Speaker 1: Get value. You can't argue with at Tesco with their
Speaker 1: amazing club card prices. Serve up something special with our
Speaker 1: finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides
Speaker 1: and dessert for only sixteen EU. Row like succulent board,
Speaker 1: be approved IRUs Shined the Strip Loin Steaks with peppercorn
Speaker 1: butter or delicious IRUs Chicken parmesanma served with creamy potato
Speaker 1: gretam and our mix of rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy
Speaker 1: Goozillionaire or Soldier Caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop
Speaker 1: in store or online Tesco. Every Little Helps available to
Speaker 1: most stores. Prices very inn express.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your Internet dad, It's Ali Ward. This
Speaker 2: is a podcast called Ologies, wherein you will think I
Speaker 2: don't think I care about this topic, and then you
Speaker 2: will later google that topic when you're supposed to be
Speaker 2: doing actual work and tell people weird facts and maybe
Speaker 2: have a dream about the topic later. I dreamed about
Speaker 2: car last night. So let's get into it. Okay, First off,
Speaker 2: thank you for making this show a thing. Thanks to
Speaker 2: everyone at Patreon dot com. Slash Ologies.
Speaker 3: If you have been wanting to join.
Speaker 2: That special treehouse with us, it's a dollar a month,
Speaker 2: but it lets you submit questions to the ologists. Also,
Speaker 2: thank you to the people who leave reviews and who
Speaker 2: rate and subscribe the shows keeping up in the charts.
Speaker 2: Some days I'm a sad creep, and your reviews always
Speaker 2: cheer me up. So I read them all everyone, and
Speaker 2: I prove it by picking a new one. And this
Speaker 2: time it's from someone called Ali Reel, who wrote I
Speaker 2: Am but a Soft Pretzel, the podcast My Pot of
Speaker 2: Cheese Fondu. Ali's ologies inspires me to use my meat
Speaker 2: computer differently while still feeding my childlike wonder for the world.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that. If you leave a review, I
Speaker 3: read it with my eyes.
Speaker 2: That's the deal, that's the truth. Okay, you're ready for cars?
Speaker 2: Let me answer that for you. No, you're not ready.
Speaker 2: This is a most loathed fish with an otherworldly face.
Speaker 2: But is it an armored creature of the deep out
Speaker 2: to drag people under the surface of lakes and rivers
Speaker 2: and rip them apart? Or is it a gentle giant
Speaker 2: whose slime you would caress. We're gonna ask a grologist,
Speaker 2: one of the world's top grologists. In fact, so garrologist
Speaker 2: not a common word In all of my digging, I
Speaker 2: was only able to find it referenced one time in
Speaker 2: one book.
Speaker 3: But what even is a gar? Okay? So a gar?
Speaker 2: The word comes from Old High Germanic for spear, and
Speaker 2: this is primarily a freshwater fish. It has a long,
Speaker 2: sharp snout like a crocodile with teeth just come in
Speaker 2: every which way like sprouts of grass. And the gar
Speaker 2: in garlic, by the way, also comes from spear because
Speaker 2: the cloves can be sharp. Can you eat gar with garlic?
Speaker 2: We're gonna find out now. This garlogist is truly an
Speaker 2: expert and a very impassioned one, and has amassed tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of social media followers for being a gar
Speaker 2: champion for engaging in birds versus fish battles, and he
Speaker 2: is an assistant professor at Nicols State University.
Speaker 3: He got his bachelors from Ohio Northern University and a
Speaker 3: master's and a PhD from University of Michigan and Arbor
Speaker 3: studying aquatic ecology. And he's also one of the most
Speaker 3: truly beloved scientists I know. Everyone who knows this episode
Speaker 3: has been in the works has nothing but glowing things
Speaker 3: to say about it. He's also though a ruthless.
Speaker 2: Pun maker, one of the finest in the game. And
Speaker 2: so to celebrate Gar puns, and there are many, you're
Speaker 2: going to just hear a soft, subtle.
Speaker 3: Chime to alert you, so you could blink, you.
Speaker 2: Can nod and say yes, yes, perhaps do a tiny
Speaker 2: imperceptible butt dance on the bus. Now, this episode has
Speaker 2: been in the making for months and months, but it
Speaker 2: got preempted by two hurricanes and various other scheduling hellscapes,
Speaker 2: and we finally connected, and then something was not happening
Speaker 2: right with the recording portal I usually use.
Speaker 3: But we made it work.
Speaker 2: So climb into hip waiters and let's get deep to
Speaker 2: discover the wonderful world of Gar, including a backstory that
Speaker 2: predates the t Rex, the barges sent out to destroy them,
Speaker 2: the slime, the scales, the poisons, river monsters, pets, boops,
Speaker 2: the hundreds upon hundreds of teeth, and one illustration that
Speaker 2: changed the course of history with an absolute joy of
Speaker 2: a human specimen, garologist doctor Solomon David.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, you went away? Are you still there? Oh? Okay,
Speaker 3: we're having some a couple audio issues. Are you back?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Are you still there?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: I lost you again. No, oh my gosh, you went
Speaker 3: away again.
Speaker 2: Okay, after twenty five solid minutes of technical hiccups in
Speaker 2: this remote recording software we use, we just switched. We
Speaker 2: went over to Zoom because this interview was not not happening.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: Is zoom the best in terms of audio? No, but
Speaker 2: gar is happening, and it's happening now. And also now
Speaker 2: it was video. So behind Solomon, I got to see
Speaker 2: a four foot tank filled with a live, long snouted
Speaker 2: gar of various sizes in the flesh almost And.
Speaker 3: You're not kidding. You do have seven of your friends
Speaker 3: behind me.
Speaker 4: You know they're right, They're right behind me, So you
Speaker 4: get some added guests in the background and everything.
Speaker 2: Seven slender beasts glided by behind him, kind of like
Speaker 2: a live baseball bats with five hundred teeth each. But
Speaker 2: I have a gargantuan list of questions to ask him,
Speaker 2: so let's dive right in.
Speaker 4: So my name is Solomon David and my pronouns are
Speaker 4: he and.
Speaker 3: Him, and you are a garologist.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think we're inaugurating, if you will, that term
Speaker 4: with this podcast. And do you google it? And it
Speaker 4: looks like it hasn't really been used for anything else
Speaker 4: as far as I can.
Speaker 3: Tell, So, how long have you been an expert in guard?
Speaker 4: Oh? Gosh? And I think I feel like expert might
Speaker 4: be you know, sure, maybe now it might be an
Speaker 4: expert in it, but that's just because like there's so
Speaker 4: much that just nobody's really bothered to worry about with
Speaker 4: these fish. So it's a I've been interested in them
Speaker 4: since I was a kid, but then I would say,
Speaker 4: like it was around grad school when I really got
Speaker 4: into them, and you know, they started taking over my life,
Speaker 4: if you will, So I would say, maybe grad school
Speaker 4: is starting to work on them. So I don't know,
Speaker 4: I guess that makes maybe twenty years something like that.
Speaker 3: I think that means. I think that makes you an
Speaker 3: expert twenty years of studying a fish. I think you're
Speaker 3: an expert in the fish. And I saw one of
Speaker 3: your early papers was titled so that we got underdog fish?
Speaker 3: So have you ever have you always been into maybe
Speaker 3: the least glamorous fish and puns? Is that something that's
Speaker 3: just been part of your part of your branding for
Speaker 3: a long time.
Speaker 4: The Van diagram of dad jokes and puns is like overlap.
Speaker 4: But yes, as far as like the underappreciated, you know,
Speaker 4: underdog animals for sure, Like I was liked snakes and
Speaker 4: bugs and you know, sort of the things deemed creatures
Speaker 4: if you will. And so yeah, that leaked over into fish.
Speaker 3: And what type of fish do you study in the lab?
Speaker 4: So the lab is called gar lab. We are focus
Speaker 4: on or not limited to gars. So members of the
Speaker 4: family Lapisastia day there are semi close relatives that bof
Speaker 4: end So there's really only one species that's formally described
Speaker 4: right now, that's extent.
Speaker 2: So his gar lab at Louisiana's Nickels State University focuses
Speaker 2: on the migratory ecology of a few different types of fish.
Speaker 2: Let's screw those fish. I want to talk gar. Give
Speaker 2: me the gar. I'm here for a tender love of
Speaker 2: the river beasts.
Speaker 3: And what exactly is a gar? I did not know
Speaker 3: that they existed until I saw your Twitter with a
Speaker 3: picture holding on it. I was like, that is a
Speaker 3: rubber prop that cannot be real. What is this thing?
Speaker 3: Is it a crocodile? Is it a fish? What are they?
Speaker 3: Can you describe what they look like for people who
Speaker 3: are not familiar with the wonders of gars?
Speaker 4: So I like to tell people, you know, picture an
Speaker 4: alligator or a crocodile with fins instead of legs, and
Speaker 4: that's a gar. So you turned the tail of an
Speaker 4: alligator into a paddle. But really, I mean, if you're
Speaker 4: looking for the you know, basic visualization, that's that's what
Speaker 4: it is. They've got this sort of primitive, ancient look
Speaker 4: to them, long snout, lots of teeth. That's a gar alligator,
Speaker 4: fins instead of legs.
Speaker 3: Where did you get interested in fish?
Speaker 4: In? Fish? Was born in Washington State, lived there for
Speaker 4: a few years. My dad would take me to the
Speaker 4: still Aguamish River, which is one of the rivers near
Speaker 4: kind of like the Seattle Coast, a little bit further inland,
Speaker 4: and I remember like chucking rocks into the water. So
Speaker 4: that was my first memory of like connection with the water.
Speaker 4: So like, I was kind of born in this town
Speaker 4: where like the sound the sign for the town had
Speaker 4: fish on it. But one of the questions I feel
Speaker 4: like that has been valuable to me is like sort
Speaker 4: of telling the story of how I got interested in them,
Speaker 4: which I feel like, could you know, be useful to
Speaker 4: others too. The magazine, the nature magazine Ranger Rick is
Speaker 4: what got me interested in gar. So when I was
Speaker 4: a kid, I flipped through the magazine. I saw this
Speaker 4: article about this animal that had fins instead of legs.
Speaker 4: Looked like, you know, fish with fin instead of license
Speaker 4: alligator gar. So I saw that as a kid, and
Speaker 4: it kind of got emblazoned on the back of my mind,
Speaker 4: that guys, alligator gar baby.
Speaker 3: Can you describe that moment, like were you a subscriber
Speaker 3: to Ranger Rick or did you pick it up on
Speaker 3: a dentist's office, Like what was that moment like seeing
Speaker 3: this alligator gar?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh. So I just moved to Ohio from
Speaker 4: North Dakota, and the neighborhood kids there saw that I
Speaker 4: was interested in creatures, like all the creepy crawlers above, snakes,
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. So they gave me a bunch
Speaker 4: of back issues of Ranger Rick. So I never had
Speaker 4: a subscription back then, there were these old issues, and
Speaker 4: so I was slipping through them then and I turned
Speaker 4: to the page and actually caught my interest first of
Speaker 4: these this illustration, these two little softshell turtles, because that
Speaker 4: was a turtle person. Then I like turtles, and so
Speaker 4: I saw that, like I zoomed up to see, like, wait,
Speaker 4: what is this? And you know, I thought it was
Speaker 4: really cool. I'm like, what is a gar? And it
Speaker 4: was actually called Mississippi King and it was about a
Speaker 4: pond in Louisiana. So it's kind of interesting right now,
Speaker 4: I like, live near a pond in Louisiana, you know
Speaker 4: where there's gars in there and stuff, and so it
Speaker 4: was almost like a foreshadowing sort of thing. And yeah,
Speaker 4: so I was really excited. Then my advisor in undergrad
Speaker 4: who was into gars, so by then I'd kind of
Speaker 4: forgotten about them. He's like, I was taking a theology
Speaker 4: and he's like, gars are this really? You know, cool fish?
