Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's the first three alarms that you turned
Speaker 1: off in your sleep. It's alleyboard Ologies. We're doing it.
Speaker 1: Pinapdology for conceals seallions, walrus dongs. Let's talk first, though.
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Speaker 1: to anyone who has hit subscribe, who's told a friend, texted, tweeted,
Speaker 1: left reviews. I read all your reviews like a gentle creep.
Speaker 1: And this week's fresh review is from someone named m Fox,
Speaker 1: who says Ologies is a life changingly good podcast. Did
Speaker 1: I get a snail tattoo after listening to the Malacology episode? Yes,
Speaker 1: as your Internet dad, I approve. Also, congrats to a
Speaker 1: hopeful scientist for heading back to school to get a PhD.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, go get it, okay. Pinapidology, it comes from
Speaker 1: the Latin for having fins for feet, And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until maybe fifteen minutes ago that I knew that it
Speaker 1: wasn't related to pinna, meaning ear, even though ears play
Speaker 1: a very important role in triumphantly explaining the difference between
Speaker 1: a seal and a sea lion. More on that later,
Speaker 1: but this ologist studied marine biology for his bachelor's, got
Speaker 1: a master's in oceanography in Chile and a PhD in
Speaker 1: ocean studies from UC Santa Cruz and is now an
Speaker 1: assistant researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences at the
Speaker 1: University of California, Santa Cruz and an abject professor at
Speaker 1: the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He's studied marine mammals
Speaker 1: for years and years, and his name comes up in
Speaker 1: over one hundred published papers on seals and sea lions,
Speaker 1: and I have had him on my sonar for at
Speaker 1: least six months. I was so excited to talk to him,
Speaker 1: and after his lamb seal aka his dog went for
Speaker 1: a potty outside, we met up. We hopped on the horn.
Speaker 1: I asked him about everything from blubber to ocean currents,
Speaker 1: psychedelic teeth, receding ice, whisker technology, belly scooting snoop boot
Speaker 1: octopus smacking, wolverus, tusks and other bony structures, and Arctic expeditions,
Speaker 1: butt nubbins and more. With World Explorer, Sea mammal enthusiast
Speaker 1: marine ecologist, seal and sea lion physiologist and pina pedologist
Speaker 1: Doctor Louise Hukstad.
Speaker 2: My name is Fly Huckstad and my prannouns are he,
Speaker 2: him and L. I guess since I Chilean.
Speaker 1: Good to know. Oh, that's right, ol, because you're now
Speaker 1: where are you right now?
Speaker 3: We're not Wilmington, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Which is not Chile.
Speaker 2: I've lived in the state for the last sixteen years almost.
Speaker 1: Oh you have, And what are you doing in Wilmington
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: I'm visiting researchers. So I got a fellowship to come
Speaker 2: here for a semester, and I've been working here, giving
Speaker 2: a god student class and doing research with a couple
Speaker 2: of collaborators here.
Speaker 1: Ag W What do I always say ask smart people,
Speaker 1: not smart questions. Are there seals in North Carolina?
Speaker 2: No, there's I mean now, it looks like every now
Speaker 2: and then they get some random stranded seals that come up,
Speaker 2: come this, this far down from this from the Arctic,
Speaker 2: but they don't live here.
Speaker 1: Okay, I wasn't sure. Actually this brings us to a
Speaker 1: great question. What is the seal? What is the seal?
Speaker 1: What is the pinnapad?
Speaker 3: So a pinnipeg is a sub order.
Speaker 2: So if you if you know something about how animals
Speaker 2: are put into categories, there's the class mammalia. So all
Speaker 2: my mamas basically are together, and we did the class.
Speaker 2: There's orders, right, sort of some categors within mammals, and
Speaker 2: one of the main ones is carnivores, and so pinipets
Speaker 2: are related to bears and dogs and cats and all that.
Speaker 2: But it's sort of like the aquatic branch of those guys, got.
Speaker 1: It, Seals are carnivores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so seals are carnivores, so they're together with the
Speaker 2: cusses relative on man will be bears basically, but they
Speaker 2: are they come from that branch of animals basically, so
Speaker 2: they're related to cats and dogs and bears and otters
Speaker 2: and all those guys.
Speaker 1: The otters, I'm totally like, yeah, of course, but the bears.
Speaker 1: That's really flipping my ship right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so bears and pinipets share a common.
Speaker 1: Ancestor, okay, and bears have cute tiny little ears. Seals
Speaker 1: and sealions and wall versus cute tiny little ears.
Speaker 2: Also, no, yees, sea lions. Seallions actually include both seallions
Speaker 2: and fur seals, and those guys have ears external ears
Speaker 2: basically what we call the pinat so true seals, those
Speaker 2: guys don't have an external ear like our ear that
Speaker 2: we can see, but they do have of course everything
Speaker 2: internal I can hear you basically.
Speaker 1: Ah, so don't talk smack about them exactly. Can you
Speaker 1: list off for me? What are pinnipeds?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's three families within the pinnipets. The first
Speaker 2: one is the walrus, which is just a species.
Speaker 3: I am the walrus.
Speaker 2: The other one are the true seals, and the third
Speaker 2: family includes seallions and four seals.
Speaker 1: Got it, and elephant seals are included in that.
Speaker 2: Elephant seals are true seals are the biggest elephants is
Speaker 2: actually are the biggest of the seals.
Speaker 1: So huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're massive, so giant.
Speaker 1: Okay, So families of pinnipeds include the walrus. There's just
Speaker 1: one species of walrus, the walrus. Then there are some
Speaker 1: fake ass just getting they're not fake, they're just not
Speaker 1: true seals called otaridai. And these are seals with ears,
Speaker 1: and sea lions and fur seals. And then there are
Speaker 1: the true seals, which are earless sort of ear lobliss
Speaker 1: and there are thirty three species of pinnipeds total, all
Speaker 1: of which you want to stare lovingly at. And what's
Speaker 1: their range? Where do pinnipeds live? When did they kind
Speaker 1: of like waddle off of land and start bobbing around
Speaker 1: in the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're they're pretty much everywhere. They tend to
Speaker 2: hang out more colder environments. So you have the highest
Speaker 2: diversity of seals in the Arctic and the Antarctic, but
Speaker 2: there's seals, well, pinipets basically in the equator. There's sea
Speaker 2: lions and roses that live in the Galapago silence, but
Speaker 2: most of them actually do leave instead of colder environments.
Speaker 2: Cald w so the west, because of North Americas were
Speaker 2: the ancestor of the seals sort of recolonized water. So
Speaker 2: around I think the area of British Columbia or something
Speaker 2: like that, twenty five million years ago there was about
Speaker 2: the size of.
Speaker 3: A sea odor. It's called pujila, and.
Speaker 2: That's the first sort of ancestor of a seal. And
Speaker 2: then along the custland of northern California, Oregon, that's where
Speaker 2: we see the first fossil of a real pelipad.
