3: was passing scorpions around that I had found in the
Speaker 3: forest a little children for them to hold as one does,
Speaker 3: And like I was passing a scorpion from one child
Speaker 3: to another, and it got grumpy, like I think it
Speaker 3: had had too many grubby kid hands on it, and
Speaker 3: it stung me, and I was like almost confused when
Speaker 3: it was stinging me. I was like what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Because I'd handled these kind of scorpions like many, many times.
Speaker 3: It's a scorpion called the Pacific redwood scorpion or Pacific
Speaker 3: forest scorpion. We have them all throughout the Bay area
Speaker 3: and northward. And I was like, what is it, what
Speaker 3: are you doing? What's happening here?
Speaker 2: This is not normal?
Speaker 3: And then it hurt, you know, My finger kind of
Speaker 3: throbbed for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and it felt
Speaker 3: like if I had jammed of thumbtack in my finger,
Speaker 3: you know, like if you jam with thumbtack in your finger,
Speaker 3: your finger throbs. But then it went away and nothing,
Speaker 3: there was no long term consequences. Let me step back
Speaker 3: and say that there's two major groups of scorpions. There's
Speaker 3: a group called the boothed scorpions. It's one of the
Speaker 3: oldest lineages of scorpions, and it's also has the greatest
Speaker 3: number of species compared to all the other lineages. And
Speaker 3: those ones all make neurotoxins that affect mammals, So they
Speaker 3: make neurotoxins that can interact with our nervous system.
Speaker 2: Again, these are the booth heids. And I looked everywhere
Speaker 2: to find out where the name boothed comes from. And
Speaker 2: I think it's from the Greek for ox or cow,
Speaker 2: because there's stings were thought to be real cow killers.
Speaker 3: Again booth hits, and so all of those have a
Speaker 3: more painful sting or put in. The ones that are
Speaker 3: potentially lethal to humans belong to that group, the boothoeds. Oh,
Speaker 3: and then all the other scorpions are non boothoeds. Ah.
Speaker 3: All the other groups of scorpions, and all those guys
Speaker 3: typically don't make neurotoxins that affect mammal nervous systems.
Speaker 2: But considering their reputation of scorpions, they do carry some
Speaker 2: dramatic names like the black spitting, thick tailed scorpion or
Speaker 2: the man killer or death stalker. These kind of sound
Speaker 2: like nineteen seventies carnival rides, so bitchen ps. When I
Speaker 2: googled scorpions with cool names, I pulled up an article
Speaker 2: entitled no Joke from a baby blog, Ten fierce baby
Speaker 2: names for your Scorpio. Given I am a scorpio, I
Speaker 2: had to read it, and among the suggestions for your
Speaker 2: autumn infant who will undoubtedly cause drama are the names Crispin, evening, steal,
Speaker 2: and nix not unlike scorpion venom itself. This article caused
Speaker 2: some involuntary sweating and gagging.
Speaker 3: But scientific are jumped up by the scientists that first
Speaker 3: recognize that species as being a new species.
Speaker 2: Have you gotten to name any I have?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, we discover new scorpions all the time. There's
Speaker 3: like maybe fifty or so added a year to for knowledge.
Speaker 2: How do you decide how to name?
Speaker 3: Well, different people have different approaches, and a name is
Speaker 3: really considered like something in honor of So if you
Speaker 3: use a person or a thing, you're naming it in
Speaker 3: honor of that person or that thing. And oftentimes people
Speaker 3: take the approach where they're like naming it something that
Speaker 3: describes its physical attributes, so the name has like Latin
Speaker 3: words for slender or pale or yellow or whatever. Other
Speaker 3: people use names that come from indigenous languages where they're found,
Speaker 3: which is one of the things that methods I like
Speaker 3: to use because I feel like it's it's honoring the
Speaker 3: place where the scorpion is from and integrating the indigenous knowledge.
Speaker 2: That's great. Ask me how many species I've discovered?
Speaker 3: How many?
Speaker 1: None?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, we could fix that if you want.
Speaker 2: Can I count the desert. Just turn over some rocks,
Speaker 2: be like, do we know this guy yet?
Speaker 3: My favorite place is a tropical jungle. So you could
Speaker 3: come in a tropical jungle and do that.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's just sign up, just large luggage,
Speaker 2: put me in it. Oh my god. Now when you're
Speaker 2: discovering scorpions, I understand that there are black lights involved.
Speaker 2: There are, yeah, so tell me everything about why they
Speaker 2: fluoresce under black lights. Every time I see it, I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm looking at like a Bob Marley poster
Speaker 2: and I'm on drugs in college, Like what's happening? Might be?
Speaker 3: That is so trippy. So scorpions, all scorpions fluoreses. It's
Speaker 3: a tree universals of scorpions. What fluorescence means basically is
Speaker 3: that that there's a pigment in the exoskeleton of scorpions
Speaker 3: that's embedded in there. It's called cormorin.
Speaker 2: So side note, Cormorine is often found in plants, and
Speaker 2: according to this Wikipedia prose, it has quote a sweet
Speaker 2: odor resembling the scent of newly mown hay. It's also
Speaker 2: found in cassia, cinnamon, in fake vanilla, and in perfume.
Speaker 2: Oh and it makes venomous arthropods glow like ravers. Also ps.
Speaker 2: I never did drugs in college. I was straight edge
Speaker 2: goth with like five jobs and a bunch of science
Speaker 2: lab homework. But my roommates owned a six foot bong,
Speaker 2: so I observed a lot of black light staring anyway, Cormoran.
Speaker 3: What it does is it takes in light waves just
Speaker 3: from light, ambient light, and it excites those white those
Speaker 3: light waves and then projects them back at a higher wavelength.
Speaker 3: So that's what causes the fluorescence. It's not like a
Speaker 3: reflection or it's actually like an excitation of light beams.
Speaker 3: And so they all fluoress this bright like neon toxic
Speaker 3: sludge green under ultra violet light. And we don't really
Speaker 3: know why they have this feature. There's there's a few possibilities.