Speaker 4: I think they're cool. I'm like, wait a minute, I
Speaker 4: know what those are. And so that kind of started
Speaker 4: me back into them, and then from there on expanded
Speaker 4: to maybe took some turns following the sinuosity of a river,
Speaker 4: maybe to where I'm at right now. But that's I
Speaker 4: would say where the fish interests started.
Speaker 3: Is it weird for you to have seven gar right
Speaker 3: behind you all the time when you work on them?
Speaker 3: Or what happens in your brain and your heart when
Speaker 3: you look at a gar? Is it just heart eye emojis?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I would say, So, I would say it's weird if
Speaker 4: I didn't have gar near me like all the time.
Speaker 4: Like if I'm in my office, there's gars there. Those
Speaker 4: I deserve specimens. The ones at home are the live
Speaker 4: specimens here, and so I'd say they're not. They're never
Speaker 4: too far off from where I'm at. I guess I
Speaker 4: just have a real fascination with these organisms, and so
Speaker 4: anytime I look at them, I'm like, really just excited
Speaker 4: about them, even if it's fish that I've seen, you know,
Speaker 4: for for a long time. You've got fish that I've
Speaker 4: had for like ten years, or.
Speaker 3: What are they eating behind you? Like, what do you
Speaker 3: toss in there?
Speaker 4: They eat shrimp, So I go the frozen shrimp. It
Speaker 4: helps sort of quell the aggression that they might have
Speaker 4: in the wild. Every now and then I would give
Speaker 4: them maybe some feeder fish that I load with extra
Speaker 4: vitamins and minerals and that sing, but really it's just
Speaker 4: frozen fish. So you try to calm them down because
Speaker 4: there's different species and there have to make sure everybody
Speaker 4: gets along. They've got different growth rates, are more aggressive
Speaker 4: than others. It's like dealing with a bunch of children
Speaker 4: all these are well, you know, nicely contained in and
Speaker 4: a quadet box.
Speaker 3: What is your field season? Like, what is your yearly
Speaker 3: rhythm do you spend like summers and the field and
Speaker 3: then you're dealing with a lot of data. What's it
Speaker 3: like for you?
Speaker 4: The rhythm down here is usually syncd up with the river,
Speaker 4: with the Mississippi River and some of the rivers that
Speaker 4: are connected with it. So we have like this sort
Speaker 4: of floodplain inundation season when the water goes up and
Speaker 4: then as it starts to come down, and so we
Speaker 4: kind of monitor populations at various points during that time.
Speaker 4: We kind of go with the flow almost literally, it's
Speaker 4: when the river's up, we're out there. When the river's low,
Speaker 4: we're out there. But we use different techniques depending on
Speaker 4: what the water levels are.
Speaker 3: What kind of gar but do you wear when you're working.
Speaker 4: And that depends too, Like if we're mucking around like
Speaker 4: in the water, then it might be waiters or you know,
Speaker 4: muck boots or something like that, and something that will
Speaker 4: you can try to wash because it's going to get
Speaker 4: covered in gar'slime. I mean there's fish slime and then
Speaker 4: there's garfishlime, and they are almost like two different categories
Speaker 4: all together. One of them does not come out.
Speaker 3: No, Okay, tell me everything, because I didn't even know
Speaker 3: that they had slime. I thought that they had thick scales. Okay,
Speaker 3: anatomy of a gar dish, what's happening?
Speaker 4: Sure, So they've got this elongate body, which is considered
Speaker 4: to be more of the sort of ancient fishes are
Speaker 4: considered the quote unquote primitive fishes, Those earlier diverging fishes
Speaker 4: tend to have more elong gate bodies, and so gars
Speaker 4: kind of fall in with that. They're covered with these
Speaker 4: diamond shaped armored scales. They're called ganoid scales. They're actually
Speaker 4: made up of a compound that's similar to enamel in
Speaker 4: our teeth, so they're super tough. Native Americans in some
Speaker 4: places would make arrowheads out in the scales. Some folks
Speaker 4: still make a jewelry out of them. Early settlers would
Speaker 4: use like they'd cover the blades on their plows with them, So,
Speaker 4: in essence, the scales are really tough. Doda has done
Speaker 4: studies to look at them. Are sort of a bioinspired
Speaker 4: you know, armor and everything. The garmer is there.
Speaker 2: Okay, did I spend an hour on Etsy looking up
Speaker 2: broaches made of gar scales. Maybe, so imagine a flat
Speaker 2: but made of like glossy cream colored jagged teeth, each
Speaker 2: one acting as a pedal am I kind of considering
Speaker 2: purchasing one. Perhaps also just imagine wearing it and people saying, oh,
Speaker 2: what an intriguing statement piece.
Speaker 4: What is that?
Speaker 2: And then you just say, Oh, it's interlocking body armor
Speaker 2: from a fish that's been around longer than dinosaurs and.
Speaker 3: Has a face like a saw.
Speaker 2: It'll cut you if you touch it.
Speaker 4: I look it. So they've got these tough scales, but
Speaker 4: you're right, the slime is there. It's this coating. It's
Speaker 4: exuded from yucus cells on the fish. But they just
Speaker 4: have so much of it, and we have to preserve
Speaker 4: fish for you know, different reasons, and so you know,
Speaker 4: we have a group that we have to take back
Speaker 4: and used for other types of like internal analysis, that
Speaker 4: sort of stuff. Dead guars seem to produce even more
Speaker 4: slime than live guars. It's a lot of slime. If
Speaker 4: we could just harness that sliminess into something else, maybe
Speaker 4: that'll be one of our next projects and maybe we'll
Speaker 4: inspire somebody look at that too.
Speaker 3: Do you have any idea if that slime is similar
Speaker 3: to hagfish slime in the way that it's tossed out
Speaker 3: and it absorbs water to where it's mostly water but
Speaker 3: slime filaments.
Speaker 4: I would say it's not similar hagfish in that way.
Speaker 4: They don't use it as a defense like hagfish as would.
Speaker 4: But both types of slime were, you know, primarily water based,
Speaker 4: though it's almost like just a superficial sliminess to them
Speaker 4: that you know, reminds me of hagfish. And I think
Speaker 4: I posted a video of like lifting up a gar
Speaker 4: that been preserved for a wild or at least was
Speaker 4: frozen in thought, and it's just like the slime drips down.
Speaker 4: The students really seem to get into that in the
Speaker 4: in the Biology of Fishes class, that's one of the
Speaker 4: first dis sections we do is gar so they can
Speaker 4: see what it's like.
Speaker 2: Yes, I look this up and it looked like a
Speaker 2: fish emerging from behind a curtain of mucus or wearing
Speaker 2: a cape made of snot it's as gross as you
Speaker 2: think it is.
Speaker 3: What are those smell like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's another thing they know. Some fish have somewhat
Speaker 4: of a pleasant smellton I used to work on Lake whitefish,
Speaker 4: which is found over the Great Lakes. They actually smell
Speaker 4: like cucumbers, and so that's actually a decent smell. Gars.
Speaker 4: It's it's like a pungent, swampy type smell. It's it's
Speaker 4: hard to describe, but it's it's unique to them, and
Speaker 4: certain species are even smellier than others. And it doesn't
Speaker 4: really come out. You just sort of learned to live
Speaker 4: with it in the field gear that you have. It's pungent.
Speaker 3: It's pungent, pungent and swampy. It sounds like the worst
Speaker 3: like wine tasting notes, a pungent nose and a swampy body.
Speaker 4: I agree.
Speaker 3: What about who eats them?
Speaker 4: Who eats go as long as they're not a vegetarian.
Speaker 4: I feel like everybody should or at least try it.
Speaker 4: It's great. So folks in the South tend to eat
Speaker 4: it more than people up north. Thinking about the United
Speaker 4: States here different countries. In Central America, gar is a
Speaker 4: popular food fish in certain parts of Mexico. It's just
Speaker 4: as popular as salmon is in the Pacific Northwest, so
Speaker 4: you can get gar and banadas to Molli's. You can
Speaker 4: get it on a grill. In the South, here in Louisiana,
Speaker 4: they actually make gar balls, which is basically just taking
Speaker 4: the meat and putting into like almost like meatballs. They
Speaker 4: prepare it in a bunch of different ways. I've had gar.
Speaker 4: It's actually really good. It's one of those things like
Speaker 4: the appearance of the fish might make somebody like, I'm
Speaker 4: not eating that. There's just no way. But you know,
Speaker 4: if you look at a Patagonian toothfish, which is you know,
Speaker 4: Chilean sea bass sea about salt at this point, probably
Speaker 4: not the should eating them anyway if you look at them,
Speaker 4: not the most appetizing looking fish. So I feel like
Speaker 4: that's just another category where they've where they've got a
Speaker 4: bad reputation. But gar is actually pretty delicious and people
Speaker 4: have been eating them for hundreds of years.
Speaker 2: I actually met which animals predate on gar gars. But
Speaker 2: I was quite happy to take this globe trotting culture
Speaker 2: cuisine tour.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: But what about non humans who dares feast on the beast?
Speaker 3: What about animals? I mean, we have at least nets
Speaker 3: and hooks, But if I were an animal in the wild,
Speaker 3: would I just be like that thing's got tooth scales
Speaker 3: all over it and a bucket of slime. I'm out,
Speaker 3: it's out of my leak. Is that how they persisted
Speaker 3: so long? Unchanged?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I mean the armor definitely helps. They live in these
Speaker 4: areas that maybe not not a lot of other more conventionally,
Speaker 4: let's say, were aspiring fish can survive because they actually
Speaker 4: breathe air.
Speaker 3: Wait, what fish breathe air?
Speaker 4: But I digress. We'll come back of that. But alligators
Speaker 4: will eat gars. Those just swallow the whole cormorants. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of pictures online of cormorants and other similar
Speaker 4: type birds or shape birds eating gars. I kind of
Speaker 4: ask for that because I get into that whole birds
Speaker 4: versus fish argument all the time, and so people send
Speaker 4: me pictures of birds eating gars. But gars will, you know,
Speaker 4: turn the table. They will eat birds. I have not
Speaker 4: seen that in real life, but I have heard from
Speaker 4: reputable sources that they do do that.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, it's predator prey.
Speaker 4: There's a balance to it.
Speaker 3: And you mentioned they breathe air. NBD. It's a fish
Speaker 3: that breathes air and has been around since the Jurassic
Speaker 3: or when did gars come on the scene.