Speaker 1: So the ancestors of modern seals and sea lions slipped
Speaker 1: off the terrain of Earth and back into the water
Speaker 1: off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. They think that
Speaker 1: makes me feel so like homesick and validated because I'm
Speaker 1: from the Bay Area where the waters. You go to
Speaker 1: the beach in the Bay Area and you go out
Speaker 1: there with a windbreaker and you're like, ah, it's nice,
Speaker 1: let's get back in the car. So the Pacific is
Speaker 1: so cold, and people obviously like don't think about that
Speaker 1: when they think about California. And so, why do you
Speaker 1: think or why do scientists think that they evolved to
Speaker 1: dig colder waters.
Speaker 2: It's partly related to the fact that colder waters are
Speaker 2: more productive biologically.
Speaker 1: What does more productive biologically mean exactly?
Speaker 2: So, because they're more productive, there's more food than these animals.
Speaker 2: They're big animals. They also have high metabolic rates because
Speaker 2: they're mammals, right, so they have to keep constant temperature,
Speaker 2: so they eat a lot of food. So in order
Speaker 2: to support their populations, they need a lot of food.
Speaker 2: And the environments where you have a lot of food
Speaker 2: in the ocean tend to be the coldor water. So
Speaker 2: upwelling areas like the California Current or colder waters in
Speaker 2: the Arctic or the Antarctic.
Speaker 1: So he says that the Humboldt currents and South American
Speaker 1: currents bring Anarctic water to the coast of Chile and Peru,
Speaker 1: bringing a pretty sweet ecosystem for seals. How cold are
Speaker 1: the waters off of Chile And at what point did
Speaker 1: you set yourself on seals or wall versus or elephant
Speaker 1: seals or sea lions or for seals, elaborate seals and say, dang,
Speaker 1: those things are cool.
Speaker 3: So let me think about this. First of all, Chili
Speaker 3: sort of.
Speaker 2: The mirror image of California, So you imagine putting a
Speaker 2: mirror in the equator. Chilias is the exact same opposite
Speaker 2: of the California current system, so we have very similar
Speaker 2: water temperature, similar kind of environments, et cetera. So that
Speaker 2: sort of explains why there's so many peanupets and Chili
Speaker 2: as well. There's not that many species, but there's a
Speaker 2: lot of individuals. However, my story is a little bit
Speaker 2: more concluded than that, because I was actually born and
Speaker 2: raised in Venezuela, not in Chile too. Chilian parents though,
Speaker 2: and every time ever since I was a little kid,
Speaker 2: I was about nine or ten, I wanted to be
Speaker 2: a marine biologist and I wanted to study marine mammals.
Speaker 2: And I think it has to do with the fact
Speaker 2: that I grew up in the eighties and then remember
Speaker 2: the commercials of seawall or they have Shemu fly in
Speaker 2: among clouds and.
Speaker 1: Come see on a new davision.
Speaker 2: And the sea lion like playing with the ball, and
Speaker 2: I guess that as a kid, I saw that and
Speaker 2: I was sort of mesmerized by marie mammals, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to.
Speaker 3: Get do that.
Speaker 2: So by the time that I my parents decided to
Speaker 2: move back to Chile, I was sixteen years old. And
Speaker 2: one of the arguments that they used to convince me
Speaker 2: to move was that there's marine.
Speaker 3: Mammos in Chile.
Speaker 2: And they bought it, so I decided, yeah, that's even
Speaker 2: though I was a sixteen year old, I of course
Speaker 2: didn't want to move the new country. When I was
Speaker 2: a teenage yeer, they told me that, and yeah, automatically
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, I'd move to Chile.
Speaker 3: Every since I was ten years.
Speaker 2: Old or something like that, I knew that I wanted
Speaker 2: to work with married mammals, So yeah, that's basically how
Speaker 2: I ended up choosing his career.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Essentially, the pennapeds sealed the deal.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's awful exactly, So.
Speaker 1: Sorry, And what's it's your take now on a quaria
Speaker 1: that have marine mammals versus being a marine mammal biologist
Speaker 1: and a pnepedologist, why did you at what point in
Speaker 1: your studies did you decide I want to study wild
Speaker 1: animals rather than work with them in captivity.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the most of us actually work with
Speaker 2: marine mammals. We want to work with them in the wild, right,
Speaker 2: That's that's the idea. But we also acknowledge that it's
Speaker 2: impossible to know a lot of things about these animals
Speaker 2: unless we have them in a control environment. So we
Speaker 2: have to do a lot of experiments with these animals.
Speaker 2: We have to come up with protocols to then apply
Speaker 2: them to wild animals. So even though I know there's
Speaker 2: a hot topic and a lot of people are against that,
Speaker 2: particularly because they're marine mammals and people think they're charismatic
Speaker 2: and they're fluffy and you want to help them, right,
Speaker 2: So a lot of people are against captivity. However, in
Speaker 2: the community of scientists that work with Marie mammals, we
Speaker 2: do acknowledge that there's a benefit, that there's a plus
Speaker 2: side to have animous in captivity.
Speaker 1: Louis says that in order to help wild populations, it's
Speaker 1: necessary for the mammal scientists who devote their lives to
Speaker 1: them to be able to study these critters in a
Speaker 1: controlled environment, to know what their blood volume is and
Speaker 1: their chemistry with certain diets, et cetera. But all of
Speaker 1: that depends on largely on the conditions that they're kept under.
Speaker 2: So you have to be very conscientious about the ethics
Speaker 2: of the aquaria for example, that you're working with, making
Speaker 2: sure that there's enough space, et cetera. And there's also
Speaker 2: the fact that a lot of the time must have
Speaker 2: lived in captivity for generations. You kind of just bring
Speaker 2: them back into the wild and release it.
Speaker 3: That's impossible.
Speaker 2: Ideally in my mind, I wouldn't have a missing captivity,
Speaker 2: but I acknowledge that they have a huge potential.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about what your life as
Speaker 1: a pine of pedologist looks, like how often are you
Speaker 1: on expeditions versus being say in North Carolina, where you
Speaker 1: might be looking at data more or animals in captivity,
Speaker 1: Like how many parkas. Do you own? He does your
Speaker 1: work smell like fish? Like? Tell me about it?
Speaker 2: So it depends on So I've been very lucky ever
Speaker 2: since I was a grass student and a PhD. I
Speaker 2: came to USIE Santa cris in California to do my
Speaker 2: PhD in the Coastal Lab with Dan Costa, which is
Speaker 2: sort of one of the biggest names in marimammal research
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's the Coastal Lab, not the Coastal Lab.
Speaker 1: It's Dan Costa, whose last name means coast and is
Speaker 1: one of the world's leading researchers in coastal animals. And
Speaker 1: I looked him up. In one photo online, Dan Costa
Speaker 1: is kind of kneeling on a field of ice, and
Speaker 1: he's wearing one of those big red parkas that people
Speaker 1: in the Antarctic wear, and his salt and pepper beard
Speaker 1: is just level with a seal sporting a six inch
Speaker 1: head antenna, kind of like a modest narwhal. Anyway, Lewis
Speaker 1: worked in the Coastal Lab and got lucky.