Speaker 3: One it's just a byproduct of how their exoskeleton forms,
Speaker 3: like the process in which they form their exoskeleton creates
Speaker 3: a fluorescence. Or alternatively, it has like a function that's
Speaker 3: helpful for them, And there's a few possibilities. One that's
Speaker 3: been proposed is that it's a whole body light detection system,
Speaker 3: so it allows them to detect when there's light, which
Speaker 3: I think could very well be. But also they have eyes,
Speaker 3: so typically they can see if there's light outside or not,
Speaker 3: so it could be another function as well. The other
Speaker 3: functions that have been thought up are that it's a
Speaker 3: way to tell other animals that they're dangerous, like bees
Speaker 3: are black and yellow, and that black and yellow is
Speaker 3: like a sign that they're dangerous. Scorpions are active at night,
Speaker 3: and at night, colors don't show up very well, and
Speaker 3: things that are active at night can't see very well
Speaker 3: in color. So many things that are that are doing
Speaker 3: things at night have have evolved greater UV capabilities, and
Speaker 3: so flowers that bloom at night have a UV pattern
Speaker 3: that attracts pollinators. So scorpions that are active at night
Speaker 3: might want a UV pattern to say hey, wait this,
Speaker 3: I'm dangerous and you should stay away from me, like
Speaker 3: a warning color. Or they're actually trying to mimic something
Speaker 3: else like a flower and attract things so that they
Speaker 3: can eat them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So those are all the possibilities.
Speaker 2: Do you think that they're ancient ancestors that were ginormous
Speaker 2: could fluoresce?
Speaker 3: Well, there is some a geologists mention that there's some
Speaker 3: really well preserved fossils that preserve cuticle and the cuticle fluoresces.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So side note this is due to their glowing hyaline
Speaker 2: layer in their axis skeleton. Also, did you know that
Speaker 2: horseshoe crabs also glow under UV light and so do
Speaker 2: proteins in human saliva, sweat, urine semen. Just in case
Speaker 2: you like checking hotel rooms for secretions. How many black
Speaker 2: light flashlights do you have?
Speaker 3: You know what? I feel like, I just like go
Speaker 3: through them like like candy. Like I can't even keep
Speaker 3: track of them in ninety percent of the time. But
Speaker 3: I do have two that are really nice ones that
Speaker 3: I like, spend a lot of money buying from a
Speaker 3: company that like crafts them m hm. And those ones
Speaker 3: are my babies. I know where they are at all times.
Speaker 2: If someone wanted to go out and look for critters
Speaker 2: at night, do you think getting a black light and
Speaker 2: just checking things out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like in some places I saw them
Speaker 3: at home depot. You can go on a scorpion hunt.
Speaker 3: And the thing that the trick is to go out
Speaker 3: at night because one, you can't really see anything with
Speaker 3: the black light during the day because it's not a
Speaker 3: very bright wavelength of light, so it gets washed out
Speaker 3: by daylight. And two Scorpions are nocturnal, so they're active
Speaker 3: at night, not not during the day.
Speaker 2: And in case you're looking for a black light bug
Speaker 2: hunt or a guess that splatter game in your hotel,
Speaker 2: you can get a UV flashlight for around ten bucks.
Speaker 2: But then I was curious as to how much a
Speaker 2: really good one costs, and I searched on Amazon the
Speaker 2: highest to lowest price. There's one on there. It's four
Speaker 2: hundred watt ultraviolet led emitter. It's six grand, and then
Speaker 2: they jump down to a couple hundreds. Also, at this
Speaker 2: point we talked a little bit about the zodiac sign
Speaker 2: for scorpios. We're like mm, and it's like, okay, if
Speaker 2: you're a certain time of the year, there's a connect
Speaker 2: the dots with some stars. It really could have been anything. Sure,
Speaker 2: does the constellation look a little bit like a scorpion.
Speaker 2: Maybe it also looks kind of like a Bissle steam cleaner,
Speaker 2: So who knows. Instead of a scorpio, I could have
Speaker 2: just been like a carpet cleaner. Now, what about scorpions
Speaker 2: in movies or pop culture? Is there any movie that
Speaker 2: really does a good job with scorpions or one that
Speaker 2: really gets your goat.
Speaker 3: You know what, Like I feel like there are always
Speaker 3: The problem I have with movies and scorpions is that
Speaker 3: they're always very inaccurate.
Speaker 2: Okay, Like why in every.
Speaker 3: Single movie does it have to be the Emperor scorpion.
Speaker 3: Emperor scorpions are from tropical Africa. They most definitely do
Speaker 3: not live in deserts. There's definitely no black scorpions living
Speaker 3: in a like white sandy desert. Oh, it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3: They want to blend in with their environment. They're not
Speaker 3: trying to stand out like black on white background. M hm.
Speaker 3: So why why? I just don't understand it, Like can
Speaker 3: they consult with a biologist and figure out what the
Speaker 3: appropriate colored species is for the place that they're shooting.
Speaker 2: Are they ember scorpions easier to handle?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean they're really common in the pet trade, and
Speaker 3: actually for that reason, they're the only scorpion that's considered
Speaker 3: to be threatened or endangered ooh, because they've been over
Speaker 3: harvested for the pet trade because of all those movies.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So, some researchers think that scorpion venom may have cancer
Speaker 2: fighting properties, or it could be used to develop like
Speaker 2: anti inflammatory drugs, and it's reported that a gallon of
Speaker 2: scorpion venom is worth are you ready thirty nine million dollars?
Speaker 2: Thirty nine million dollars. In a year or two ago,
Speaker 2: there was this get rich quick scheme that started to
Speaker 2: spread in the Middle East countries like Iran. It was
Speaker 2: just promising a fortune to anyone who could poach or
Speaker 2: raise and milk scorpions of their venom. But it's turned
Speaker 2: out to be a total bust. So labs are not
Speaker 2: interested in amateur venom milkers. So what are they gonna
Speaker 2: do with all these scorpions now? I guess just release them,
Speaker 2: they're saying, or perhaps sell them as food. Scorpions can
Speaker 2: be like eating tiny land lobsters, but before you fasten
Speaker 2: a postage stamp sized tiny plastic bib. Doctor Spisito says
Speaker 2: that most scorpions don't even reach sexual maturity until the
Speaker 2: age of five or six, So she gets a little
Speaker 2: sad thinking about crunching and munch at.
Speaker 3: Them, like they can live to be twenty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like lay off the scorpions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like lay it, layoff of them. Yeah. And the
Speaker 3: other crazy thing about scorpions that I always that I
Speaker 3: was struck by when I first learned about them is
Speaker 3: that the moms give birth to a live baby.
Speaker 2: That was my next question. I've seen a picture of
Speaker 2: scorpions that are just to have a backpack full of
Speaker 2: baby scorpions. Yeah, what is happening there? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So they get so while their courtship starts by the
Speaker 3: what we call pod dey, do they actually dance? They
Speaker 3: do like a ballroom dancer, actually quite refined animals. So
Speaker 3: the males approach the females and grab onto their hand.