Speaker 4: Sure, So the family Lepisasdiada it diverged and branched off
Speaker 4: around one hundred and fifty seven million years ago, so
Speaker 4: that's late Jurassic period. So they're older than Turannosaurus rex
Speaker 4: and they've been around longer than they have too, So
Speaker 4: a lot of our favorite dinosaurs from the Catatious period, like,
Speaker 4: they're even older than that, so they've been around for
Speaker 4: a while. Gars used to be a much more diverse
Speaker 4: group than they are now. Right now, we have seven
Speaker 4: extant species that are all found within North America, Central America,
Speaker 4: and Cuba. There used to be many more species and
Speaker 4: they were found in North America, South America, Africa, India, Europe,
Speaker 4: basically worldwide. They had a panchac distribution and yeah, things
Speaker 4: like air breathing helped them survive for this long. They
Speaker 4: kind of found a body plan that works and they've
Speaker 4: stuck with it for millions of years.
Speaker 3: What is that body plan? Do they have swim bladders?
Speaker 3: You mentioned that in your Biology of Fish classes. It's
Speaker 3: one of the first things you dissect. Do You slip
Speaker 3: in the gar early because they're the coolest and you
Speaker 3: want people to fall in love with fish also, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 4: Like I mean, given that classes Biology of fishes, but
Speaker 4: like with all the you know, thirty thousand some you
Speaker 4: know described fish species. Yeah, I like them to focus on,
Speaker 4: you know, the handful that I really like, but you know,
Speaker 4: to introduce them to the others too. I'm like, there's
Speaker 4: these seven species and then there's like, you know, thirty
Speaker 4: thousand other ones. Toolus, we always have them on hands
Speaker 4: because of our research, so you know, we've got them
Speaker 4: in the freezer. But if you look at them internally,
Speaker 4: as far as that body plan, they've got that elongate body,
Speaker 4: they've got the long jaws with lots of teeth, which
Speaker 4: helps them you know, capture prey effectively. That gas ladder
Speaker 4: looks like a lung on the inside. It runs like
Speaker 4: the length of the dorsal side of the fish. So
Speaker 4: when you dissect them, it looks like along it's highly vascularized.
Speaker 4: It's like a big balloon. And yeah, they have to
Speaker 4: go up and they've got to gulp for air relatively
Speaker 4: frequently in order to function. They basically are an air.
Speaker 3: Breathing fish, so they're they're not just using the air
Speaker 3: that they're gulping for buoyancy, they're actually using it for
Speaker 3: rest duration.
Speaker 4: That's correct, Yeah, because they live in a lot of
Speaker 4: these slower moving water areas, the bayous sort of backwaters
Speaker 4: of rivers and streams. Not that some guars don't live
Speaker 4: in rivers and streams are fast moving water, but they
Speaker 4: live in these areas where the water's moving slower and
Speaker 4: also where the water might be warmer. Warmer water tends
Speaker 4: to hold less oxygen, and so they've got to find
Speaker 4: somewhere else to get their oxygen from otherwise they can't
Speaker 4: stay it. So they just go to the surface. They
Speaker 4: take a gulf, and they can kind of bob.
Speaker 2: Out their business, their business being looking like a Tim
Speaker 2: Burton sketch covered in slime and scale. Now about this
Speaker 2: air gulping. Why does warmer water have less oxygen? Okay, so,
Speaker 2: in short, warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen because warm
Speaker 2: water means the molecules are raging at a faster moving
Speaker 2: mash pit. All that bumming around means that the oxygen
Speaker 2: gas can get tossed out of the mix. Now, if
Speaker 2: you swear you can hear the temperature of boiling water,
Speaker 2: you are not wrong or delusional. So a paper with
Speaker 2: the delightfully long title why can you hear a difference
Speaker 2: between pouring hot and cold water an investigation of temperature
Speaker 2: dependence in psychoacoustics. This came out in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 2: it studied this effect and essentially scientists think our brains
Speaker 2: are just very hip to the lower pitched sounds of
Speaker 2: more viscous water being poured in the higher pitched boiling
Speaker 2: water which has more bubbles and it breaks apart more
Speaker 2: than cold water when it splashes.
Speaker 3: And do they have gills as well?
Speaker 4: They do, so they can breathe through their gills. They're
Speaker 4: considered to be facultative air breathers, which facally means they
Speaker 4: can do both. They don't really have to breathe air
Speaker 4: unless certain conditions are met, so they basically are air
Speaker 4: breathing almost all the time. If they have the right
Speaker 4: mix of cool water and low activity, then they can
Speaker 4: just use their gills.
Speaker 3: And they tend to be fresh water or brackish right.
Speaker 4: Yes, they're mainly found in fresh water. They have to
Speaker 4: reproduce in fresh water. We've seen cases where there are
Speaker 4: eggs and brackish water, but they can venture out into
Speaker 4: full salt water. So there's alligator guards, spotted guars. Long
Speaker 4: those guars have been found off the Gulf Coast in
Speaker 4: full salt water. The Autumn Aquarium in New Orleans, they've
Speaker 4: got an alligator guard. I think it's a couple of
Speaker 4: them in full saltwater, so you can see them swimming
Speaker 4: with sharks and sea turtles and tarpain. It's actually really cool.
Speaker 4: I just go there and I just stare at that
Speaker 4: tank for you know, the duration whenever I'm there.
Speaker 3: Do they know who you are? Are they like, that's
Speaker 3: a famous gar scientist.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I think they know that they're famous,
Speaker 4: and I'm just the fanboy up there trying to take
Speaker 4: a bunch of pictures. And my wife usually just wandered
Speaker 4: the other exhibits and kind of leave me there and everything.
Speaker 4: So yeah, definitely one of my favorites.
Speaker 3: Does your wife share your enthusiasm for fish?
Speaker 4: I think by proxy, and also I think she does
Speaker 4: have a genuine interest in them. We met when we
Speaker 4: were both working at Shedd Aquarium, so you know that's
Speaker 4: a place with a lot of fish by default. So
Speaker 4: we both worked there and I was the researcher there
Speaker 4: and she was working in fundraising, and so that's how
Speaker 4: we met. So really the fish kind of started things
Speaker 4: off or is and we meet, We go through the
Speaker 4: exhibits and I go, I'd just show my favorite fish.
Speaker 4: It was like the guards, the bow fing, the one fish.
Speaker 4: I completely ignored the penguins, of course, and any of
Speaker 4: the other organisms there. So I think that enthusiasm kind
Speaker 4: of carried over. And the last toast in our wedding
Speaker 4: was to the garfish. She held up this little figurine
Speaker 4: and said, if it wasn't for this fish, we wouldn't
Speaker 4: have met each other or anything like that. And so
Speaker 4: I you know, she she tolerates it, but also supports it,
Speaker 4: and I think you know, deep down she appreciates those
Speaker 4: fish too.
Speaker 3: Oh how can you not. I mean, the garfish brought
Speaker 3: you together. I mean that is amazing.
Speaker 4: For our wedding, instead of escort cards, we had little
Speaker 4: gar figurines that were called escort guards. And that was
Speaker 4: a surprise to me. It wasn't me. She came up
Speaker 4: with the idea. I saw it on our wedding day,
Speaker 4: and so it's really been infused with you know, our lives.
Speaker 4: Definitely my life at you know, virtually you know, any love, you.
Speaker 3: Could not have picked a better partner. I mean, come
Speaker 3: on to talk about it, Lucky, What about gar and movies?
Speaker 3: Have they found their way into popular culture at all?
Speaker 4: Sure, you know popular culture maybe to an extent, not
Speaker 4: to the extent of you know, Jaws with the sharks
Speaker 4: or anything like with alligators. There's no krawl you know,
Speaker 4: movie or anything like that, but they are there. So
Speaker 4: if you're familiar with the movie Predator, which was Arnold
Speaker 4: Schwarzeger's sort of one of his breakout roles, is this
Speaker 4: alien that would collect trophies throughout the galaxy, and you
Speaker 4: would actually try to collect humans too, because they're considered
Speaker 4: one of the best prey. What hell are you? They
Speaker 4: had necklaces with these skulls of their sort of trophies,
Speaker 4: and it just so happens that one of the skulls
Speaker 4: is a gar skull. The band somebody pointed that out
Speaker 4: to me along the way, so I thought, like, Gars
Speaker 4: are seriously cool animals, because these aliens are coming from
Speaker 4: all over the galaxy to like, you know, hunt for
Speaker 4: these So that wasn't That's an example I use in
Speaker 4: class and in some presentations. There was another movie called
Speaker 4: If you Know Who Weird Al Yankovic is. He does
Speaker 4: a lot of spoofs and everything like that. His old
Speaker 4: eighties movie UHF had a lot of satire making fun
Speaker 4: of a bunch of different shows. One of the shows
Speaker 4: is Wheel of Fish, and one of the fish on
Speaker 4: the wheels was a gar. And so somebody sent me
Speaker 4: that picture.
Speaker 2: Paul Yankovic's Everywhere I Love You.
Speaker 4: They're even in the Creature from the Black Lagoon. So
Speaker 4: I don't always see it, but people will see it,
Speaker 4: and if they know that I'm obsessed with gars, will
Speaker 4: send this stuff to me. So I like that I
Speaker 4: received that sort of you know information.
Speaker 3: Okay, gar flim flamm. What is a myth that you
Speaker 3: are would love to bust about gar?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: Gosh? So probably the myth that they are bad for
Speaker 4: sport fish populations. They're damaging the ecosystems. That's that's one
Speaker 4: of the big myths is that they're bad for fish
Speaker 4: that we traditionally cared about for cared about more like
Speaker 4: a bass or walleye or some of the other sportfish.
Speaker 4: We think that these gars are you know, taking over
Speaker 4: lakes and rivers, that if you see a lot of gar,
Speaker 4: then it's bad for the other fish. And they're you know,
Speaker 4: important components of native ecosystems, there are predators that are
Speaker 4: needed to maintain balance, kind of like wolves in Yellowstone
Speaker 4: are maintaining you know, proper balance there. So usually if
Speaker 4: you have a healthy population of guars, you have a
Speaker 4: healthy overall ecosystem.
Speaker 3: Oh, why aren't people just eating more gar? Why aren't
Speaker 3: people going after like the trophy fish when you're like,
Speaker 3: it was pretty good eating over here?
Speaker 4: I mean it is right. We've got alligator guars that
Speaker 4: can get over eight feet long, so there's a lot
Speaker 4: of meat on those fish. Not that i'd recommend going
Speaker 4: after the biggest fish, but if you've ever prepared fish before,
Speaker 4: a lot of times they'll use a filet knife to
Speaker 4: you know, fillet the fish right with guards, you need
Speaker 4: to use tin snips to get through the high so
Speaker 4: you need some extra equipment to process a gar. But
Speaker 4: it's worth it, is what I would say.
Speaker 2: Did I watch a bunch of fish cleaning videos for
Speaker 2: this episode for you? You know I did?
Speaker 4: Oh god, it's pretty tough pair of scissors and we
Speaker 4: want to you can hear it crunching as it cut.
Speaker 2: And yes, anglers use yard too or medical trauma scissors
Speaker 2: to chew through these. Ganoine scales, which are indeed really
Speaker 2: similar to tooth enamel. Imagine sawing through a blanket made
Speaker 2: of teeth. Oh, speaking of saws, I asked Solomon if
Speaker 2: after you were done eating the meat, could you use
Speaker 2: a gar mouth as a saw for anything? And he
Speaker 2: was like, eh, No, they're really better at grasping than
Speaker 2: they are cutting.