Speaker 2: He had this project and he didn't have any students
Speaker 2: working on that, so he offered to me and I
Speaker 2: was like, of course, I'll work with that. It was
Speaker 2: in Antarctica. It's not only I'm get to go to Antarctica.
Speaker 2: I get to go to Antarctica through Chiles. Is a
Speaker 2: free ticket home noise. But also I've been very lucky
Speaker 2: in the fact that I've been invited to work all
Speaker 2: over the place. So I've worked in California, so there's
Speaker 2: a small colony of elephant seals. It's about thirty minutes
Speaker 2: north of Santa Cruz in California, and that's where we
Speaker 2: do a lot of the research with northern elephant seals.
Speaker 1: He's worked in Mexico and California with California sea lions,
Speaker 1: which can measure up to nine feet long, weighing eight
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. And remember they're the ones with a little
Speaker 1: tidy ear sees. And he's worked in the Galapagos with
Speaker 1: the endangered Glacago sea lions fur seals. He's worked in
Speaker 1: Uruguay and Chile with South American sea lions. The dude
Speaker 1: has had adventures anywhere else notable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've been to Ontarctica about ten times, where
Speaker 2: working with Southern infant seals, grabator seals, Antarctic fur seals,
Speaker 2: upper seals.
Speaker 1: And when you're doing the work, what are you doing.
Speaker 1: Are you hiding out in a tent and recording every move?
Speaker 1: Are you hugging them? Are you taking blood samples? What
Speaker 1: does that field work look like?
Speaker 3: I love of that.
Speaker 2: So it depends on where you are. So I never
Speaker 2: actually have the experience of the hardcore biologies that lives
Speaker 2: in a tent for weeks at a time. I've done
Speaker 2: that for like two weeks in that sale, I've got
Speaker 2: to more sort of spoiled camp sites and field sites.
Speaker 3: So the worst condition and this quote unquote wars.
Speaker 2: When I was working on my dissertation, I went to
Speaker 2: work with Southern elephan Seas and we have a camp. Well,
Speaker 2: Noah has a camp where we were saying, but they
Speaker 2: have absolutely everything there. You have the onlyft they don't
Speaker 2: have is specifically internet. But you have a satellite phone,
Speaker 2: you have a generator of electricity, you have a cabin,
Speaker 2: You have beds, so it's nothing bad. You have a
Speaker 2: shower even.
Speaker 1: And when Louis says the Noah camp, he doesn't mean
Speaker 1: rustic bunkers with his friend Noah. Noah is the National
Speaker 1: Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is a United States Scientific
Speaker 1: Agency within the Department of Commerce and their field lodgings
Speaker 1: more like summer camp housing from what I gather and
Speaker 1: life as a seal researcher ranges from that all the
Speaker 1: way up to the Murdo Research Station in Antarctica, which
Speaker 1: by comparison is pretty plush.
Speaker 2: Well, you have three bars, you have ATMs, you have so,
Speaker 2: you have Wi Fi, you have a coffee shop. You're
Speaker 2: super spoiling there. So does have been sort of my
Speaker 2: experiences in the field.
Speaker 1: Is there a type of fieldwork that you really love doing?
Speaker 1: How close to the pinnepeds do you get to be?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's that's good thing.
Speaker 2: Because I didn't finish I forgot about the take a
Speaker 2: part of yours question.
Speaker 3: I work with animals.
Speaker 2: Basically, I define myself as an ecologies but also do
Speaker 2: a little bit of physiology, so basically looking into how
Speaker 2: the animals feed within their ecosystem and how they operate.
Speaker 2: And in order for us to do that, I basically
Speaker 2: use two different methodologies. One of them is what we
Speaker 2: call biologging, which means basically put in tax on animal
Speaker 2: any instruments that you can put in an animal to
Speaker 2: measure things like where they go, how did they dive,
Speaker 2: how fast they move even thinking about their body for example,
Speaker 2: their temperature, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So I use a lot of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, this biologging equipment, remember the seal hat with the antenna.
Speaker 1: It's like that or tagging or collars, and it helps
Speaker 1: pinapedologists figure out where these animals are headed and how
Speaker 1: they eat, so they can make sure to protect their
Speaker 1: food sources and thus them and right on queue. By
Speaker 1: the way, Lewis's dog demonstrated a blinged out mammal by
Speaker 1: shaking her own color to measure, so yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: like that. Now. Researchers like Louis will also take blood
Speaker 1: samples to figure out what seals eat because what a
Speaker 1: pinniped is half a kilometer underwater, it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to see what they're munching on. So to analyze this,
Speaker 1: pinepnologists use stable isotopes, which are non radioactive forms of
Speaker 1: nucleotides that don't spontaneously undergo radioactive decay.
Speaker 2: They're stable basically sort of markers that tell me something
Speaker 2: about their diet and where they go, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: I can make sure that on their tissues, their blood,
Speaker 2: their fur, their whisker, et cetera. So I can collect
Speaker 2: those samples from the animals when they're under anesthesia. We
Speaker 2: can include the instruments on them and then let them
Speaker 2: go into their thing and then retrieve the information later.
Speaker 1: So you get to straight up touch seals under permitted conditions.
Speaker 3: And then a lot of permits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so many questions about getting to touch a seal,
Speaker 1: which ninety nine point nine percent of people will not
Speaker 1: get to do, but one hundred percent of people want
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Are they silky? Are they soft? Is it like petting
Speaker 1: a chocolate labrador or is it more like a cat?
Speaker 1: Or and are they muscly or are they like like
Speaker 1: what texture of seal?
Speaker 3: Tell me everything? So it depends the species. Right, So
Speaker 3: have you ever pat a great day?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: So that's sort of what it feels like, Okay for
Speaker 2: a true seal. True seals don't have they're not very furry.
Speaker 2: They don't have the nice and undir fur like like
Speaker 2: the first seals, So they just have sort of the
Speaker 2: guard hair. So their hair is sort of more rigid.
Speaker 2: It's kind of coarse, so they're not very very very
Speaker 2: fluffy when you touch them. Okay, they feel very mostly
Speaker 2: but they actually or when you're touching them, you're basically
Speaker 2: touching the skin that lies over the blobber, and the
Speaker 2: blobber is not blobbery.
Speaker 3: It's not like yellow. It's actually sort of rigid.
Speaker 2: So they're they're likely like compact little bolts of fat.
Speaker 1: Actually, what's the differentference between blubber and fat.
Speaker 2: Blobbery is more of a complicated fat that has an
Speaker 2: added structure to it, so it has some proteins in there.
Speaker 3: It makes the fat a little bit more rigid.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, if you're moving through the water, it's going
Speaker 2: to make sure that you are just as tight as
Speaker 2: possible because anything that you have that moves with you,
Speaker 2: that wiggles, you're basically add adding drag, and that's bad
Speaker 2: when you're moving through the water. For example, the shape
Speaker 2: of a dolphin is that perfect sort of torpedo like shape,
Speaker 2: right with very tight skin, and they also have a
Speaker 2: layer blogger, So that should be the ideal shape that
Speaker 2: all these animals should sort of converge doors. So still
Speaker 2: is sort of trying to get into that direction. It
Speaker 2: hasn't quite gotten there yet. They're not blobbery, they're not yellowy,
Speaker 2: they're not wiggling. They're sort of tight tight skin, so
Speaker 2: it's like you putting yourself.