Speaker 3: They face her and grab onto her hands, and then
Speaker 3: they do this like dance like back and forth where
Speaker 3: he leads her back and forth, and then he does
Speaker 3: this thing called cholesterol massage, which means he's like kind
Speaker 3: of touching her hit her mouth parts with his mouth parts.
Speaker 3: Is basically scorpion kissing. And sometimes in some species the
Speaker 3: male will sting the female in that particular place on
Speaker 3: their body and we don't know what they're doing. They're
Speaker 3: probably injecting some sort of pheromone or some kind of slight,
Speaker 3: very mild sedative to keep from getting eaten because usually
Speaker 3: they're smaller. Oh my god, And if he does the
Speaker 3: dance well. She likes his moves. She likes his ballroom dancing.
Speaker 3: Then he'll deposit this this gelatinous stalk on the ground.
Speaker 3: It's like a thing made out of like a jelly
Speaker 3: sort of material, and at the top of it he
Speaker 3: puts a little sperm packet and then he leads her
Speaker 3: over it and she she'll pick it up with her
Speaker 3: genital opening, and then she stores the sperm this specialized
Speaker 3: structure in her body and decides when she wants to
Speaker 3: inseminate herself, and also with whose sperm.
Speaker 2: Does she have different pockets like this is jewels, like
Speaker 2: this is whatever.
Speaker 3: It's clear how they like differentiate once they've been inseminated,
Speaker 3: if they have like a way to separate the packets,
Speaker 3: or if the packets sort of stay. That part is unclear.
Speaker 2: It's her business.
Speaker 3: But at the point when she does decide to inseminate herself,
Speaker 3: she has this complex overuterus system. It looks almost and
Speaker 3: many species. It looks almost kind of like a figure eight,
Speaker 3: and there's little spaces within that overuterus where the embryos
Speaker 3: start to develop, and once they reach parturitionian age, she
Speaker 3: gives birth gestation period.
Speaker 2: You ask seven to nine months similar to a human,
Speaker 2: or up to fourteen months for emperor scorpions. Just think
Speaker 2: they have eight ankles. They could swell up walking around pregnant.
Speaker 2: What troopers. Some female scorpions are just pregnant most of
Speaker 2: the time, just most of their life, kind of like
Speaker 2: my Catholic grandma who had eleven.
Speaker 3: Children and little baby scorpions come out of her birth canal.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, is that viviparous or what is it
Speaker 2: called viviparous? Clearly a word I read more.
Speaker 3: Than viprous and oviviparous, which is where you internalize eggs
Speaker 3: and when the eggs hatch, you give birth. But those
Speaker 3: are fully viviparous. So they're actually like connect like same
Speaker 3: as as humans kind of. They're they're the embryos are
Speaker 3: connected to the mom via a membrane, so receiving nutrition
Speaker 3: directly from her, and then they come out and they're
Speaker 3: they're kind of in like an amniotic sack sort of
Speaker 3: and it's clear, and once they give birth, the babies
Speaker 3: break the sack and climb up onto her arms. And
Speaker 3: while she's giving birth, she does this thing called a
Speaker 3: birth basket where she arches her back up because the
Speaker 3: opening is like on their stomach. She arches her back
Speaker 3: up and makes her arms like into like a circle,
Speaker 3: like kind of touches her hands together and makes like
Speaker 3: a little circle, and so they'll crawl up her hands
Speaker 3: onto her back. And then they'll stay up there for
Speaker 3: it depends on the species, but they'll stay up there
Speaker 3: until they've molted for the first time, so they've shed
Speaker 3: their exoskeleton and gotten a little bigger, and in that
Speaker 3: first period they kind of almost look like a little
Speaker 3: larval still, like they don't look like a normal scorpion,
Speaker 3: but as soon as they have that first molt, they
Speaker 3: look just like a little tiny miniature scorpion.
Speaker 2: Did I just watch several macro videos of baby scorpions
Speaker 2: being squeezed out of a scorpion vagina while sipping my
Speaker 2: morning coffee? I sure did. It looked like if you
Speaker 2: were to squeeze unpeeled shrimp through a drinking straw, just
Speaker 2: one after the other, like coming through a water slide,
Speaker 2: just bloop bloop. So then they just climb up on
Speaker 2: the when they live there like people on deck of
Speaker 2: a yacht until they molt, so they just hop off
Speaker 2: and they're like Tulu.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like they'll kind of start coming off her back
Speaker 3: and then getting back on for a little bit. At
Speaker 3: some point, she's like, hasn't eaten in months and months,
Speaker 3: and she's like hungry, and she'll just eat those little
Speaker 3: suckers if they don't leave her alone.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: But in some species they do kind of live semi cooperatively,
Speaker 3: like they're still living together in the same area for
Speaker 3: a long period of time. So the moms actually like
Speaker 3: will live in a burrow with the babies. Oh I
Speaker 3: don't know, like months, years maybe, and they'll just live
Speaker 3: around each other and they tolerate each other really well.
Speaker 3: And then she gives birth from anywhere from two to
Speaker 3: I think the upper limit that anybody's ever recorded is
Speaker 3: like one fifth forty, like high one forties. Wow, maybe
Speaker 3: let's say one fifty, call it even one.
Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty babies.
Speaker 3: That would be like a lot. And they all pile
Speaker 3: up on her back. Oh my, and like a big
Speaker 3: giant pile.
Speaker 2: What a party? Yeah, and now party what about Have
Speaker 2: you ever seen one in the wild that's covered in
Speaker 2: kinda bibbis?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So like to find scorpions, I go out during
Speaker 3: the day and flip over rocks and logs and things
Speaker 3: that they like to hide under. And oftentimes I'll flip
Speaker 3: over a rocker log and they'll be a mom with
Speaker 3: babies under there in the right season like spring.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Is it always kind of a special treat
Speaker 2: to see one.
Speaker 3: Yeah? And you know, like I collect scorpions and euthanize
Speaker 3: them in order to study them, and I always leave
Speaker 3: the moms. Yeah. I don't want to. I don't want
Speaker 3: to take those moms and all those little babies. There's
Speaker 3: no need for that.
Speaker 2: Is it hard to collect and euthanize them for research
Speaker 2: or do you feel like you're like, the more we
Speaker 2: learn about them, the more we can kind of conserve
Speaker 2: them as a species.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean certainly, that's for me. The rationalization is
Speaker 3: that we for most scorpions, we don't know like basic
Speaker 3: natural history information like how long they live, how many
Speaker 3: babies they have, how they may, how what they eat,
Speaker 3: what eats them. We don't know any of that information
Speaker 3: except for like half a dozen species.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have the low down on only six
Speaker 2: out of around twenty five hundred species. So future scorpiologists,
Speaker 2: the world is your oyster which is actually a mollusc.