Speaker 3: So now we know.
Speaker 2: Also, anglers have called these gritters garbage fish, but they're
Speaker 2: starting to accept that they're pretty good eating. And some
Speaker 2: fisher people suggest baiting a hook with carpeads. But when
Speaker 2: scientists need to get a headcount for science reasons, they
Speaker 2: might electro fish, which is applying a current underwater which
Speaker 2: attracts the fishies to the anode and then it stuns them.
Speaker 2: And if this sounds like shooting fish in a barrel,
Speaker 2: it pretty much would be, which is why it's considered
Speaker 2: poaching in many states. But more on this in a bit.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 2: You can also use a drone, like Solomon did on
Speaker 2: a recent expedition with the Nature Conservancies Matt Miller.
Speaker 4: And so we use drones to actually take the line
Speaker 4: away from the boat and we bait it with chunks
Speaker 4: of carp And so you've got this chopped carp on
Speaker 4: a fishing line that's flown by a drone four hundred
Speaker 4: feet away. So basically looking at a flying fish ad
Speaker 4: go through the air and then you tug on it
Speaker 4: and it'll drop the line and you kind of set
Speaker 4: your lines around the boat that way. So we were
Speaker 4: able to land to fair number fish and it was
Speaker 4: all catch and release that way and stuff. We've got
Speaker 4: the biggest fish that I've ever landed, and that was
Speaker 4: between eighty to one hundred pounds is a six foot
Speaker 4: long alligator guard, which is on the average side for
Speaker 4: those fish, but it was really exciting. Yeah, so we
Speaker 4: were drone fishing. We're using like this sort of futuristic
Speaker 4: technology to fish for this ancient fish. It was an
Speaker 4: interesting sort of parallel there.
Speaker 3: How old is a six foot or eight foot alligator gar.
Speaker 4: It's hard to say. Alligator gars grow fast early in
Speaker 4: life and they tend to slow down, but they can
Speaker 4: live for over a high undred years. So a seven
Speaker 4: foot aligiger guard could be forty to fifty years old,
Speaker 4: it could be one hundred years old. We're finding out
Speaker 4: that the way that we age them, we're finding those
Speaker 4: techniques and so we're finding out that all gars are
Speaker 4: actually much older than we originally thought they were. Back
Speaker 4: when I was in grad school, we thought that some
Speaker 4: species only lived about ten years old. We've now learned
Speaker 4: that they can live for probably over thirty years. So that's,
Speaker 4: you know, a significant increase in what we're learning.
Speaker 3: How are you actually dating that? Are there rings in
Speaker 3: their scales or something? What's going on?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So for some fish you can use the scales.
Speaker 4: For others you can use some of the fin rays,
Speaker 4: and they have what we call annuli, like rings on
Speaker 4: a tree, but with a lot of fish gars included.
Speaker 4: We get the best estimates from something called an odolith
Speaker 4: or an earstone, which is in the head.
Speaker 2: Allie, please please tell me what a fish earstone looks like. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: calm down, tucking and imagine something just a few millimeters
Speaker 2: in length that can come in all shapes, usually characteristic
Speaker 2: to a certain speed. Cheese, and they look like teeny
Speaker 2: tiny apple fritters, or if you put a very small
Speaker 2: chicken nugget in your pants pocket and sat on it
Speaker 2: for a seven hour train ride.
Speaker 3: But the texture of a rock treasure.
Speaker 4: And so if we take those out and we look
Speaker 4: at those, we kind of grind them down. We can
Speaker 4: see the rings there, and if you count those rings,
Speaker 4: you can get a good estimate of how old those
Speaker 4: fish are. And nowadays you need really high tech methods
Speaker 4: in order to get the best estimate that we can.
Speaker 4: But now we're finding out is that fish that we
Speaker 4: thought maybe ten years old might be thirty years old,
Speaker 4: fish that we thought we're sixty might be who knows,
Speaker 4: seventy eighty. You know, fish can live for over one
Speaker 4: hundred years. As far as cars are going.
Speaker 3: What bad asses? Seriously? Okay, I have so many questions
Speaker 3: from patrons. Can I lightning round sounds good? Are you ready? Okay?
Speaker 2: But before we do, we toss some dollars at a
Speaker 2: good cause in the name of theologist and doctor Solomon
Speaker 2: David pointed our money canon toward Ranger Rick magazine, which
Speaker 2: is a part of the National Wildlife Federation.
Speaker 3: So hello to.
Speaker 2: All the rangers out there, including Hannah Shardt, the editor
Speaker 2: of Ranger Rick. The donation was made possible by sponsors
Speaker 2: of the show, which I will quickly tell you about
Speaker 2: and give you some discounts.
Speaker 1: Get value you can't argue with at Tesco with their
Speaker 1: amazing club card prices, serve up something special with our
Speaker 1: finest meal deal for two starring one main, two sides
Speaker 1: and dessert for only sixteen euro like succulent board be
Speaker 1: approved virus shining the strip loin steaks with pepper corn
Speaker 1: butter or delicious Irish chicken parmegama served with creamy potato
Speaker 1: gritam and our mix of rainbow root vegetables and enjoyed
Speaker 1: Goozillionaire or Soldier caramel cheesecake. Can't argue with that shop
Speaker 1: in store or online Tesco. Every little helps available the
Speaker 1: most stores, prices very and express.
Speaker 2: Okay, all your questions regarding this fish, Okay, So first up,
Speaker 2: Charlotte Folkcard, Ashley Aeroncio, Felix Sasal and Ellen Skelton all
Speaker 2: had questions about our changing planet.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Okay number one, because we were supposed
Speaker 3: to record this. I think like September third, right around
Speaker 3: which hurricane was it that preempted that?
Speaker 4: Gosh? I lost track. Honestly, we had Ata and I
Speaker 4: don't know, maybe there was Zeta. Yeah. I think a
Speaker 4: record five or six named storms this you know that
Speaker 4: might have been hurricanes this year. So lots lots of
Speaker 4: hurricanes are.
Speaker 3: The gar surviving climate change.
Speaker 4: Okay, it seems to be. Yeah, No, that's that's a
Speaker 4: great question. Some fish are going to be more affected
Speaker 4: by climate change than others. Fish that depend on cold water,
Speaker 4: cold temperatures, We're probably going to see their ranges contract
Speaker 4: in a lot of areas, whereas warmwater fish will probably
Speaker 4: see range expansions there. Gars are warmwater fish, they'll probably
Speaker 4: do better in some areas. But climate change is going
Speaker 4: to affect habitat. It's gonna affect all kinds of things.
Speaker 4: So climate change is most likely going to be bad
Speaker 4: for everybody. It's just going to be you know, problematic
Speaker 4: in different ways. Right now, gars are doing okay, but
Speaker 4: habitat loss is probably the biggest threat to guars.
Speaker 3: And habitat loss that caused by just human development and build.
Speaker 4: Yeah, whenever we're you know, damming rivers or cutting off
Speaker 4: floodplains from their you know, river systems, we're cutting the
Speaker 4: fish off from spawning grounds, removing vegetation in some places,
Speaker 4: which is what gars need to reproduce. That can be problematic.
Speaker 4: So really, habitat losses is the big thing, and that
Speaker 4: can be exacerbated by invasive species, by climate change. You
Speaker 4: know again, like you mentioned anthropogenic inputs too.
Speaker 3: Okay. Hanavon wants to know what's with the gar with
Speaker 3: the sharp teeth. My friend from Alabama is always talking
Speaker 3: about trying not to get bit while swimming. Does that happen?
Speaker 3: Will they bite you?
Speaker 4: No, they're not going to bite you. Oh. The only
Speaker 4: way you're really going to get bitten by a gar,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe even just slightly intentionally, is if you're
Speaker 4: messing around with one on the boat, like let's say
Speaker 4: you're an angler and you're trying to you know, dislodge
Speaker 4: a hook or get them out of the net or
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. That's really it. They're not going
Speaker 4: to come after you and attack.
Speaker 3: Okay, if you're swimming in Alabama, will other fish bite you?
Speaker 4: I can't speak for other fish, you know, really sunfish
Speaker 4: they call them perch down here, they will come in.
Speaker 4: They will knit that you. Now, they don't really have
Speaker 4: the teeth that guars do. But they're some of the
Speaker 4: fish that we think are and aggressive actually are aggressive.
Speaker 4: They're just not really going to do any harm or anything.
Speaker 3: Okay. More Patreon questions. Julie McDonald want to know do
Speaker 3: fish feel pain? I know this is kind of a
Speaker 3: silly question, but I've heard conflicting accounts of it and
Speaker 3: would like to hear from the source. Do fish feel pain?
Speaker 4: So I don't know if I'm with the source because
Speaker 4: you have to go to the fish for that, But
Speaker 4: there is a lot of research being done on fish
Speaker 4: and pain. I would probably summarize it in that fish
Speaker 4: feel pain. It's not exactly in the way that we do.
Speaker 4: I'm not a fish pain expert. What we do do
Speaker 4: with our research is that we make sure that when
Speaker 4: we're handling the fish, if they are experiencing any sort
Speaker 4: of pain, it's the most minimal version that they could
Speaker 4: feasibly experience, so we anesthetize them. We're quick to get
Speaker 4: them out of the nets. Safety of the animals is
Speaker 4: definitely a priority. So I would say that fish do
Speaker 4: feel pain, now how they feel pain? I am not
Speaker 4: a fish neural biologists, so I couldn't tell much more
Speaker 4: specific than that.
Speaker 2: Okay, quick aside. I looked into this because I do
Speaker 2: feel like the shrug fish don't feel pain seems entirely
Speaker 2: anathetical to, say, evolution and avoiding dangers, but it's a
Speaker 2: pretty convenient justification for choosing the fish dish on a
Speaker 2: wedding menu instead of the veggie option, of which I
Speaker 2: was frequently guilty before all weddings happened on a screen. So,
Speaker 2: according to doctor Lynn Snedden, a University of Liverpool researcher
Speaker 2: and a director of bioveterinary science, Doctor Snedden is the
Speaker 2: global authority on fish pain, and she says they probably
Speaker 2: do indeed feel pain. They express physical symptoms when injected
Speaker 2: with an acid, and those symptoms subside when they're administered
Speaker 2: morphine afterward. And the research finds that our aquatic friends
Speaker 2: may feel pain strikingly similar to that of mammals. Also,
Speaker 2: doctor Snedden has a website called The Fish Indicators of
Speaker 2: Stress and Health acronym FISH. So if someone says these
Speaker 2: slimy guys love getting caught, it's pretty fishy claim. Now, okay,
Speaker 2: if you like vengeance, though, you're gonna love. This question
Speaker 2: on the minds of many, including patrons Calvin Doling, Raden, Markham, Hannaquist,
Speaker 2: Jamie Kishimoto, Chris Brewer, Morgan, Alexander Coburn, Laura Smith, just Want,
Speaker 2: Rachel Moore, Aviva Elizabeth and Alison Tory.
Speaker 3: So many people. This is probably the biggest question I
Speaker 3: got want to know what is up with their toxic eggs.