Speaker 3: On a wetsuit.
Speaker 1: Why is Louis comparing them to dolphin like dolphins or
Speaker 1: the cheerleader stepsister and pinnipeds are a girl in a
Speaker 1: teen rom com who is beautiful but just still wearing glasses. Well, cetaceans,
Speaker 1: he says, have just had more time evolving in the
Speaker 1: water now. Pinnipeds, despite being shaped like the world's most
Speaker 1: ambitious blunt and having feet that look like tube socks
Speaker 1: are falling off, they still kill it in the face area,
Speaker 1: and they're huge, beautiful blinking eyes with eyelashes. Is there
Speaker 1: a reason that they are so cute? What evolutionary purpose
Speaker 1: do those serve other than being adorable?
Speaker 2: So humans somehow are tuned to find things that have
Speaker 2: big eyes as adorable, but that's notssarily the case. That's
Speaker 2: not the reason why their eyes are so big. So
Speaker 2: if you think about when these animals are eating, when
Speaker 2: they're finding prey, they're doing this in the depotion and
Speaker 2: there's virtually no light in the depotion. So you going
Speaker 2: to Maine magicians of finding food, especially if you're trying
Speaker 2: to go for this sort of by luminescent prey. You
Speaker 2: got to have big eyes so you can catch every
Speaker 2: ten a little bit of light possible. So that the
Speaker 2: reason why they have such big eyes because they're basically
Speaker 2: are diving and trying to find food in the twilight zone.
Speaker 3: There's no light in there.
Speaker 1: And then what happens when they're just basking on the beach.
Speaker 1: How come all of that blubber doesn't make them overheat
Speaker 1: or all of that light doesn't make them want to
Speaker 1: dive into a cave, which is what I want to
Speaker 1: do sometimes on the beach with sunglasses.
Speaker 2: It does actually, So when you see them on land
Speaker 2: that they're basking, their body are cold after they were
Speaker 2: diving for a whole night or even longer than that.
Speaker 2: So there might be just warming up a little bit.
Speaker 2: But when it gets too hot, they have to get
Speaker 2: in the water again. So you go right now, for example,
Speaker 2: you go to the Channel Islands in California.
Speaker 1: So the Channel Islands are off the coast of Santa
Speaker 1: Barbara and are home to a staggering array of pinnipedes,
Speaker 1: including California sea lions and harbor seals, northern elephant seals,
Speaker 1: northern fur seals, rare Guadalupe fur seals and even more
Speaker 1: rare stellar sea lions. What really just hiding off the
Speaker 1: coast of Oprah's house, truly living their best lives. Now
Speaker 1: a few hours north of that, near San Luis Obispo,
Speaker 1: lies a colony of around seventeen thousand elephant seals. Now
Speaker 1: this rookery of breeding pinnipeds, it's free to look at.
Speaker 1: It's open year round. You don't need reservations. It's just
Speaker 1: off Highway one. But you want to head two Elephantseal
Speaker 1: dot Org to make sure that they're open and to
Speaker 1: check out road conditions up there, which can get a
Speaker 1: little wacky with giant falling boulders. So maybe you bring
Speaker 1: a good camera. It's binoculars too, because what might you
Speaker 1: witness midday? A lot of beach lounging.
Speaker 2: You'll see that they didn't around now and basically when
Speaker 2: it gets too warm, they have to get on in
Speaker 2: the water to sort of cold down, because blobbers are
Speaker 2: really good insulator and their temperature is going to go
Speaker 2: up no matter what.
Speaker 1: How what about yearly cycles? Do they migrate like cetaceans
Speaker 1: or do they stay in one place all the time?
Speaker 2: So depends on the species. Most animals. Most species are
Speaker 2: sort of residents. They don't move them much. Some of
Speaker 2: them just part of the polationis moves. For example, California's allions,
Speaker 2: the breeding colonies are in the Shadow Islands and Son
Speaker 2: in southern California. But when the bringing season ends, the
Speaker 2: males take off, and that's what you see males in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, in Oregon, in Washington State, in British Columbia.
Speaker 2: So those are saions that move all the way there
Speaker 2: from the Shannel Islands. The female sort of a stay
Speaker 2: stick around the Shadow Islands.
Speaker 1: So sea lions the ladies stay put and the dude's jet.
Speaker 1: When this happens in the species human, my Montana relatives
Speaker 1: call this honky tonking. So sea lions bide UDEs. What
Speaker 1: about elephant seals.
Speaker 2: So elephant seals from California and Mexico go all over
Speaker 2: the north see if you as far as the Gulf
Speaker 2: of Alaska, the Losian Islands. We have animals from central
Speaker 2: California that have crossed the International Dayline going west towards
Speaker 2: Japan basically and come back and when they're at sea,
Speaker 2: they're spent. So we're talking about thousands of kilometers away
Speaker 2: from the coast.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Where are they sleeping? Are they just like
Speaker 1: bombing in the ocean.
Speaker 2: They're sleeping while they're diving. So it's actually been really cool.
Speaker 2: There's a gut student in Santacus that is looking at
Speaker 2: that exactly. Elephant seals are. Basically we just published a
Speaker 2: paper where we show that elephant seals are just little,
Speaker 2: well not little, they're big vacuums. They're constantly eating a
Speaker 2: small fish. They're diving there, they're eating the small fish,
Speaker 2: and once they reach a point, I guess when they're
Speaker 2: they're full, they have what we call a drift dive.
Speaker 1: A drift dive like drifting off. So Louis worked on
Speaker 1: a recently published paper in the journal Science Advance and
Speaker 1: it was titled forced into an Ecological Corner Round the
Speaker 1: Clock Deep Foraging on Small Prey by Elephant Seals that
Speaker 1: talks about these aquatic naps and what.
Speaker 2: They do is that they dive, They swim actively to
Speaker 2: about fifty to one hundred meters, and then they turn
Speaker 2: on their backs and they just fall like a leaf.
Speaker 2: So imagine the leaf of a tree falling off. And
Speaker 2: the reason one we know that is because we put
Speaker 2: instruments on the animals and we can describe the three
Speaker 2: dimensional movement of the animal. So they do that and
Speaker 2: withink that that's when they're they're resting, they're diving, there
Speaker 2: are sleeping, and they're also digesting.
Speaker 1: What that is bonkers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when they're at sea, elephant seals are just amazing.
Speaker 2: They're just diving constantly for about twenty minutes in average,
Speaker 2: coming back up to the surfers for just three minutes,
Speaker 2: and then keep diving and keep diving. So ninety percent
Speaker 2: of their time at sea they're dive.
Speaker 1: What kind of lungs do they have?
Speaker 2: The lungs are big, but the lungs are actually not
Speaker 2: very good at holding the oxygen. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: they exhale before they gonna dive. Most of their oxygens
Speaker 2: carry in their blood and their muscles.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so they don't get the bends because
Speaker 1: they empty their lung set exactly.