Speaker 2: So I guess the world is your arthropod.
Speaker 3: So the more information we know, the better we can
Speaker 3: protect them. And the truth is they're actually really environmentally sensitive.
Speaker 3: So most scorpions species, as soon as an environment gets
Speaker 3: disturbed by humans, can't survive there anymore. Oh wow, And
Speaker 3: so they're good indicators of the relative health of an ecosystem.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think I'll say that I didn't get
Speaker 3: into the business of studying scorpions because I love killing them. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: they're not that cooperative sitting under a microscope below. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the only way to identify species and study things
Speaker 3: like venom or reproduction is to look at them under
Speaker 3: a microscope.
Speaker 2: I think that's all entomologists have to It's not like,
Speaker 2: definitely a struggle. Yeah, you can't exactly look at them
Speaker 2: through binoculars and just observe them for ten hours like
Speaker 2: wolves or something, you know.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately with most invertebrates, we're nowhere close to where
Speaker 3: we are with with vertebrates in terms of of knowing
Speaker 3: how many species are out there and what they're doing. Right,
Speaker 3: maybe once we get there, we can switch to the binocular. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the binocular model. We'd need like a like a really
Speaker 3: some really strong binocular very strong.
Speaker 2: Now, what is some flimflam about scorpions that you would
Speaker 2: like to debunk? What are some myths that you're like,
Speaker 2: let's get the record straight people.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, here's a few. Here's a few things you
Speaker 3: need to know about scorpions.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: One, they can't jump. Oh okay, it's just a thing.
Speaker 3: They don't They don't jump. They can't walk. They can
Speaker 3: they can walk on some vertical services if they're like grainy,
Speaker 3: like like a rock that has little micro areas to
Speaker 3: step on, but otherwise like something that's slick, like windows.
Speaker 3: They could never walk on a window.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So they're gonna have a hard time getting to you
Speaker 3: if you see it from like a like three feet away,
Speaker 3: like you don't have to run away. It's not gonna
Speaker 3: be able to grab you.
Speaker 2: So, with the exception of Arizona, some parts of southern Nevada,
Speaker 2: and some parts of western New Mexico, Lauren says.
Speaker 3: In the US, there are no scorpions that you have
Speaker 3: to be concerned about. Oh okay, like worst case scenario,
Speaker 3: it feels like a wasp. Even those ones in Arizona,
Speaker 3: like they if you're a healthy adult, you don't have
Speaker 3: to worry. It's not gonna kill you. It will just
Speaker 3: hurt for a little bit. Okay, you might feel like
Speaker 3: a little more like an electric shock than a wasps thing.
Speaker 3: But if you're a child, you want to be safe
Speaker 3: and not be playing with scorpions in Arizona. It's just
Speaker 3: rule thumb. So that's the thing.
Speaker 2: You have cool tattoos? Do you have any scorpion tattoos?
Speaker 2: I do not.
Speaker 3: You don't have a care to get a scorpion tattoo
Speaker 3: because like I don't know, Like I don't want to
Speaker 3: go with a cartoon one because I feel like it
Speaker 3: would bug me, and like a real biologically accurate one,
Speaker 3: like what if something came out wrong, I know, you know,
Speaker 3: like or what if like the drawing was wrong to
Speaker 3: start with and I didn't notice it, and then like
Speaker 3: I would have look at it for the rest of
Speaker 3: my life. Right, Also, like I do sometimes hate them
Speaker 3: because research is really hard, and I have those days
Speaker 3: where I'm like, I hate you. I don't want to
Speaker 3: look at you, like I look at you all day
Speaker 3: and then I'd have to go home and look at
Speaker 3: it like we've taken a shower. Look at that scoria.
Speaker 3: I don't want to see those things.
Speaker 2: I have so many questions from listeners, can I ask you? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like a lightning round oo boy. Okay,
Speaker 2: So before we get to your Patreon questions, a few
Speaker 2: words from the folks who sponsor the show. And one
Speaker 2: thing about having ads is I get to approve everyone
Speaker 2: I endorse. And also it makes donations to a cause
Speaker 2: of the ologists choosing possible. So this week it's so
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Speaker 2: nonprofit that Lauren founded with Eric Steiner, and Islands and
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Speaker 2: research facilities for scientists in the area. They also serve
Speaker 2: as centers for science and environmental education for nearby schools.
Speaker 2: These stations are carbon minimal, they reuse gray water, they
Speaker 2: harness green energy also, and they offer outreach programs for schools.
Speaker 2: They have internships for teenagers interested in science field guide training. Ah.
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Speaker 2: Okay, back to your questions. Okay, so this is kind
Speaker 2: of like a lightning ground. Okay. Sonya Karplovich wants to
Speaker 2: know should they be captus pets? And if yes, do
Speaker 2: they make good pets?
Speaker 3: I say, I'm gonna say yes they should. Should There's
Speaker 3: no reason they shouldn't be captus pets. But like all
Speaker 3: things that are kept in captivity, I think it's really
Speaker 3: important to have captive bread ones because then that keeps
Speaker 3: people out of the natural ecosystems from over harvesting, over
Speaker 3: collecting for the pet trade. So there are some, like
Speaker 3: quite a few species that are really common in the
Speaker 3: pet trade and are bread in captivity. So if you
Speaker 3: want a scorpion as a pet, don't go get it
Speaker 3: out of your backyard. Leave it there. It's doing something
Speaker 3: important in the ecosystem. And rather buy one that's been
Speaker 3: captive bread by by a breeder.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's the opposite of dogs.
Speaker 3: Opposite of dogs.
Speaker 2: Don't rescue one out of the wild.
Speaker 3: Kindly rescuing their their just fine on their own.
Speaker 2: Got it. I was like, how much do scorpions cost?
Speaker 2: And I found myself on a website selling medium Emperor
Speaker 2: scorpions for forty nine to ninety nine and they have
Speaker 2: a live arrive guarantee, which I guess when you think
Speaker 2: of it, it's really an elite selection of people who
Speaker 2: when mailed the box of scorpions would be disappointed to
Speaker 2: find that they are not a live scorpions. And Alyssa
Speaker 2: Katahiss wants to know why is it in the scorpion's
Speaker 2: nature to sting the frog? In quotes? Have you heard
Speaker 2: that phase? There a fable?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a fable right where the scorpion is on
Speaker 3: the frog's back and they're swimming across The scorpion convinces
Speaker 3: a frog to give it a right across the river
Speaker 3: and says like, oh no, I'll never sing you because
Speaker 3: if I sing you, we're both gonna die. And then
Speaker 3: stings it in the middle of the river and the
Speaker 3: frog says why, and it says, because I'm a scorpion.