Speaker 3: What is their life cycle? Like, how are they doing it,
Speaker 3: how many babies do they make, how big are their eggs,
Speaker 3: what's going.
Speaker 4: On the eggs? So, first of all, there's no gar caviar,
Speaker 4: So no garvr if.
Speaker 3: You will, there are so many gorn here to.
Speaker 4: Try it. I mean not that they don't have eggs's
Speaker 4: just you shouldn't try to eat them. So gar eggs
Speaker 4: are weird. They are toxic to humans, they're toxic to mammals,
Speaker 4: they're toxic to birds, they're toxic to a lot of
Speaker 4: different invertebrates, but they're not toxic to fish. So it's
Speaker 4: kind of a weird gap in the you know, toxic
Speaker 4: bingo card, Like if you're gonna have poisonous eggs, you
Speaker 4: think you want it to be poisonous to the animals
Speaker 4: that are kind of you know, in the same area.
Speaker 4: So O Sensibly, that seems like, you know, a weird
Speaker 4: sort of thing. But part of our working theory is
Speaker 4: and there's other folks at Nickels State University working on
Speaker 4: this as well. Doctor garylett Fleur's lab is looking at
Speaker 4: gar egg toxicity and trying to figure out what are
Speaker 4: the proteins. Is a bacterial based you know, what are
Speaker 4: some of the details there. But from an evolutionary perspective,
Speaker 4: we're thinking that you know, gars live in this water
Speaker 4: that is going to be low oxygen, it's relatively warm,
Speaker 4: it's relatively shallow, especially where they're laying their eggs. So
Speaker 4: you're probably not going to have a whole lot of
Speaker 4: other predatory or egg predator fish out there. But what
Speaker 4: you do have is crustaceans. Down to Louisiana, we got
Speaker 4: crawfish around. I say crawfish because I'm speaking for Louisiana,
Speaker 4: but it's crayfish and everybody else. And you've got a
Speaker 4: lot of you know, waiting birds, herons, everything that you know.
Speaker 4: I want gars to have the revenge back on. So
Speaker 4: it would be toxic to those bird predators, would be
Speaker 4: toxic to the invertebrates. There be toxic to other mammals.
Speaker 4: And so that's one of my working theories is do
Speaker 4: why that toxicity is there but not to fish. So
Speaker 4: the eggs are toxic, they're toxic even inside the fish.
Speaker 4: So every now and then we'll read about somebody who
Speaker 4: caught a gar and they decided to you know, try
Speaker 4: to make gar caviar, and they ate the eggs, so
Speaker 4: even when they're inside the fish, they don't have to
Speaker 4: be laid in order to be toxic. But also what
Speaker 4: we found out is that even the larvae are toxic
Speaker 4: for a little bit too, so they're actually poisonous to predators.
Speaker 4: That kind of that toxicity shrinks as they get older
Speaker 4: and older, but for those first you know, maybe several
Speaker 4: days to a week or so, the larvae are also toxic.
Speaker 3: Ooh, and do their predators learn that pretty quickly early on?
Speaker 3: Like are they able to eat an egg and like
Speaker 3: barf it up and be like never again, or do
Speaker 3: they just do their predators straight up die if they
Speaker 3: eat them, and it's just sort of instinctual avoid them.
Speaker 4: I think there's a fair amount of research that's still
Speaker 4: out there to be done on that. Because humans have
Speaker 4: learned they've gotten sick. I don't think anyone has actually,
Speaker 4: you know, died from eating gar eggs, thankfully, but they
Speaker 4: have gotten violently ill. But invertebrates seem to get sick
Speaker 4: and they die. It seems like birds they'll get sick
Speaker 4: from it and they'll die off too. So I don't
Speaker 4: know if they live long enough to tell their friends,
Speaker 4: you know, cough cough, don't eat this. I think it's
Speaker 4: a pretty high level of toxicity. And the way they
Speaker 4: lay their eggs is that there's usually it's going to
Speaker 4: be in groups and in clusters, so that it might
Speaker 4: be an amount that they're ingesting. I couldn't speak to
Speaker 4: the learning curve beyond humans. Humans now know. We have
Speaker 4: the Internet to try to spread that information. Don't eat gar.
Speaker 3: Eggs, don't do it. Don't do it so tempting. It's
Speaker 3: like the forbidden foods. It's the tide pod of the
Speaker 3: ancient fish world.
Speaker 4: It really kind of is.
Speaker 2: So don't eat it unless you're excited to have violent
Speaker 2: gastro intestinal distress and maybe death.
Speaker 3: So don't now.
Speaker 2: This question was also asked by quite a few of
Speaker 2: you patrons, including Claire Meyer, Margaret Ray, Liz rope Key
Speaker 2: and honestly it's a little nosy.
Speaker 3: Katie wants to know what is the ecological niche for
Speaker 3: their long snouts, like, what's the most likely reason they
Speaker 3: evolve like that? And Nicole Cohen says, I catch gar
Speaker 3: all the time with my dad, and I always wonder
Speaker 3: what determines the bill length. Does the length have any
Speaker 3: status to the fish or is it just how the
Speaker 3: fish is? Like some humans are taller than others, so
Speaker 3: why do they have these really long bills? And how
Speaker 3: different are those between individuals of the same species.
Speaker 4: So great questions As far as the long bills, I
Speaker 4: think you can loosely make an argument for convergent evolution.
Speaker 4: If you look at crocodiles and alligators, they've got those
Speaker 4: long snout slots of teeth. Guards don't have the same
Speaker 4: biting power that crocodiles and alligators do, but to a
Speaker 4: similar sort of principle where they use that long snout
Speaker 4: as sort of a range extension to go after prey.
Speaker 4: If you're familiar with this other it's a fish eating
Speaker 4: crocodile called a garia, no relations to guards. It's not
Speaker 4: even spelled exactly the same way. But they've got these
Speaker 4: long snouts. They specifically feed on fish. They side swipe
Speaker 4: with it, and they open it very quickly to grasp
Speaker 4: on that fish. So different gar species have different lengths
Speaker 4: of snouts, usually depending on what they're eating. The long
Speaker 4: nose gar primarily eats other fish, so it's got a
Speaker 4: long and skinny snout. All your gar will eat fish,
Speaker 4: but it'll eat a lot of other types of animals.
Speaker 4: Even they'll even scavenge. So they've got a shorter snout
Speaker 4: and a wider snout a little it allows them to
Speaker 4: eat some different things. Now, as far as the maybe
Speaker 4: sexual dimorphism across the snouts, they believe that some female
Speaker 4: spotygars have longer snouts than male spot of gars, But
Speaker 4: we found this berries with population and it probably varies
Speaker 4: with the locality and even across species, so there's no
Speaker 4: great way to show that. You know, longer snout means female,
Speaker 4: shorter snout means male. But bigger gars tend to have
Speaker 4: bigger snout.
Speaker 3: And Alandakole wants to know do gar have electromagnetic sensory
Speaker 3: organs and if so, what are the primary functions of it.
Speaker 3: You mentioned electro fishing, and I was like, well, what
Speaker 3: is electro fishing? Do they have any It's in their face?
Speaker 4: Sure, so electric fishing is you know, to be simple,
Speaker 4: it's not what gars do. So they don't have they
Speaker 4: don't have electroceptors. They do have taste buds on their
Speaker 4: snout though, so I have watched a little poke around
Speaker 4: with their snout like you know, look around for food,
Speaker 4: almost like a little long snouted dog looking for food.
Speaker 4: We get to see that in the aquarium and you
Speaker 4: can see that in the wild too. You'll see their
Speaker 4: tails stick straight up out of the water and they're
Speaker 4: like head standing. They can sniff out food, but they
Speaker 4: aren't electrosensitive in that like a paddlefish would be, or
Speaker 4: like a sturgeon would be.
Speaker 2: Wait, sturgeons are electro sensing.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 2: I looked it up, and this is similar to how
Speaker 2: sharks go about locating prey. And electrosensing tends to be
Speaker 2: more prevalent in aquatic species, including dolphins, since the dissolved
Speaker 2: metals and water conduct electricity better than air, but it's
Speaker 2: also seen for some reason in terrestrials like echidnas and
Speaker 2: bees and platypuses and platypusses. It was recently found fluoresce
Speaker 2: and a greenish glow under ultraviolet light, which was a
Speaker 2: discovery recently made when doctor Paula. Spaith Anik and some
Speaker 2: other researchers at Chicago's Field Museum held a small quiet
Speaker 2: rave and invited a drawer full of preserved monotreams. So
Speaker 2: yes these egg laying mammals are the animal equivalent of
Speaker 2: psychedelic posters you buy at a bob shop. But back
Speaker 2: to electricity in your fish face.
Speaker 4: Now. Electric fishing is a technique that we do in
Speaker 4: fisheries where we run a week current through the water
Speaker 4: and fish within a certain vicinity of that current are
Speaker 4: drawn towards that electrical field, and if they're really close
Speaker 4: and they get stunned and we can net them up,
Speaker 4: we put them in the boat, we can tag them,
Speaker 4: measure them, and within seconds they'll come to and then
Speaker 4: we can release them back and they kind of go
Speaker 4: about their business. So it's a good way of sampling
Speaker 4: a population. If you need to get a large number
Speaker 4: of fish with a minimal amount of sort of contact.
Speaker 3: Times you know you mentioned when they go up to
Speaker 3: gulp air. Does that not make them more visible to predators?
Speaker 4: It does, and so gars will do it relatively quickly.
Speaker 4: But if your gar of a certain size, once they
Speaker 4: reach in all sizes, there's really not many other predators
Speaker 4: that are going to frighten them. Alligators can eat certain
Speaker 4: large gars, but a big alligator gar it's only a major,
Speaker 4: you know, predator, maybe a big alligator, but they'll usually
Speaker 4: go for smaller prey, but it's really human now. Gars
Speaker 4: also exhibit what we call synchronized respiration, So if one
Speaker 4: gar goes up for air, oftentimes another gar will go
Speaker 4: for air. Another gar will go for air. We think
Speaker 4: this might have evolved because if other gars see that
Speaker 4: it's safe to go for air, then they'll go for
Speaker 4: air at about the same time. So that works for
Speaker 4: gars versus almost any other animal, not so much versus humans.
Speaker 2: Oh, right now, somewhere there's a bunch of gar asking
Speaker 2: each other are you going?
Speaker 3: I mean i'd go. If you go, we can ride
Speaker 3: together if you want. But I mean, just one goal
Speaker 3: and then I have to I have to get up early. Okay.
Speaker 3: Miranda Panda wants to know are there any fish who
Speaker 3: have evolved from this fish? And reversely, is there any
Speaker 3: way of knowing what they evolved from or have they
Speaker 3: just been around too long to tell? Like what's their
Speaker 3: backstory and who's evolved from them?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I would say gars have been doing their own
Speaker 4: thing the way sort of phylogenetically, the tree of life
Speaker 4: has sort of branched off. They kind of went off
Speaker 4: on their branch, and they branched off from the rest
Speaker 4: of the ray finned fish's group again about one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty seven million years ago, and they've been kind
Speaker 4: of doing their thing and haven't changed it since then,
Speaker 4: So I wouldn't say there's other fish that have sort
Speaker 4: of evolved from Gars. Now. Evolutions sort of an ongoing process,
Speaker 4: so even within populations, we see that they're changing with
Speaker 4: things like climate, with different sort of mutations that might
Speaker 4: pop up, so over time might get a gar species
Speaker 4: that's present today that splits into two different species. We
Speaker 4: also think that there's some unknown sort of cryptic species.