Speaker 2: Have amazing adaptations to dive because they're diving to two kilometers.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much that's in miles, but a.
Speaker 1: Mile or so, like around a mile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so and for up to two hours.
Speaker 1: Oh my, gosh, that's like ten Is that ten thousand
Speaker 1: meters around? Yeah? I guess, Oh my god, for hours. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is weird question wise, But underneath their blubber, are
Speaker 1: they ripped? Like do they have abs underneath? They're like
Speaker 1: a foot of blubber.
Speaker 3: They actually have very big muscles.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons why, as I was saying,
Speaker 2: they hold a lot of their oxygen or most of
Speaker 2: their oxygen in their blood and in their muscles, So
Speaker 2: their muscles are very big, very well developed, because basically
Speaker 2: they're swimming. It will be like as running NonStop for
Speaker 2: eight months at a time, and he's sleeping for like
Speaker 2: five minutes every couple of days or something like that.
Speaker 2: It's just a ridiculous kind of lifestyle.
Speaker 1: It's like someone who's shredded wearing baggy clothes exactly what. Okay,
Speaker 1: you mentioned males and I have some questions about dimorphism
Speaker 1: because walruses they have these giant tusks, right, and elephant
Speaker 1: seals have a dong on their face and they rip
Speaker 1: each other apart. What is going on with their sex lives?
Speaker 1: Why do they have face weapons?
Speaker 3: It goes again, it depends on the species that.
Speaker 2: Walruses have a little bit about what we call sexual dimorphism,
Speaker 2: but it's not that much. You're actually see females with tusks.
Speaker 2: They're just not as big. I guess in the case
Speaker 2: of sea lions and elephant seals, they're probably one of
Speaker 2: the best examples of sexual dimorphism. Males can be two,
Speaker 2: three or four times as big as females, so you
Speaker 2: have that, and that has a lot to do with
Speaker 2: the reproductive system. And in the case of elephant seals,
Speaker 2: that big trunk like thing that they have in their
Speaker 2: face is called provoskis, and it's just as a secondary
Speaker 2: sexual character character. So we don't really I mean, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of hypothesis why they have it. One of
Speaker 2: the likely explanations is that it helps with the resonance
Speaker 2: when they're making their calls, so they have this system
Speaker 2: where elephant seals I should probably say too, that they
Speaker 2: have the loudest call. They're louder than lions on them
Speaker 2: and not a lot of people know that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I double checked this, and yes, allion's roar can
Speaker 1: reach one hundred and fourteen decibels, about the level of
Speaker 1: a live concert. Back when there were live concerts, but
Speaker 1: an elephant seal can just honk in the face of
Speaker 1: that and can broadcast his horniness up to one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty decibels, which is louder than a thunderclap, a chainsaw,
Speaker 1: and right about the noise of a military jet from
Speaker 1: fifty feet away. So the proboscis amplifies the male's sexual eagerness,
Speaker 1: which is the most literal use of the term bull
Speaker 1: horn just bull horny with the face.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that they used to sort
Speaker 2: of avoid conflict is they remember males, remember the calls
Speaker 2: from individuals. So if there's a fight at the very
Speaker 2: beginning of the season, all males arrived, so that before
Speaker 2: females arrive, don't hang out together and just start having
Speaker 2: fights with each other, and the winner off the fire,
Speaker 2: you're going to recognize who. You're going to be able
Speaker 2: to tell all that I thought the guy that didn't
Speaker 2: go away from me.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to get into that fight again.
Speaker 2: So they recognize each other based on their calls. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that probably this strum helps with
Speaker 2: them is just making their call louder.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, So they're able to make these really
Speaker 1: loud calls so people know, don't mess with me. Kick
Speaker 1: your ass last season and then I stole your girl,
Speaker 1: so you might not want to get in a fight
Speaker 1: and bite my neck again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a series of really cool experiments that a
Speaker 2: friend of mine died where she went to different colonies
Speaker 2: of elephants along the because of California, and she recorded
Speaker 2: elephant seals from one colony and played those calls on
Speaker 2: a different colony. And you can see that the guys
Speaker 2: that didn't know this particular male that was very aggressive
Speaker 2: in one colony, they didn't react to him at all
Speaker 2: to that call. But if they played the same call
Speaker 2: in the colony where that animal leaves, everybody would be
Speaker 2: like a freak out because they knew.
Speaker 3: Who that guy was.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, and I hate to ask this, but
Speaker 1: I mean, they have what looks to be a dog
Speaker 1: on their face. Do they have like matching nethers? Like
Speaker 1: if if you have an elephanty with a giant proboscis,
Speaker 1: like is he packing or what?
Speaker 2: I don't know, because their pinnis are internal, which is
Speaker 2: a good thing.
Speaker 1: What they've got inner digs? How does that work?
Speaker 2: So they again, when you are an animal of the
Speaker 2: swims in the water. You want to reduce the drag
Speaker 2: so you don't have any extra apendages or anything like
Speaker 2: that are hanging out. So guess like a dolphin, our
Speaker 2: cetacean elephant, seals and well seals and peinipies and general
Speaker 2: have evolved in a way that their penis is internal
Speaker 2: and they only when they're going to have sex they
Speaker 2: expose their pinions.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, So you don't know what you're getting
Speaker 1: into until it's gotten into you.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, But you're like, I guess I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: by this call, and he's really loud, So.
Speaker 3: Exactly they do. They do all have vacuum.
Speaker 1: So what in the ding dong heck is a baculum? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a dong bone. It's a bone in your dog.
Speaker 1: If you're a walrus, they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they have they have a most most mammals actually.
Speaker 3: Have a bone in their princes.
Speaker 2: So it's humans we're sort of deception. But I think
Speaker 2: Native Americans in Alaska use the vaculum of walruses and
Speaker 2: they carve it so they use it as a little
Speaker 2: piece of art.
Speaker 1: I guess, little piece of art. I looked it up
Speaker 1: a walrus vaculum can measure two feet in length, and
Speaker 1: doing some deeper digging on this, I found an anthropological
Speaker 1: article that traced the origins of Usik art to pretty
Speaker 1: much the twentieth century, with Native Alaska artists doing the
Speaker 1: carvings not out of their own traditions but to meet
Speaker 1: the demands of tourists looking for a kind of lude
Speaker 1: veneer carving from their wild travels. So that being said, pinepedes,
Speaker 1: of course have a rich history of subsistence living and
Speaker 1: tradition in Alaska, Native Arctic, Inuit and First Nations cultures
Speaker 1: and other climates where these animals are endemic and their
Speaker 1: populations were stable until the last century or so when
Speaker 1: settler economies meant widespread irresponsible hunting. And there's a really
Speaker 1: amazing documentary called Angry Nanook that highlights the conflict between
Speaker 1: seal hunting bands that should just target a certain type
Speaker 1: of commercial hunting versus those bands that harm indigenous communities.