Speaker 3: It's in my nature. Oh, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess it's like the point of the fables that
Speaker 3: people are who they are and don't change.
Speaker 2: Sort of, that's the philosophical answer. Let's look at this practically, though.
Speaker 3: But a scorpion sitting on frogs back when we're seeing
Speaker 3: the frog because they have all their eyes on the
Speaker 3: top of their head, and they wouldn't even know what
Speaker 3: they were doing.
Speaker 2: Their eyes are on the top of their head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like facing up towards the sky.
Speaker 2: How many eyes do they have?
Speaker 3: It depends, but usually they all almost all have three
Speaker 3: sets of eyes, two in the middle and then a
Speaker 3: set of three to six in each corner of the
Speaker 3: front of their head. And so they're arranged like in
Speaker 3: a triangle. And some people have hypothesized that they use
Speaker 3: the triangular array of eyes to look up into the
Speaker 3: night sky and navigate by the stars.
Speaker 2: Oh my stars. Now, for those who enjoy a good
Speaker 2: crossword puzzle word or are choked for conversation on a
Speaker 2: long car ride with your in laws. Navigating by stars
Speaker 2: is called astromenotaxis. Astrominotaxis. There, you know that. Now Nelson
Speaker 2: Chan has a question that I think you are going
Speaker 2: to enjoy answering.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: Are all scorpions poisonous? And I know that there's a
Speaker 2: poison venom discussion to be had.
Speaker 3: There is, So no scorpions are poisonous because poison is
Speaker 3: something that's secreted and then when something else eats that thing,
Speaker 3: it makes them ill. All scorpions are venomous, which is
Speaker 3: something that's secreted and then injected into the destined hoast
Speaker 3: like another animal. So there's a delivery apparatus for the venom.
Speaker 3: So all scorpions are venomous. Not all scorpions are venomous
Speaker 3: to humans because they don't necessarily have that mammal mirrotoxin.
Speaker 3: But they're all venomous to something.
Speaker 2: If you ate scorpion venom would it be poisonous?
Speaker 3: No, it's a protein and your stomach acid would do
Speaker 3: nature it.
Speaker 2: So if you ate a scorpion, unless it stung you
Speaker 2: on the way down, you're good to go. You're good
Speaker 2: to go, and then it would still be venomous because
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be digested, so poison versus venom.
Speaker 3: But I would like not recommend eating a thumbtack. Okay,
Speaker 3: so like in that sense, maybe not eat the stinger
Speaker 3: just because it's like sharp and I don't know what's
Speaker 3: going to do in your stomach. It seems like not
Speaker 3: a good like, not a good look for anyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also let them live, Let them live? Can
Speaker 2: I live? Jordan Jarrett wants to know what your opinion
Speaker 2: is on the scorpion and Honey Ashrunk the kids. They say,
Speaker 2: I love animals, but scorpions are the one animal that
Speaker 2: just creeps me out. Did you ever see honey a
Speaker 2: shrink the kids? Is there a scorpion of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And well here's what I'll say about that scorpion.
Speaker 3: Scorpions are opportunistic predators, so they'll they'll basically eat anything
Speaker 3: that they can get their hands on.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: They don't forge during the day, and I want to say,
Speaker 3: like when that happens, it's daytime. Oh, that's inaccurate. It
Speaker 3: was also an inaccurate species for where it was. But
Speaker 3: for sure scorpions will eat anything they can get their
Speaker 3: hands on, and that includes like if they could get
Speaker 3: find like a tiny gecko that they're bigger than, they'll
Speaker 3: eat it. If another scorpion comes along, they'll eat it.
Speaker 3: If it's a cricket, they'll eat it. If it's a moth,
Speaker 3: they'll eat it. But they have really low metabolism, so
Speaker 3: that is another thing that makes the good pets. They
Speaker 3: have like one of the lowest men tabloism. So if
Speaker 3: you forget to feed them for like, say a year,
Speaker 3: they'll be If you forget a week, they're gonna survive.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I didn't know that. They're like camels
Speaker 2: kind of j Owens has a question if you remove
Speaker 2: their tails, is it true they die from constipation? And
Speaker 2: what is their mechanism if that's true?
Speaker 3: So maybe I will say that there's some truth to
Speaker 3: that end. That their anus is actually at the end
Speaker 3: of their tail, right before their stinger. Really, so they're
Speaker 3: like rectum goes all the way through their entire tale.
Speaker 3: And then like they're they have just like a single
Speaker 3: kind of chloeca thing that has that excrease everything, and
Speaker 3: they don't have like separate p and pooh situation and
Speaker 3: that's so it all comes out from right before the stinger.
Speaker 3: Oh so maybe they could die of constipation because it
Speaker 3: would be like ruptured and broken. Yeah, I think they'd
Speaker 3: probably just die of blood loss, to be honest.
Speaker 2: That was actually Emily Hawking's question about the waste management system.
Speaker 2: Where is the butt?
Speaker 3: Do they pee? Now we know they do. They excrete
Speaker 3: like uric acid, same as other things, and other waste
Speaker 3: products comes out of their butt.
Speaker 2: There's this one researcher, Camillo Mattoni in Argentina, who has
Speaker 2: observed that some scorpions will voluntarily break off their tails
Speaker 2: to escape. And yes, in that case, in the absence
Speaker 2: of an ans, poo will just build up like emails.
Speaker 2: You don't want to check. But sometimes they can break
Speaker 2: off another tail segment to get rid of the poo
Speaker 2: and then continue to live just long enough to mate again.
Speaker 2: Like Hey, yeah, hi, hi, I don't have a stinger.
Speaker 2: I do have this stumpy column of impacted pooh happening.
Speaker 2: I got scared once and broke off part of my body.
Speaker 2: But I would love a chance to just get to
Speaker 2: know you better, maybe have several dozen babies. Wade Lee
Speaker 2: hy Wait Wad high Way Wade wants to know. Is
Speaker 2: it true smaller scorpions are more venomous in general smiley
Speaker 2: face emoji.