Speaker 4: The people just haven't steady gars enough that we're pretty
Speaker 4: sure that there's other gar species out there besides the
Speaker 4: seven that we know.
Speaker 2: What seven are those, I'm going to run down a
Speaker 2: who's who of society gar, at least the discovered species.
Speaker 2: There's the long nosegar, which has the most redundant of
Speaker 2: the gar names. Then there's the leopard printy spotted gar.
Speaker 2: There's the Florida gar, which looks a lot like a
Speaker 2: spotted gar, but it's Floridian, which means that it's wearing
Speaker 2: denim cutoffs in January and maybe has a bedazzled license
Speaker 2: plate holder. There's the tropical gar, which is a popular
Speaker 2: menu item in Central America. It's eaten like we enjoy salmon.
Speaker 3: Here, just hold the row.
Speaker 2: There's the short nose gar, which snoop wise, it's kind
Speaker 2: of closer in proportions to a dolphin than a swordfish.
Speaker 2: It's also a common pet. Oh, let's not forget about
Speaker 2: the alligator gar, a river giant that can reach eight
Speaker 2: feet in length and three hundred pounds of scaly chunk.
Speaker 2: And then moving on lastly, the most rare of the
Speaker 2: seven cuban gar, which is a freshwater species. It can
Speaker 2: also inhabit brackish water as well, but sadly it's not
Speaker 2: a saltwater species, as then we could call it the
Speaker 2: Cuban seagar.
Speaker 3: I'm a monster.
Speaker 2: And speaking of this, next question about a certain show
Speaker 2: was asked by patrons Kendall Burnell, Janella Lindauer, Jennifer Stone,
Speaker 2: Meggie Bender, and oh Rich Pastinew wants to know if
Speaker 2: you've seen any of Jeremy Wade's shows like River Monsters
Speaker 2: or Dark Waters, and if so, what's your opinion.
Speaker 5: God don't bite pieces off their prey. They only eat
Speaker 5: what they can swallow whole. This puts humans off the menu.
Speaker 4: The great question. I think Jeremy Wade has done a
Speaker 4: great job for science communication of these sort of river
Speaker 4: monster type fish. I think it's done a great job
Speaker 4: of getting away maybe from them being called monsters. The
Speaker 4: show is called River Monsters. You might think these are
Speaker 4: these threatening organisms. They're really bad. They present these sort
Speaker 4: of sensationalized accounts of this sort of crime that's been committed,
Speaker 4: somebody who's bitten by something, and you know, it turns
Speaker 4: out usually that it wasn't the fish. In the case
Speaker 4: of Gars, it ends up that was the case. Although
Speaker 4: I did spend a lot of time yelling at the
Speaker 4: TV when that first River Monsters episode came on. All
Speaker 4: my roommates had left by that time, are like, we
Speaker 4: can't sit with you and listen to you to it.
Speaker 4: That wasn't the right name for that fish, and that
Speaker 4: wasn't the right thing. But I think overall bringing it
Speaker 4: to sort of public view has been beneficial for that,
Speaker 4: So I think overall he's done a great job with it.
Speaker 4: I just like watching people catch being fish anyway.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I believe I've seen enough to clear the guard's name.
Speaker 5: You've got that. Yeah, it's time to return the specimen
Speaker 5: to the wild and reflect on other possible suspects.
Speaker 3: Do people ever wrestle guard You know, they.
Speaker 4: Might wrestle them when you get them to the boat,
Speaker 4: but not like they're wrestling alligators or anything like that.
Speaker 4: Alligator guards are actually pretty chill once you get them
Speaker 4: onto the boat. Like they realize I'm huge and there's
Speaker 4: really not much you can do to me. So I mean,
Speaker 4: especially what if you're doing catch and release or whatever
Speaker 4: and that sort of thing. But like, they'll usually kind
Speaker 4: of sit there. When we get on fish, whether it's
Speaker 4: a small gar a large gar, we put a wet
Speaker 4: towel over their eyes, so that calms them down. That's
Speaker 4: the case with a lot of different organisms, and so
Speaker 4: they kind of chill out and then we you know,
Speaker 4: take our measurements and get them back into the water
Speaker 4: and everybody's happy.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I feel this way when I scroll on Twitter
Speaker 2: for too long, so I just have someone put a
Speaker 2: wet towel over my head and I just sit there
Speaker 2: blinking in the dark. Piece at last, nothing exists now.
Speaker 2: A lot of folks, including patrons Miranda Panda, Ava Schaeffer,
Speaker 2: Linda Matson, Susan Kennon and a Valerie, Janelle Shane, Michael Hanby,
Speaker 2: Jennifer Lewis, Adam Weaver, Natalie Bates, Ryan mcsmith, Lydia Zimmerman,
Speaker 2: Sadie Baker, and the Legra Sunstorm wanted to know more
Speaker 2: about their evolution, the fossil record, and essentially their history,
Speaker 2: presumably to write more nuanced fanfic about gar So many
Speaker 2: people want to know more about their long backstory, like
Speaker 2: Margaret Ray says, how did they survive the kt asteroid
Speaker 2: impact that took out the dinos? Daniel Donald and wants
Speaker 2: to know since it appeared that they stopped evolving around
Speaker 2: the late Jurassic, what is it about their niche that
Speaker 2: made them say.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're good, just we're just going to stop the
Speaker 3: mutations now. And Shaan Washington eggs please please please, one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand percent debunk the living fossil fallacy? What is
Speaker 3: that living fossil fallacy? And why did they stop evolving?
Speaker 4: So many questions there. Oh, now let me start with
Speaker 4: that one. So, first of all, they didn't stop evolving.
Speaker 4: They are very slowly evolving compared to other organisms. So
Speaker 4: every organism that's alive today is considered to be technically
Speaker 4: a modern organism. We're living in modern times. It's alive today,
Speaker 4: it's had the span of time to evolve. Gars just
Speaker 4: tend to evolve at slower rates. Basically, all animals are
Speaker 4: still evolving, so populations are changing, natural selections taking place
Speaker 4: on individuals. So I would put out there that evolution
Speaker 4: is an ongoing process. It hasn't stopped for gars. It's
Speaker 4: just that they're already slow at doing it. So we
Speaker 4: might see more changes, but it's probably at a timescale
Speaker 4: that we you know, won't be able to observe very
Speaker 4: effectively at least moving forward. Now getting to the living
Speaker 4: fossil question, this is something that I have my students
Speaker 4: answer as the first exam question. So I finding future
Speaker 4: students are listening to this and now they get they
Speaker 4: get a freeb out of this. But it's why was
Speaker 4: Darwin's idea of a living fossil technically incorrect? But the
Speaker 4: idea is there. So he said, living fossils were kind
Speaker 4: of like organisms that are alive today that look the
Speaker 4: same as they were you know, way back when or
Speaker 4: in the fossil record. What we like to use to
Speaker 4: sort of adjust that is they look like that at
Speaker 4: least as far as external appearance. But they've been evolving
Speaker 4: over this entire entire period of time. So from a
Speaker 4: science communication perspective, I like the term living fossil. You
Speaker 4: just have to use the right caveats with it when
Speaker 4: you're explaining it to somebody. It's almost like saying primitive fish.
Speaker 4: People tend to know or steal a cant as a
Speaker 4: primitive fish. A gar is a primitive fish. It's not
Speaker 4: necessarily the exact terminology that's correct. But if I were
Speaker 4: to say they're none too staffed in Otorigians, you lose
Speaker 4: people by the second syllable first. So I like living fossil.
Speaker 4: I think you can use it if you use in
Speaker 4: the right one.
Speaker 2: Acilacanth side note is an ancient nubby lobed fish, and
Speaker 2: everyone thought they were extinct for sixty five million years
Speaker 2: until nineteen thirty eight when a South African fisher person
Speaker 2: called up a museum and was like, hey, in case
Speaker 2: you want to look at my trash fish bycatch, come
Speaker 2: down to the pier. There's a weird one in here,
Speaker 2: and biologist Marjorie Courteney Latimer hopped into a taxi to
Speaker 2: the pier and was like, hot dog, what in the
Speaker 2: born home is this? And then made a sketch of
Speaker 2: it which looks kind of like a police sketch of
Speaker 2: Acila canth I'm not gonna lie to you, and confirmed
Speaker 2: that this thing in this guy's net was the not
Speaker 2: extinct lobed fish that was the predecessor essentially to terrestrial tetrapods.
Speaker 2: This was a big deal, like the natural science equivalent
Speaker 2: of someone on a telenovela who is long dead showing
Speaker 2: up on a doorstep and everyone being like, but they're alive,
Speaker 2: you fleshy finned bitch. I love you, Willa rowan first
Speaker 2: time question asker who loves a Cela Camp. No, they
Speaker 2: are not a close relative of gars. Sorry, but also,
Speaker 2: selacans are said to have just a speck of brain
Speaker 2: matter amid a big old lump of fat, which also
Speaker 2: feels like me many days.
Speaker 3: Speaking of Stephanie Birhertes and just one both wanted to
Speaker 3: know what their brains are like, just wanted to know
Speaker 3: how do they compare intelligence wise to other sea creatures.
Speaker 3: How do you even measure or quantify that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say that they're smarter than we might
Speaker 4: give them credit for. I mean, I think fish overall
Speaker 4: are smarter than what we you know, the pop culture
Speaker 4: has given them credit for. Like I think Science Friday
Speaker 4: dispelled the rumor of like, you know, you have the
Speaker 4: memory span of a goldfish or you know, goldfish, you
Speaker 4: remember quite a bit. They can live for a long
Speaker 4: time too. Gars Also they can recognize individual people. We've
Speaker 4: seen that with pet fish and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: So they're they're pretty smart. Now, I've never seen a
Speaker 4: head to head gar versus octopus, you know, brain teaser,
Speaker 4: you know, contest or anything like that. I think there's
Speaker 4: plenty of sea organisms out there that are smarter than gars.
Speaker 4: But I think, you know, they're still pretty smart. I
Speaker 4: think most animals are surprising with how intelligent.
Speaker 3: They you know, and if people are falling in love
Speaker 3: with gar Also, patron Terry Goss wants to know, I've
Speaker 3: seen gar in aquaria all my life. Is this a
Speaker 3: suitable habitat? It seems too small? But they're pond lakefish.
Speaker 3: No also points Terry for saying aquaria and not aquariums.
Speaker 3: I know you can say both, but aquaria just is like, ooh,
Speaker 3: that is the plural, isn't it?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 3: Pet Gar Ken it. You obviously are a gar expert,
Speaker 3: so you're making it work and they're living the life.