Speaker 1: And on that note, we donate to a charity each week,
Speaker 1: and this week I'm throwing in an extra one We're
Speaker 1: going to do too. One donation will go to Feeding
Speaker 1: Nunavut dot com and that promotes civic improvement by raising
Speaker 1: awareness about food insecurity and the challenging living conditions in Nunavut,
Speaker 1: which is up up in the North in Canada. They
Speaker 1: also work whenever possible with national, regional, and local organizations
Speaker 1: to support and evaluate programs addressing issues of hunger, poverty, housing, education,
Speaker 1: and health, particularly mental health and Feeding Nunavut is a
Speaker 1: one hundred percent volunteer run organization, So one donation will
Speaker 1: go there, and this week in next one, of course,
Speaker 1: we'll go to one of the ologists choosing, and this
Speaker 1: weekly chose a donation to go to the nonprofit Alaska
Speaker 1: Sea Life Center, which is the only facility in Alaska
Speaker 1: that combines a public aquarium with marine research and education
Speaker 1: and wildlife response. So you can learn more about them
Speaker 1: at Alaska Salife dot org. You can also check the
Speaker 1: link in the show note to Feeding Nunavut dot com.
Speaker 1: Those donations will be possible by patrons and by the
Speaker 1: sponsors of the show where you're gonna hear about now
Speaker 1: Okay vaculum to your questions, including a common topic barking
Speaker 1: asked by patrons, Leolodovico, Katie Fetterman, Eric Gerard, Bethany Lysette
Speaker 1: Ruby Johnstone. In particular, Ruby asked why why do seals
Speaker 1: always sound like they were calling out to a mysterious
Speaker 1: man named Brad? Every seal I have encountered in recent
Speaker 1: memory has screamed run. This is something I think about
Speaker 1: a lot, says Ruby. Okay, a lot of patrons had
Speaker 1: questions about obviously about dogs and seals and are they
Speaker 1: dogs of the sea? And also what's up with their barks?
Speaker 1: Why do they bark as opposed to making other noises?
Speaker 2: So they are part of that branch of carnivores that
Speaker 2: dogs and bears belong to. So I guess in that sense,
Speaker 2: they are kind of dogs of the sea. They're very trainable,
Speaker 2: as you can see animals in a career, They're very smart.
Speaker 3: There are, however, wild.
Speaker 2: Animals, so I will highly discourage anyone to get close
Speaker 2: to these animals. They actually move faster than you think,
Speaker 2: and they might not like you've been.
Speaker 3: Close to them. So that's one thing that.
Speaker 2: I guess is one of the most important messages that
Speaker 2: I like to convey. It's the fact that you see
Speaker 2: a seal at the beach stairway from the seal, don't
Speaker 2: disturb the seal, especially if they're pups. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of people along the West coast of the United States
Speaker 2: that if they see a pup a harper the pup,
Speaker 2: they think that the animal is abandoned, and they go
Speaker 2: and try to rescue the animal, and mom is usually
Speaker 2: looking at the hair pop from the water, and then
Speaker 2: what you're doing basically is separating them mom from their pup.
Speaker 1: So if you see a pin of bead pup on
Speaker 1: the beach, do not cradle it, do not abscond with it.
Speaker 1: Seal moms will be like, dude, I left to get
Speaker 1: one fish and you took my baby. It's not enough
Speaker 1: to warm the whole planet and invent polka music. Humans
Speaker 1: have to go stealing babies too, So what do you do?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so it don't do it? So you can call.
Speaker 2: There's organizations like the Environmental Center, for example. You can
Speaker 2: call if you think that the animan is in distress.
Speaker 2: That don't get close to animals.
Speaker 1: Lea Lodovico had a great question. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: have scientists analyzed a range of seal barks, and if so,
Speaker 1: can I tell which barks are associated with certain behaviors
Speaker 1: like defensive barking versus productive barking.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people when they when they think
Speaker 2: of a seal barking, what they actually are visualizing is
Speaker 2: a California's lion barking, which are the ones that you
Speaker 2: see of the pier in San Francisco because of California
Speaker 2: and whatnot. So they do have different meetings, So smells
Speaker 2: usually do that as.
Speaker 3: A warning sign.
Speaker 2: But the world of about a coustic communication benefits is
Speaker 2: just fascinating and I will highly encourage everyone to go
Speaker 2: and look for Withdell seals calls because they sound like
Speaker 2: a space shift.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have the most amazing sound. And one of
Speaker 2: the most my most treasure experiences is just walking on
Speaker 2: the sea ass and you're just walking underwater basically on
Speaker 2: the frost and ocean, and underneath you you have Withdelle
Speaker 2: seels swimming around in the Charctica and you can hear
Speaker 2: them through the eyes and they have these sort of
Speaker 2: incredible sort of star Wars robot slash spaceships calls are amazing.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, you need to hear these Wetel seals right now.
Speaker 1: So that video was uploaded by the YouTube account Wetell
Speaker 1: Seal Science and Apparently, researchers in Antarctica would sometimes fall
Speaker 1: asleep to these seals vocalizations, which sound beautiful to our
Speaker 1: ears and also can be super super high frequency captured
Speaker 1: by a broadband digital hydrophone device. Their calls can go
Speaker 1: up to two hundred killer heertz, so high that a
Speaker 1: bat would be like, what am I listening for? People?
Speaker 1: I don't hear anything even without slowing it down above
Speaker 1: ice again, all kinds of trills and chirps they make,
Speaker 1: wookie purrs and whistles that according to one researcher, Doctor
Speaker 1: Paul Zico, a lead author of a recent study on
Speaker 1: the matter, went on record as saying, quote, it really
Speaker 1: sounds like you're in the middle of a space battle
Speaker 1: in Star Wars, laser beams and all. Quote. So why
Speaker 1: do they do it? Why do the seals do it?
Speaker 1: Nobody knows, but some scientists have floated the idea that
Speaker 1: it could be echolocation, as they can dive up to
Speaker 1: six hundred meters, which is deeper than one Empire state
Speaker 1: building stacked on top of another Empire state building, and
Speaker 1: they may be hunting in that watery blackness of the
Speaker 1: deep and using those calls they really have no idea
Speaker 1: either way. Honestly, I've dated guys at bands who, even
Speaker 1: with a basement full of guitar center items, couldn't produce
Speaker 1: the kind of beats that these fish eating blubber loafs can.
Speaker 1: Stone cold, sober, it's a beautiful thing to behold. Have
Speaker 1: you ever had a moment where you're walking on the
Speaker 1: sea ice and you're listening to these spaceship calls from
Speaker 1: essentially aquatic bears underwater and just felt like, what is
Speaker 1: my life?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Several times every time that a good Antarctica. That's sort
Speaker 2: of my experience. I'm not very good about showing like
Speaker 2: I'm not jumpy. I'm not gonna be screaming or yelling
Speaker 2: at anything like that, So I'm.
Speaker 3: Sort of an integrat in that sense.
Speaker 2: But it's one of the things that to me, there's
Speaker 2: one there is why I go back so much. It's
Speaker 2: just an incredible experience and just being so lucky. Every
Speaker 2: now and then, every five minutes or so, it hits
Speaker 2: you like, Wow, I'm so lucky I've been here in
Speaker 2: this environment working with these animals too, because working with
Speaker 2: that with the el seels is just one of the
Speaker 2: most incredible experiences.