Speaker 3: They it depends on where you are, so it's not
Speaker 3: a simple yes or no answer. In some places, smaller
Speaker 3: scorpions are belong to that one group boothity, so they
Speaker 3: are more venomous.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 3: But I would say in general, a better frame of
Speaker 3: reference is if they have thin hands and either a
Speaker 3: really long or really fat tail, they're probably more venomous.
Speaker 3: And if they have big, fat hands and their hands
Speaker 3: are much broader than the width of their tail, then
Speaker 3: they're less venomous. Ooh, So it's not like the overall
Speaker 3: body size but the proportion of hands to tail situation.
Speaker 2: So counterintuitively, big pintures less scary.
Speaker 4: And you know what they say about men with small hands,
Speaker 4: You can't trust them.
Speaker 2: Dory Grillas seals. There's a lot of consonants in that.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if I said it right. Dory
Speaker 2: Grillis seals, I think trust you not scorpion related. But
Speaker 2: could you tell us about the five hundred Queer Scientists initiative?
Speaker 2: Why did you start it? Why do you think it's important?
Speaker 2: Future plans and Carolyn Swift has the same question in said,
Speaker 2: as a queer science I'd also love the answer to this.
Speaker 2: Huge thank you to both doctor e and you and
Speaker 2: Dory for asking.
Speaker 3: Well, I am queer and I'm an a racknologist, and
Speaker 3: I think for most of my professional career and student
Speaker 3: life I kept those two aspects of my identity really separate.
Speaker 3: And when I started my position, I realized that I
Speaker 3: was the only queer faculty member at my institution. Really yeah,
Speaker 3: and I'm in San Francisco. I was going to say, Right,
Speaker 3: San Francisco is like the gay Mecca. So I'm the
Speaker 3: only queer faculty member, and so my knowledge, I'm the
Speaker 3: only queer faculty member in the history of the institution.
Speaker 3: What because first of all, we're a small institution, so
Speaker 3: it's not like a university that has hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 3: of professors. We have fifteen faculty but still so but
Speaker 3: still it's San Francisco, right yeah, And so I started thinking, like,
Speaker 3: if I feel this way, I feel like those aspects
Speaker 3: of my personality are separate. I'm in a really queer
Speaker 3: friendly place, I'm the only queer faculty member. I feel
Speaker 3: kind of isolated in that sense there must be people
Speaker 3: out there in parts of the world where being LGBT
Speaker 3: is not a protected class for jobs, like you would
Speaker 3: be fired if people found out at work that you
Speaker 3: were gay, or if you're just in a place where,
Speaker 3: like culturally it feels unwelcome to be out and open. Surely,
Speaker 3: if I feel this way in San Francisco, there must
Speaker 3: be people in other places. And so I decided that
Speaker 3: I would start a visibility campaign and it's called five
Speaker 3: hundred Queer Scientists, and where we have a website, we
Speaker 3: also have social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram, and
Speaker 3: we take user contributed stories of scientists and science students
Speaker 3: at all levels, from undergraduate all the way through deans
Speaker 3: of universities have contributed their story and it's really just
Speaker 3: people sharing their stories of what they do in STEM
Speaker 3: and their identity as an LGBTQAI person and how those
Speaker 3: things fit together. And it's been I think great for
Speaker 3: the community to be able to identify each other because
Speaker 3: often it's like one of those attributes that's hidden. It's quiet,
Speaker 3: but it's a really strong part of your personal identity,
Speaker 3: and so it's hard to identify others that you can
Speaker 3: just commiserate with or have as role models or as
Speaker 3: colleagues that you feel comfortable sharing that part of your
Speaker 3: identity with. And so I think it's been a great
Speaker 3: way for the community to find each other and connect
Speaker 3: with one another.
Speaker 2: How long good did you start it?
Speaker 3: We launched last June and I had collected fifty bios
Speaker 3: of people by email, like emailing all my friends and
Speaker 3: asking them to email all their friends. And two weeks
Speaker 3: later we had five hundred.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And now we're eight months and eight yeah, eight months,
Speaker 3: and we have eight hundred and fifty Wow, And we've
Speaker 3: had like over a million interactions on social media in
Speaker 3: those eight months. And you started it, Yeah, So I
Speaker 3: started it with the help of others, but certainly it
Speaker 3: was my little brainchild, and I'm really happy with what
Speaker 3: it's become.
Speaker 2: So you can find five hundred queer Scientists at five
Speaker 2: hundred Queer Scientists on Instagram or go to five hundred
Speaker 2: greers Scientists dot com, and you can read first person
Speaker 2: stories such as Charlotte, who says I am a lesbian
Speaker 2: and a chemistry student. I made the decision to return
Speaker 2: to education after spending a long time selling phones for
Speaker 2: a living For me, studying chemistry is the most wonderful
Speaker 2: thing I have ever had the opportunity to do. It
Speaker 2: started when my wife and I returned from our honeymoon
Speaker 2: in New Zealand. All we can think about is how
Speaker 2: do we go back there? We considered the usual ideas
Speaker 2: of learning a trade or something similar than One day
Speaker 2: I woke up and hit me. I nudged becks and
Speaker 2: said I want to go back to school. She asked why.
Speaker 2: I told her I wanted to study chemistry. She replied, well, four,
Speaker 2: so I can teach it. She simply replied, well, then
Speaker 2: go do it, and rolled over and went back to sleep.
Speaker 2: So here I am Amy Turish, student at the University
Speaker 2: of Manchester, chasing after an interest in radio chemistry and
Speaker 2: a dream to teach at the academic level. Or Alexi
Speaker 2: who writes I'm by and a wildlife educator, animal trainer
Speaker 2: and artist. I floated through college studying biology and social psychology,
Speaker 2: not knowing what I wanted to do. In an interview
Speaker 2: where I uttered the phrase elephant diaper, the managers of
Speaker 2: the local zoo's education department saw something in me that
Speaker 2: I didn't know was there. As someone who was impacted
Speaker 2: by David Attenborough. I never expected I could be doing
Speaker 2: the same for kids of color and all kids in
Speaker 2: general on the ground, But here I am educator, trainer, scientist,
Speaker 2: and mentor to several queer teens of color. So if
Speaker 2: there's something missing from your day, and that's something is
Speaker 2: crying with pride for total strangers and or making some
Speaker 2: new friends, do check out five hundred queer scientists. And
Speaker 2: if you are a queer scientist and you're looking for
Speaker 2: a place to find some community, maybe share your story.
Speaker 2: Look no further fam So follow the folks on there,
Speaker 2: fill your feed with really great scientists, fill your heart
Speaker 2: with joy and admiration. How has it changed your life
Speaker 2: having started it?