Speaker 3: But if someone wanted to have a pet gar, is
Speaker 3: it a hard thing to do?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say there's certain things that make them
Speaker 4: easy to keep because they breathe air, so they're you know,
Speaker 4: very you know, robust fish. They're very durable fish, and
Speaker 4: they can easily be trained to eat nonline food like
Speaker 4: frozen trip. But they get big. That's that's the biggest
Speaker 4: In most cases, that's the only thing. So as these
Speaker 4: fish yet big. I've got lab space for them, We've
Speaker 4: got ponds they can go into, you've got other homes.
Speaker 4: Having raised gars for twenty years, I can tell you
Speaker 4: we start them off in a small tank. We move
Speaker 4: in a bigger tank. Moved a little bit bigger tank.
Speaker 4: But yeah, for the average aquarium hobbyist or fish keeper,
Speaker 4: not exactly ideal unless you have plans for a pond
Speaker 4: or some sort of larger housing for them, larger aquaria
Speaker 4: if you.
Speaker 3: Will, aquaria. Yes. Claire Meyer has kind of a technical
Speaker 3: question here, wants to know what happens if you boop
Speaker 3: a gar snow.
Speaker 4: That's a good question. You can do it, but I
Speaker 4: would not advise it. They move at lightning speed with
Speaker 4: their jaws. It's usually side to side, so I wouldn't
Speaker 4: recommend it. They might open their mouth, they might keep
Speaker 4: it closed. You just never know. I would keep your
Speaker 4: face clear of a gar snow if there's a paine
Speaker 4: and glass in between.
Speaker 3: The Earl of Gramlican had the same questions, and now
Speaker 3: they both know. But Earl of Gramlekin also asks. Wikipedia
Speaker 3: says they have green bones.
Speaker 4: What is this?
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 4: So they yes and no on it being true. That's
Speaker 4: a common name issue. So there's a fish called a
Speaker 4: garfish mainly around the Indo Pacific, the Pacific Ocean and
Speaker 4: other places too. It's the larger group called needlefishes or ballaniformes.
Speaker 4: They have green bone, so not gars like lepisastenic, so
Speaker 4: these gars don't have green bones. But if you go
Speaker 4: to Australia where they call them garfish, it's the type
Speaker 4: of needlefish they have green bones.
Speaker 2: So yes, a case of mistaken identity. That other garfish
Speaker 2: is the gar pike or the sea needle, and their
Speaker 2: bones are in fact green because of a bile substance
Speaker 2: called biliverdin, which is also what turns some bruises a
Speaker 2: remarkable shade of avocado.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Julia Flood and Hannaquist had similar questions. Julia says,
Speaker 3: I only just googled what a gar is, and my
Speaker 3: only question is what did I do to deserve this
Speaker 3: nightmare fish? And why does nature hate me? Personally? And
Speaker 3: Hannah Quist wants to know why are they so fricking cute?
Speaker 3: So where do you fall on the looking at gar?
Speaker 3: I'm going to guess you're more on the Hannah, less
Speaker 3: on the Julia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I just think they look cool no
Speaker 4: matter what. But what I do tell people is, and
Speaker 4: you can see this now that there is gar twitter
Speaker 4: out there, so there's a lot of pictures that search
Speaker 4: for it. A lot of the pictures you see with
Speaker 4: gar from the side view, you see those teeth and
Speaker 4: you see that long snout. They look really fearsome. I
Speaker 4: would challenge people to turn them so they're looking at
Speaker 4: you head on, and they look like the dirtiest fish
Speaker 4: you've ever seen, Like blobfish. Doesn't look like a blobfish, right,
Speaker 4: And they brought them up from the depths and they
Speaker 4: look all weird like that. But a gar when you
Speaker 4: look at them head on, they look that dirty and stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, it was not easy to find a head on photo,
Speaker 2: as googling gar head on, it'll get you a lot
Speaker 2: of pictures of just plain gar heads before they were decapitated.
Speaker 2: But I finally found a quarterer shot and y'all that overbite,
Speaker 2: those big unblinking eyes, that cute cluelessness.
Speaker 3: This thing one belongs in a Simpsons episode.
Speaker 4: So you know, maybe it looks cut, maybe it looks fearsome,
Speaker 4: and that sort of things. So I think, as with anything,
Speaker 4: it's a matter of perspective. They're valuable predators to native ecosystems.
Speaker 4: They're useful even now in biomedical research we're finding and
Speaker 4: so they've got a lot of use for us, but
Speaker 4: also use in nature. So you know, fearsome or you know, cute.
Speaker 4: I think they're they're valuable and cool fish. But I
Speaker 4: challenge them to do the lateral look and the head
Speaker 4: on look, and you'll see both sides.
Speaker 3: Allegra Sunstorm wants to know, is the plural gar or
Speaker 3: gars embarrassing?
Speaker 4: The answer the question is yes, my advisor, I went
Speaker 4: back and forth with this when I was in grad school,
Speaker 4: so technically, back then American Fishery Society, who sets a
Speaker 4: lot of those rules for fish, said that the plural
Speaker 4: of gar is gars. But now they change the rules.
Speaker 4: Say you know what, it's whatever you feel like. So
Speaker 4: gar can be plural. Gars can be plural. It can
Speaker 4: be a bunch of different species of gars and be multiple,
Speaker 4: you know, the same species gargars. That's whatever you're feeling
Speaker 4: like that particular day.
Speaker 3: Gars.
Speaker 2: Some call them ugly trash fish, river monsters, but we
Speaker 2: call them ancient, patient, boopable, long boy.
Speaker 3: Sweetie peaties. Tam Tran wants to know can guars crawl
Speaker 3: on land?
Speaker 4: Short answer is no, they can't crawl on land, but
Speaker 4: they can survive on land, probably for you know, at
Speaker 4: least a couple of hours. There's stories myself, including when
Speaker 4: I was in grad school. A guar jumps out of
Speaker 4: a tank. It can survive for a long time out
Speaker 4: of the out of the water. If they're kept bet
Speaker 4: they can survive for you know, an even longer period
Speaker 4: of time. They're pretty durable, so they can survive on land,
Speaker 4: but they're not they're not going anywhere.
Speaker 2: I like to think of someone in a prehistoric landscape
Speaker 2: telling a gar, you're perfect never change, and the gar
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, gyler l Prim wants to know. Do
Speaker 2: they shed their scales?
Speaker 4: They do not. Some fish, it's easy for the scales
Speaker 4: to kind of come off, and they very quickly regrow them.
Speaker 4: Gars it's it's interline sort of chain mail. So they
Speaker 4: don't tend to shed them. But if they are damaged,
Speaker 4: they will grow back. Guars will regenerate their fins. They'll
Speaker 4: regenerate like the bases of their fins. They're really just
Speaker 4: you know, I wouldn't say quite indestructible, but they're they're
Speaker 4: pretty cool on what they can do and what they
Speaker 4: can survive.
Speaker 3: They very tough. That's but Clerk's heard a rumor that
Speaker 3: are are bulletproof. Is that even remotely true?
Speaker 4: Maybe the thought is that small caliber weapons do deflect
Speaker 4: off of them, so maybe at the right angle. That's
Speaker 4: one of my advisors that told me back in the
Speaker 4: day they used to use a sort of a form
Speaker 4: of body armor, and so I don't know if that
Speaker 4: was straight up bulletproof. But while they're on the fish,
Speaker 4: I have heard anecdotal stories about them being resistant to
Speaker 4: small caliber weapons. So maybe not bulletproof. But again, like
Speaker 4: I said, the engineers are looking at those scales and
Speaker 4: that sort of those biological properties as sort of a
Speaker 4: bioinspired armor. So you know, if there's there's something.
Speaker 2: There, shout out all the biomimicry experts out there, including
Speaker 2: listener Christa Avanpado of New York Special hugs to her
Speaker 2: right now as she tells cancer what's what?
Speaker 3: Sam Kilgore has a great question, have you ever kissed
Speaker 3: one on the snoop?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm trying to think, maybe not on the snoop,
Speaker 4: Maybe you know, maybe just on the cheek, just on
Speaker 4: the cheek. So probably as close as I.
Speaker 3: Com it's pretty close. It's snoot adjacent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, so maybe he has not kissed one
Speaker 2: on the snoot. But as someone who loves nothing more
Speaker 2: than reuniting with lost treasures, I had to ask did
Speaker 2: he ever find that Ranger Rick article? And he said
Speaker 2: he spent a long time looking for this obscure, backdated
Speaker 2: magazine that changed his life.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was this image he.
Speaker 2: Saw cut a watery path to his life's work, to
Speaker 2: his bride, to his reign as the.
Speaker 3: King of fish Puns. And he searched in vain.
Speaker 4: Like rapidously go through my search online, my parents search
Speaker 4: for them, my parents, my friends search for them. And
Speaker 4: it wasn't until I tweeted at Ranger Rick one day
Speaker 4: and said, look, Ranger Rick got me into Gars back
Speaker 4: in the day. And the next morning when I woke up,
Speaker 4: they said, you know, is this the issue and everything
Speaker 4: like that. So they sent me that picture and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh my gosh. They sent me a copy
Speaker 4: of the article and I got, you know, in touch
Speaker 4: with them, and yeah, this year I was able to
Speaker 4: write sort of my own you know article if you will,
Speaker 4: in Ranger Rick. So it was kind of a cool
Speaker 4: full circle story with that.
Speaker 3: What was it like when you saw that picture again
Speaker 3: after not having seen it for so long? Was it
Speaker 3: just as he remembered it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the turtles were there, like it was
Speaker 4: just like it was just it was in my head.
Speaker 4: It was actually trying to eat this wood ducks. It
Speaker 4: was like the original birds versus Fish for me too.
Speaker 4: So I mean it was like I had it in
Speaker 4: my head, but I had not seen it for you know,
Speaker 4: twenty some years, and it turned out it was from
Speaker 4: a nineteen eighty three issue too, so I'm not that
Speaker 4: old from nineteen eighty three to be when I was
Speaker 4: a kid. But that shows how old those issues were,
Speaker 4: and I looked it up on Wikipedia. Range Rick still
Speaker 4: has a big circulation with those back issues. Like pole
Speaker 4: donate them to libraries and other places, so I'd encourage
Speaker 4: people to do the same, because you never know who's
Speaker 4: going to see those and you know, get interested on
Speaker 4: their own with you know who knows what out of.
Speaker 2: Major If you're sitting next to a stack of vintage
Speaker 2: Ranger Rick issues and screaming at me to just tell
Speaker 2: you the date, it was April nineteen eighty three, pages
Speaker 2: thirty eight and thirty nine. And yes, of course I
Speaker 2: will post this image on the ologies Instagram, and if
Speaker 2: anyone knows the article's author, Joanne Chipwood, say hello. She
Speaker 2: became a hospice nurse and has written several books on
Speaker 2: the topic, including My Gift Myself, a step by step
Speaker 2: guide to becoming a hospice volunteer. She also wrote a
Speaker 2: book titled A Horse called Mayonnaise. So thank you, Joanne.
Speaker 2: We all love Gars and Ranger Rick because of you
Speaker 2: and horses and to a lesser extent, Mayonnaise.
Speaker 4: It's been cool being involved with range dirics I've gotten
Speaker 4: to know the editors and we're going to be working
Speaker 4: on some other stories and stuff, so to me, it's
Speaker 4: really like an opportunity to do some science communication back
Speaker 4: in that direction. But yeah, I've got the actual issue
Speaker 4: hanging in my and everything. It's there. I copied it,
Speaker 4: I sort it everywhere so would never get lost in
Speaker 4: the two So it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to send me a picture of that
Speaker 3: so that I can well put it up on the Instagram.