Speaker 1: Ever, would you say that what all seal is your favorite?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're They're just adorable there. They don't have any
Speaker 2: predators from land.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: If you heard the recent Ersenology episode about bears, you
Speaker 1: may remember that the Antarctic pretty much means no bears here.
Speaker 2: So there there you can approject with the all feel
Speaker 2: and they just look at you like what what are you?
Speaker 2: And they roll on their backs and suppose their bellies,
Speaker 2: which is where you're not supposed to do if if
Speaker 2: you're at risk, right, So work with them is just incredible,
Speaker 2: But they don't understand anything bad it's going to happen
Speaker 2: to them that comes from land or from the eyes.
Speaker 1: Rob Harber's first time question ask are common in hot
Speaker 1: with a good one? Just literally just wrote in ever
Speaker 1: booped a snoot? Have you ever gotten a touch of
Speaker 1: seal nose and just gone yeah?
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, I have several times, and
Speaker 3: one of the reason is why I did this. Well,
Speaker 3: it is adorable.
Speaker 2: But when we have sentiments on there and his tisia
Speaker 2: to work with them, we have to get them to
Speaker 2: dated right because these guys have big teeth. You want
Speaker 2: to make sure that everyone is safe and one of
Speaker 2: the things that is kind of tricky about anesthetizing seals
Speaker 2: is that they tend to hold their breath. It's a
Speaker 2: bad thing to hold your breath when you are under anesthesia.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that we do to make
Speaker 2: sure that they're breathing and they're okay, it's actually stimulating
Speaker 2: their their nose. So playing with their nose makes them
Speaker 2: breathe a lot. So there's several times, there's several pictures
Speaker 2: on me. Actually, the feel when you see you see
Speaker 2: me booping the seal every two minutes or so to
Speaker 2: make sure that they take a breath.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you just you don't understand how many
Speaker 1: people just decided to become pinapedologists. I think on your
Speaker 1: resume one of the special skills is like I boop snoots.
Speaker 1: I have to. I keep them alive. I must boop
Speaker 1: their snoots. It's pretty good job.
Speaker 3: The mission in my life.
Speaker 1: Stephanie Approaches had a really great question, how do they
Speaker 1: deal with water pressure in their ears? Also? Are their
Speaker 1: whiskers useful?
Speaker 2: So yeah, the whiskers are amazing useful. Going back to
Speaker 2: their ears, they usually sort of full of fluid. So
Speaker 2: by being full of fluid, you sort of avoid the
Speaker 2: changing pressure that we have, so that basically they lost
Speaker 2: the the chamber that is full of air that we have.
Speaker 2: Seals don't really have that anymore, so they can they
Speaker 2: can dive and they don't have that much air in
Speaker 2: their ears, so that's not a problem for them. And
Speaker 2: the whiskers. If you ever heard about equolocation of dolphins,
Speaker 2: the same thing, uh, the equivalent of the ecollocation will
Speaker 2: be the whiskers. The whiskers are super sensitive organs that
Speaker 2: they used to track prey in the toilet somewhere they
Speaker 2: actually are hunting. They're able to chasee fish within several feet,
Speaker 2: so if a fish is passed, they can feel the
Speaker 2: wake of that fish, the turbulance that custs in the
Speaker 2: water and follow that path. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: we have colleagues from Japan that have put these tandable
Speaker 2: cameras on seals and you can see how when they're diving,
Speaker 2: there's the whiskers are sort of glued to their cheeks,
Speaker 2: to their face, and when they heat the depth at
Speaker 2: which they want to find prey, they open their whisker
Speaker 2: like a parabolic antenna.
Speaker 3: And they use that to find prey. What Yeah, so
Speaker 3: about eighty percent of their food that they actually consume,
Speaker 3: they probably find it using their whiskers.
Speaker 1: They can find clams buried in sand with just their whiskers.
Speaker 1: Imagine having a metal detector on your face or X
Speaker 1: ray glasses to detect buried candy bars. Such is the
Speaker 1: power of the whisker. Now how powerful are these whiskers?
Speaker 1: Another patron had a question Emily Stewart, first time question
Speaker 1: asker wanted to know I heard on octonauts. Is it
Speaker 1: true that harbor seals whiskers are so sensitive they can
Speaker 1: sense an individual fish from one hundred miles away. My
Speaker 1: whiskers are detecting more ripples. I'd say these ripples were
Speaker 1: made by a big fish. It's not accurate.
Speaker 3: One hundred miles away is not accurate. But they can.
Speaker 2: But it's basically what I was trying to say, that
Speaker 2: that experiment was done with captive animals, So again it
Speaker 2: goes back to say why we need animals in captivity.
Speaker 3: But they did that.
Speaker 2: Basically cover their eyes and they have a little mechanic
Speaker 2: fish in a pool, and the seal was able to
Speaker 2: follow the fish exactly, but it wasn't one hundred miles away.
Speaker 3: It was just a couple of feet away.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that one hundred miles away? Yeah, one hundred meters, yes.
Speaker 1: So see the twenty ten Journal of Experimental Biology paper
Speaker 1: entitled Hydrodynamic determination of the moving direction of an artificial
Speaker 1: fin by a harbor seal or the appetizing twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: follow up research study entitled Seal whiskers may sense fish breath.
Speaker 1: PJ had a great question, they said, I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: seal locomotion. How did their ridiculous movement evolve and why
Speaker 1: is it perfect? Doggins first time question asker says, hello,
Speaker 1: I have questions about how they get around on land?
Speaker 1: They just flop. What is the land speed of a seal?
Speaker 1: And does it hurt their little stomachs if they flop
Speaker 1: onto something other than ice?
Speaker 2: So when we're talking about locomotion of seals, the first
Speaker 2: thing that comes to mind, of course, is how they
Speaker 2: move in the water. And you have two different kinds
Speaker 2: of locomotion in there. You have the sea lions and
Speaker 2: first seals. So they are right.
Speaker 1: That's what we call them otar it means ears. So
Speaker 1: the eared ones, how do they move?
Speaker 2: And they use the four flippers, So imagine like penguin
Speaker 2: basically the same thing. That's that's how sea lions and
Speaker 2: forces sort of swim.
Speaker 3: And then you have the true seals and they use
Speaker 3: their hind flippers like a fish. Basically they go side
Speaker 3: to side.
Speaker 2: So those are the two different motions that they have
Speaker 2: when they're in the water, and you can sort of
Speaker 2: see how true seals are sort of better adapted to
Speaker 2: the water than sea lions are when it comes to land.
Speaker 2: Of course, they have to go through so many adaptations
Speaker 2: to being able to be successful at sea that they've
Speaker 2: lost their grace when they want.
Speaker 3: So they have to move in a clum sea way.
Speaker 2: True seals have lost the ability to have lost the
Speaker 2: joint that basically connects your femur to your hip, so
Speaker 2: they have to move.
Speaker 3: Like a.
Speaker 2: Like a snake basically, and that's the only way that
Speaker 2: they have moved.