Speaker 3: I think for me the biggest change has just been
Speaker 3: realizing other people that were not necessarily in my field.
Speaker 3: Although I have met a few people now in the
Speaker 3: field of a racknology that are queer, but in the
Speaker 3: greater field of entomology, which is the study of insects,
Speaker 3: doesn't really include a rachnology, but they allow us to
Speaker 3: participate it's close enough. So I've certainly met lots of entomologists.
Speaker 3: But I think also I've just realized, like how meaningful
Speaker 3: it is for people to realize that there's others out there,
Speaker 3: because I've heard over and over from so many people
Speaker 3: at this point that prior to this campaign, they'd never
Speaker 3: met any other scientists in their field that was LGBT.
Speaker 3: So I wasn't alone, certainly, And I think that's the
Speaker 3: reassuring part of it, is like you're not alone. There's others.
Speaker 3: They're out there, they're just maybe not as visible as
Speaker 3: we'd like them to be.
Speaker 2: Anything that you would suggest for people to kind of
Speaker 2: keep an eye on, or anything that people could do
Speaker 2: to up the inclusion, anything people could do to be allies,
Speaker 2: Like any advice for people who are like, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: not quite sure what I could do to help.
Speaker 3: I think some simple ways is just acknowledging people in
Speaker 3: the workplace or in your student community and asking, like
Speaker 3: point blank, if there's ever anything that they can do,
Speaker 3: or if there's if you are witnessing something that's that's
Speaker 3: would make them feel uncomfortable or you perceive that they're
Speaker 3: uncomfortable to speak out, so that they don't have to
Speaker 3: speak out. I think that that's huge, and you know
Speaker 3: also that I would say for me, that's been one
Speaker 3: of the really great things about having run this campaign.
Speaker 3: By talking about it this much, this aspect of my
Speaker 3: identity this much around my colleagues who are straight and heterosexual,
Speaker 3: non transgender, gender conforming, whatever, they've become much bigger allies
Speaker 3: for me, like huge advocates and have expressed their desire
Speaker 3: for advocacy in a way that like prior to this
Speaker 3: thing never would have done. And so I think for
Speaker 3: all the people that are lgb TEA out there, like
Speaker 3: taking the step of putting yourself out there and like
Speaker 3: expressing your needs to your colleagues and telling them point
Speaker 3: blank how they can help is scary, it's like terrifying,
Speaker 3: But when you do it, like they're really appreciative of
Speaker 3: that because they don't necessarily know how to help you
Speaker 3: and how to be an ally so just asking which
Speaker 3: is I think it's always like hard to ask for help,
Speaker 3: no matter the context, right, But if you can find
Speaker 3: the courage to do so, it makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2: Ah, you're changing so many lives, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that. It's not me, it's the community. Yeah,
Speaker 3: those eight hundred and fifty stories, only one of them's mind.
Speaker 3: But I'm happy to be the spokesperson for the community
Speaker 3: whenever I have, whenever I can, because I am in
Speaker 3: a place of privilege where I can talk openly about
Speaker 3: my identity in my workplace and not have any fear
Speaker 3: of retaliation or retribution and have this full support of
Speaker 3: my institution. So so I'm happy to do that work
Speaker 3: for the community when I can. Like, there's not that
Speaker 3: much information about out there about the experience for LGBT
Speaker 3: people in the workplace them, but the few things that
Speaker 3: we do know is that about forty percent of queer
Speaker 3: faculty members in academia and in industry are not out.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of people that are out there
Speaker 3: that are not comfortable expressing that part of their identity
Speaker 3: because of fear of retribution, which is a valid fear,
Speaker 3: because surveys have shown that of faculty members that are out,
Speaker 3: seventy percent of them have been made to feel excluded
Speaker 3: or harassed at work by their colleagues.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So there's like a huge motivation not to be out,
Speaker 3: even though being out is great for the community, it's
Speaker 3: great for future students, it's great to be a role model.
Speaker 3: But there's so much, there's so much, there's so many
Speaker 3: reasons not to do it, because you're going to be
Speaker 3: uncomfortable at work, it's going to be terrible. You don't
Speaker 3: want to do that, And so I think it's hard
Speaker 3: to feel that you're in a space that's comfortable enough
Speaker 3: to be out and to be visible.
Speaker 2: So they can commiserate and hear other people's stories. And
Speaker 2: that's amazing. Oh, I'm so glad that you did that.
Speaker 2: You're doing so many good.
Speaker 3: Things and helping peoples and queer people who know that's
Speaker 3: a thing. I don't know how any queer scorpions, but.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's got to be something out there.
Speaker 3: Maybe there's lots of examples of weird things in nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just under a rock. There's so much more
Speaker 2: fluidity in nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, much gender fluidity. Right, and yet like as humans
Speaker 3: who want to dichotomize that. It's so crazy.
Speaker 2: I know this Nails episode we talk a lot about
Speaker 2: you know, just you come b yogs, bring your own
Speaker 2: Jenny's and and now the last couple of questions. I
Speaker 2: always ask her, what's the worst thing about your job
Speaker 2: or the most annoying thing about scorpions? What's the shittiest
Speaker 2: aspect about being a scorpionologist, a scorpiologist.
Speaker 3: You know, I think the hardest thing about working in
Speaker 3: science in this moment in time, in this country especially
Speaker 3: is like the funding so tough. And I think in
Speaker 3: the field that I work in, which is sort of
Speaker 3: evolutionary biology, the successful funding rate to the main place
Speaker 3: that we apply for funding is the National Science Foundation
Speaker 3: government grants, the success rates about four percent. So as
Speaker 3: an early career scientist like breaking into that because you know,
Speaker 3: like almost certainly that four percent is not evenly distributed
Speaker 3: across all genders and ethnicities and stages of career. It's
Speaker 3: certainly biased because the people that are more senior, are
Speaker 3: more established, to tend to be more white, more male,
Speaker 3: and are better at getting grants. So to be an
Speaker 3: early career researcher, trying to break into a four percent
Speaker 3: funding rate is daunting and hard, and it makes it
Speaker 3: really hard to find enough money to do the thing
Speaker 3: that you want to do and feel is really important
Speaker 3: contribution to society.
Speaker 2: Do you have to write all your own grants or
Speaker 2: do I do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I do. I submit probably three or so a year,
Speaker 3: and you know those each of those takes months and months,
Speaker 3: so it's time away from research, which is what I
Speaker 3: really love and want to really be doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now, best thing about scorpions, Best thing about
Speaker 2: your job? What do you love?