Speaker 3: It's interesting how those memories can really like ignite something
Speaker 3: where you just have such such an affinity or such
Speaker 3: an obsession with that kind of creature at that moment.
Speaker 3: So I love when that happens. Okay, but among all
Speaker 3: of your love for gar Zeh, there must be something
Speaker 3: that sucks, Like what about your research or your life
Speaker 3: as a garologist is just the worst?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say, you know, it's probably a conservationist
Speaker 4: dilemma too, depending on what you're studying. But Gars have
Speaker 4: this reputation. We've tried to improve it over the years.
Speaker 4: Like there's a lot of other people involved with this.
Speaker 4: Matt Miller from Nature Conservancy, after at Leastarr and Nickel
Speaker 4: state that are really pushing gar research showing that they
Speaker 4: have value, that they're important, you know, components and ecosis.
Speaker 4: So that's something that's extremely important. I try to do that.
Speaker 4: But you know, there isn't maybe a week that goes byword.
Speaker 4: There isn't some sort of bow fishing pictures or article
Speaker 4: that comes out where people are just shooting guards. There's
Speaker 4: piles of dead fish because people don't see value in them,
Speaker 4: and so they'll put them into dumpsters, they get dumped
Speaker 4: into landfills or turn into fertilizer, killed by the hundreds.
Speaker 4: There was actually a thing called an electric guard destroyer
Speaker 4: that used to be used decades ago because people thought
Speaker 4: that they were just trash fish. They were bad for
Speaker 4: the environment. So we try to improve that. But I think,
Speaker 4: you know, waking up to that. But I think you know,
Speaker 4: as environmentalists conservationists, it's an uphill battle no matter what
Speaker 4: we do. But we I think it's just important that
Speaker 4: we keep doing what we're doing. So I'd say, if
Speaker 4: anything sucked, it's that. But it also keeps me.
Speaker 2: Going, oh, ps, if you need to know what an
Speaker 2: electric guard destroyer vessel from the nineteen thirties looks like,
Speaker 2: just imagine a barge equipped with state of the art
Speaker 2: for then electricity controlled the waters mercilessly targeting Gar and
Speaker 2: is essentially the death Star helmed by garth Rader. That
Speaker 2: does not deserve a twinkle. Don't let me have it.
Speaker 3: That you want to keep fighting for gar for them
Speaker 3: to be appreciated, Yes, for.
Speaker 4: Sure, so you know, showing that they're valuable members of
Speaker 4: the ecosystem. They have value to humans as far as
Speaker 4: ecosystem services. And like I said, there's new research where
Speaker 4: we're learning more about the human genome through gar species
Speaker 4: now because of their genome organization. So it's not just
Speaker 4: what they're doing out in the values for us, it's
Speaker 4: what they can do at a genomic level too.
Speaker 3: There is there something genomically similar like to humans in
Speaker 3: a way that's surprising.
Speaker 4: There is. So a good friend and colleague of mind,
Speaker 4: doctor Ingo Brosch, He sequenced the spotted guar genome and
Speaker 4: what they found is that the gar genome is organized
Speaker 4: more closely to the human and you know, other tetrapod
Speaker 4: genome than it is to teleos fish, which are considered
Speaker 4: are more modern fish. So there's a little fish called
Speaker 4: the zebra fish which is sort of our aquatic labrat,
Speaker 4: used in all kinds of genetic and genomics research, but
Speaker 4: it's got some differences that make it hard to compare
Speaker 4: back to the human genome. Even though it's like a labrat,
Speaker 4: we use it to compare it to other organisms, right,
Speaker 4: because the gar can serve as a go between. We
Speaker 4: can compare the human to the GAR genome and the
Speaker 4: guarding home to the zebra fish genome, and it helps
Speaker 4: us understand more about the human to zebra fish comparison.
Speaker 4: And therefore it's sort of like this extra translator, sort
Speaker 4: of in a Rosetta stone or a bridge. So genomically
Speaker 4: we can now learn more about the evolution development of
Speaker 4: human disease by you know, with some help from the GAR.
Speaker 4: So using this sort of primitive fish is actually helping
Speaker 4: us literally too. I don't think it'll ever replace zebrafish,
Speaker 4: but I mean they're way cooler than zebrafish. Now the
Speaker 4: zebra fish people are going to have me, but I
Speaker 4: think it works hand in hand. So I think it
Speaker 4: works alongside zebrafish, along fruit flies, alongside a lot of
Speaker 4: other organisms. But now we've got this once heated organism
Speaker 4: that actually has some additional utility, which is great. They
Speaker 4: have intrinsic value on their own, but I you know,
Speaker 4: it helps that, you know, we can see some additional value.
Speaker 3: And between their boopable snoots and their dirty head on look,
Speaker 3: and they're like amazing ability to survive. There's obviously a
Speaker 3: lot to love about a gar. But what is it
Speaker 3: that you just love the most?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, you know, I feel like I've got
Speaker 4: to it's I've got to do sort of a kapa.
Speaker 4: It's like, it's it's the big picture, I think, you know,
Speaker 4: I think just the look of them, Like, you know,
Speaker 4: I think aligators and crocodiles are cool, but they're this
Speaker 4: fish that has these long jaws. It's this it's a
Speaker 4: swimming dinosaur. Of It's just this sort of relative of
Speaker 4: ancient times that is still alive today. So that's sort
Speaker 4: of primitive look. Overall. I think I just think they're awesome,
Speaker 4: and so that's what makes me want to just share
Speaker 4: about them to everybody else.
Speaker 3: What are your plans in terms of science communication for guars?
Speaker 3: Do you want to write like ten books about gar?
Speaker 3: Our pitch a feature about gars? What is your ultimate dream?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, you know, books, books, would be great.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, the range Rick article to me
Speaker 4: was the publication I'm most proud of, Like that's going
Speaker 4: up on my wall too, But to me, that's like,
Speaker 4: you know, probably gonna have a wider reach than anything
Speaker 4: I put into scientific paper and everything. But also we
Speaker 4: came down to Nickels State here in Thibodeau, Louisiana, and
Speaker 4: I started GAR Lab, and so I think it's training
Speaker 4: future scientists and using the platform on social media and
Speaker 4: also as a professional to you know, spread the word
Speaker 4: of gar if you will, and so show that you know,
Speaker 4: they're valuable for all these reasons. And they're really cool animals.
Speaker 4: I think they show that diversity is important. So you
Speaker 4: need even the creatures that look like this that might
Speaker 4: look a little bit fearsome, maybe a little too slimy,
Speaker 4: maybe they got poisonous eggs, but they're important parts of biodiversity,
Speaker 4: and we need biodiversity in order to function as an ecosystem,
Speaker 4: as a planet.
Speaker 3: If you had one tip to give someone who is
Speaker 3: getting into science communication, what do you think that would be?
Speaker 3: Because you're so good at.
Speaker 4: It, I you know, I've learned from others, and so
Speaker 4: I would say learn from others that have come before you,
Speaker 4: But don't try to replicate or be what anyone else is.
Speaker 4: There's already you know, one of my favorite episodes of
Speaker 4: yours was the Bill and I episode. There's already a
Speaker 4: David Attenborough. There's already a Bill and I out there.
Speaker 4: Don't try to be them. Stick with your what you're doing,
Speaker 4: but be work on the techniques to share that and
Speaker 4: to show how that has a value, and you can
Speaker 4: add your own diversity to that. I would be you know,
Speaker 4: we're miss fight and say, you know, I didn't see
Speaker 4: people like me in nature programs or in the fields
Speaker 4: that I'm in, but now I feel like this is
Speaker 4: an opportunity to do that moving forward.
Speaker 3: This is such good advice. I just I hold you
Speaker 3: in such high regard and I really see where I
Speaker 3: so appreciate you doing this, and I'm so glad we
Speaker 3: didn't never hurt Kane Today.
Speaker 4: Me too, I'm still looking out the window. It's still
Speaker 4: their mind to.
Speaker 2: So ask smart people fishy questions, because you know what,
Speaker 2: there have been bulletproof toothy snoop nosed ancient babies gliding
Speaker 2: under the water for longer than the dinosaurs. Just when
Speaker 2: you think the drugs have worn off, you realize that
Speaker 2: life on Earth is just a kaleidoscope of weird. So
Speaker 2: to get Morgar and some really great sodcom in your life,
Speaker 2: you can follow it on Twitter at Solomon R. David
Speaker 2: and on Instagram Solomon dot r dot David and his
Speaker 2: website is Solomon David dot net and there are links
Speaker 2: to all of those in the show notes, as well
Speaker 2: as to arranger Rick and the sponsors of the show.
Speaker 2: You can put Ologies merch on your actual body, war
Speaker 2: walls or friend's body at ologiesmarch dot com. Thank you
Speaker 2: Shannenfelds and Bondi Dutch of the podcast You are that
Speaker 2: for managing merch. Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting in
Speaker 2: the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Thank you Emily White and
Speaker 2: all of the Ologies podcast transcribers for making sure that
Speaker 2: transcripts are available for deaf and hard of hearing folks.
Speaker 2: Those are available for free to anyone that wants them
Speaker 2: on our website, and there's a link in the show
Speaker 2: notes Caleb patten Bleep's episode so that they are a
Speaker 2: kid and your grandpa safe and those are at the
Speaker 2: same link. Thank you Noel Dilworth who schedules theologists, and
Speaker 2: thank you to co quarantiner Jarrett Sleeper for assisted editing,
Speaker 2: and of course to all around great guy Steven Ray
Speaker 2: Find Morris, lead editor.
Speaker 3: Who puts all the pieces together each week.
Speaker 2: Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music. He is in a
Speaker 2: band called Islands. You can follow me at ali Ward
Speaker 2: with one L say hello ologies is at ologies, at Twitter.
Speaker 3: At Instagram. I forgot to say that earlier. If you
Speaker 3: listen to the end, you get a secret.
Speaker 2: And this week I feel that I should tell you
Speaker 2: that Jarrett sometimes pretends to be Jack White riffing garage
Speaker 2: rock to just ordinary situations. And about six months ago
Speaker 2: I asked him if I had a spider bite on
Speaker 2: my ass, And this week he got an iPad with
Speaker 2: garage band and like fifteen minutes later he had created
Speaker 2: this opus which will forever haunt and delight us all joy.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 6: Packidermatology, homeology or do zoology, lithology, unology, meteorology, patology, technology, seriology.
Speaker 3: Semology to the chime.
Speaker 1: Get value you can't argue with. At Tesco with their
Speaker 1: amazing cloak card prices have the perfect night in with
Speaker 1: their finest frozen pizza meal deal get the finest frozen pizza,
Speaker 1: chips and ice cream all for six Euro, like our
Speaker 1: delicious spicy salami, hot honey and do you or Margarito
Speaker 1: wood fired pizzas served up with their crispy, chunky chips
Speaker 1: and ice cream like sea salta caramel or pistachio for dessert.
Speaker 1: Can't argue with that shop in store or online. Tesco
Speaker 1: Every Little helps available in most stories, Prices varying. Express