Speaker 3: And you know, I love my job because I get
Speaker 3: to wear so many hats and I'm at an institution
Speaker 3: that feels I'm at an institution that was such a
Speaker 3: good match for me, which is why I wanted to
Speaker 3: work there. The Calibournia Academy of Sciences is is I think,
Speaker 3: an incredible museum because it's equally committed to science outreach,
Speaker 3: which is something I love doing and like really high
Speaker 3: quality science research. So for me those two aspects of
Speaker 3: my work life, I always felt like I was going
Speaker 3: to have to give up one for the other. Like
Speaker 3: in a faculty job at a university, I was going
Speaker 3: to have to give up the outreach because that's like
Speaker 3: extra credit, it's extracurricular. It's not something that's considered in
Speaker 3: your annual review or your job performance. Or doing science outreach,
Speaker 3: I was going to have to give up science because
Speaker 3: there's very few science outreach jobs where you can still
Speaker 3: engage as much as you need to in the science
Speaker 3: research itself. But I found a really great fit, and
Speaker 3: I think for me. That's like the great thing about
Speaker 3: going to work every day is they love all the
Speaker 3: things I'm doing, including running a little nonprofit that's focused
Speaker 3: on conservation and doing a visibility campaign for a queer
Speaker 3: sciences And it's nice to be somewhere where I can
Speaker 3: bring all of me to the job.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful place. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: If you've ever if you're going to work every day
Speaker 3: is also not so bad.
Speaker 2: Oh man, if you're in San Francisco, go go go.
Speaker 2: It's just oh, I could spend days.
Speaker 3: I just like walk through the park to work in
Speaker 3: the morning. I see coyotes and there's like crows quawking,
Speaker 3: and redtail hawks fly soaring through the air. It's like
Speaker 3: pretty amazing special. Lately, we have a turkey that lives
Speaker 3: in our business entrance and she just like hangs out
Speaker 3: in the in the like little walkway, like like fluffing
Speaker 3: up her others and like walks around. There's lots of
Speaker 3: different names for her, but everybody's got a different name.
Speaker 2: What do you call her?
Speaker 3: I call her burn That Okay, somebody I didn't make
Speaker 3: the name up. Somebody else did, but that's my favorite one.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's like like burn and that's like
Speaker 3: a real Turkey kind of name. It's definitely she's a
Speaker 3: pretty turkey too.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I need to come back and visit.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Oh my god, it's great.
Speaker 2: Oh I've been I have been gently prodding you for
Speaker 2: too long, Like.
Speaker 3: Like ships in the night, we can never like manage
Speaker 3: to meet up on us. We did it, I did.
Speaker 2: We did it. So ask smart people stupid questions, because
Speaker 2: how the hell else would we ever find out that
Speaker 2: scorpions are four hundred and fifty million years old and
Speaker 2: we're once the size of like a couch? What what?
Speaker 2: To learn more about doctor Esposito's endeavor, you can find
Speaker 2: her on Twitter at a racknology nerd. She's on Instagram
Speaker 2: at karrabalz and I will put links in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Her education nonprofit again is Island and sees It's islandscs
Speaker 2: dot org. You can go to five hundred QUEERSI on
Speaker 2: Twitter on Instagram they are five hundred Queer Scientists and
Speaker 2: it's five hundred Queer Scientists dot com. More links will
Speaker 2: all be up at Aliward dot com, slash ologies, slash scorpiology.
Speaker 2: You can follow Ologies on Twitter or Instagram at Ologies.
Speaker 2: I'm on both at Aliward with one L and there's
Speaker 2: tons of links again for each episode up at alleyward
Speaker 2: dot com slash ologies, and you can become a patron.
Speaker 2: If you like patreon dot com slash Ologies, you can
Speaker 2: get merch at ologiesmerch dot com or through my website.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Bonnie Dutch and also Shannon Feltis for
Speaker 2: helping manage that. Thank you to Aaron Talbert and Hannah
Speaker 2: Lippo for adminting the Really Wonderful Ologies Facebook group. Thank
Speaker 2: you to interns Harry Kim and Caleb Patton of the
Speaker 2: You're Never Too Old podcast, to assistant editor Jarrett Sleeper
Speaker 2: of Mine Jam Media. He also hosts the podcast My
Speaker 2: Good Bad Brain and a combat sports podcast called fight Stuff.
Speaker 2: And thank you to Stephen Ray Morris of the per
Speaker 2: cast Antcy Jurassic Right for never being a frog stabber
Speaker 2: and editing this all together. Also Nick Thorburn of the
Speaker 2: band Islands, who wrote and performed the theme music. And
Speaker 2: if you listen to the end of the episode, I
Speaker 2: always tell you a secret. This week I want to
Speaker 2: tell you about Herbert. Herbert is my tiny tooth I
Speaker 2: have this one tooth that I had a veneer on
Speaker 2: because it's just tiny, and so I was trying to
Speaker 2: get my teeth moved around. I've been doing in visiline
Speaker 2: for like four or five months to get Herbert back
Speaker 2: into place, and they had to take the veneer off
Speaker 2: to like fix it, and I did not know how
Speaker 2: small he was. It's been a while since I've seen him,
Speaker 2: and so now I just have this one little tooth
Speaker 2: I'm in between the veneers, and I got it taken off,
Speaker 2: and I asked some close friends like, look at this,
Speaker 2: and they were like, I didn't. I wouldn't have even
Speaker 2: noticed it. Ali, you're tripping like it's I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: even seen it. And then I went and saw my
Speaker 2: friend Daylan by the way, Happy birthday Daylan. It's her
Speaker 2: birthday today. And one of the first things she said, well,
Speaker 2: happened to your tooth. And I was like, is it noticeable?
Speaker 2: She's like yes, I said. Other friends were like, they
Speaker 2: wouldn't have even seen it. She's like, they're lying to you.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna get it fixed. But meanwhile, if you
Speaker 2: are at the museum and you're like, Allie, what's up
Speaker 2: with her? Tooth. That's what's up with it. It's almost fixed.
Speaker 2: You'd never know, but I figured I might as well
Speaker 2: use the end of this episode to tell you about Herbert. Maybe, Patreon,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll just post a little smiley video of me
Speaker 2: and Herbert up there and Daylan, Happy birthday. Thank you
Speaker 2: for always telling me the truth.
Speaker 3: I love you so much, Okay.
Speaker 4: Pacadermatology, hommeiology or do zoology, lithology, minology, meteorology, paratology, nathology, seriology, elenology.
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