Speaker 3: They have to move.
Speaker 2: Sea lions they actually still have the ability to walk
Speaker 2: on all four If you're not sure whether it's a silion,
Speaker 2: if it's walking on all four, that's a selion.
Speaker 1: Oh that's how you tell the difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can see selion perfectly walking on all
Speaker 2: forward they sort of project the hind flippers forward and
Speaker 2: they can move on all four that's a selion. So
Speaker 2: is that and the ear that you can see the
Speaker 2: external ear on sea lions.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's such a good life hack somehow
Speaker 1: in a trivia game that's going to come up important,
Speaker 1: or someone's going to time travel and be like, wait,
Speaker 1: I know this.
Speaker 2: And the other part about how fast they move, they
Speaker 2: move faster than you think they move. I have had
Speaker 2: a male adult elephants hill which is something like three
Speaker 2: tons of glober and muscle chasing me up at June
Speaker 2: that it was about twenty feet high and had to run.
Speaker 2: I was basically playing bait so that the male will
Speaker 2: let us do the work that we need to do
Speaker 2: with females and have this male follow with me and
Speaker 2: they will keep up with me. So have to run,
Speaker 2: try to run as fast as I could up at
Speaker 2: doon and this animal was still chasing me and they
Speaker 2: did that like ten times in an hour. I was
Speaker 2: still able to keep up with me. So that's one
Speaker 2: of the reason why I keep telling people, do not
Speaker 2: get closed a seal. They move way faster than you
Speaker 2: think they move.
Speaker 1: Never cock block a seal. Just leave it to the
Speaker 1: professionals who signed up for this life.
Speaker 2: They could kill you. And a male elephant seel can
Speaker 2: kill a human for sure.
Speaker 1: Really would they do it with their teeth? Essentially?
Speaker 2: They're yeah, or just if they catch you, they're going
Speaker 2: to try to fight you. Three tones of animal that
Speaker 2: are usually very frustrated, especially in the breading season. Elephantis
Speaker 2: have the highestest of sterne concentration of any mammal. So
Speaker 2: you can imagine with all that the stostern going through
Speaker 2: their system how frustrated they are if they're not getting
Speaker 2: any females attention. So you don't want to be there.
Speaker 1: So beware the horny, angry in cell pinnipeds, insliphant sales
Speaker 1: really oh man, Yeah, so leave them alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I have a personal question in
Speaker 1: terms of like videos that we've seen. Do you know
Speaker 1: that one video of the walrus who looks really shy
Speaker 1: getting a birthday cake. Yeah, the birthday cake, by the way,
Speaker 1: it's just an elegant affair, kind of crowned in a
Speaker 1: row of fresh hairing and the birthday walrus is doubled over,
Speaker 1: bashfully covering its face with its flippers. Just imagine an
Speaker 1: a live coffee colored sleeping bag with mittens for hands
Speaker 1: who was touched beyond words? Is that is there an
Speaker 1: emotion like aweshucks that pinnipeds feel or is that just
Speaker 1: trained into a captive walrus?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to say that that's party just training.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay, just making sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think I don't. I mean, after working
Speaker 2: with them for so many years, I can assure you
Speaker 2: that they don't feel any shame whatsoever anything. They will
Speaker 2: fart in your face. They will, they will vomit. They
Speaker 2: don't have any any visions.
Speaker 1: They're not like a cake for me. Yeah, okay, they
Speaker 1: will fart, fish, fart right in your face and not
Speaker 1: have a second thought about it. Oh my gosh. Anne
Speaker 1: hard Key wants to know. Do they have tails? I
Speaker 1: met a sea lion and it had a small finger
Speaker 1: sized tail and it was so weird and cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do have tails. It's about side of your thumb,
Speaker 2: a little bit wider, and they move it. There's there's
Speaker 2: a fun fact, they say, you know, suddenly elephant seals
Speaker 2: stick their tongue out when they're under the stasia and
Speaker 2: we have no idea why.
Speaker 1: Do you ever go flooby bloop bloopy.
Speaker 3: With uh gloves in my hands? Gloves?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense. Andrew Hageman, first time question asker
Speaker 1: wants to know when do baby seals lose their white
Speaker 1: fur and do they have like an ugly tough teenage
Speaker 1: phase like the rest of us or are they just
Speaker 1: cute forever?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they're talking about seals that leave up in the Arctic,
Speaker 2: and they most of them are what we call capital breather,
Speaker 2: which means that they sort of optimize their time. They
Speaker 2: just want to be months for a short period of time.
Speaker 2: After birth, they give their pups of mealk that has
Speaker 2: a lot of fat, and their lactation periods are very short.
Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, that the shortest lactation period
Speaker 2: from any mammal is four days for the hooded seal.
Speaker 2: And you're serious, Yeah, and after four days mom takes off,
Speaker 2: Bye bye baby.
Speaker 3: You're you're on your own to do so puffs.
Speaker 2: When they're born, they don't have that much glover, right,
Speaker 2: so they depend on this fur to keep born. But
Speaker 2: with a milk that is that fatty, they're going to
Speaker 2: put on a lot of blobber very very fast. And
Speaker 2: after they do that, they mold their coat, and they
Speaker 2: do look very ridiculous when that happens, but this usually
Speaker 2: a couple of months after all weeks. Two months after
Speaker 2: mom leaves, they're gonna mold their baby coat and they're
Speaker 2: gonna grow their adult coat until the next year. So
Speaker 2: all seals and sea lions they mold once a year.
Speaker 1: Ps I looked up pictures of their molting and they
Speaker 1: kind of resemble like a fake fur bench you left
Speaker 1: outside for a decade, patchy, worn, awkward, or like if
Speaker 1: you fell asleep midway through drunkenly shaving your head. We
Speaker 1: had a couple questions about teeth. Kayla Smith, I have
Speaker 1: a gray rich flight Clara Meyer, Julia Spindorf, and Manette
Speaker 1: Eaton first time question ask her people want to know
Speaker 1: about ab eater seal teeth.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, all right.
Speaker 2: I do my dissertation on crabatter seals and I'm working
Speaker 2: with them right now, so I love crabator seals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, try to describe what their
Speaker 1: teeth look like. Because I saw them for the first
Speaker 1: time and I was like, this is like a fractal.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm on acid looking at a skull,
Speaker 1: what are they doing?
Speaker 3: So it's a very complicated teeth structure, and if you
Speaker 3: look at them, they feed perfectly, and when they're closer jaws,
Speaker 3: it kind of looks like a cage.
Speaker 1: Right, imagine triangular molars that have almost fractally swirls on
Speaker 1: all sides. They look like a van Go painting made
Speaker 1: of teeth. Horrifying, gorgeous, these Antarctic seal teeth.
Speaker 2: And they're eating crell so they effectively are using their
Speaker 2: teeth as sieves. So if you think of a bating
Speaker 2: whale as filtered out saw panton of the water, crabator
Speaker 2: seals are the same thing, but with creole and they
Speaker 2: haven't involved all these complicated bailing structors like the whales have.
Speaker 2: But you can actually see how the the structure of
Speaker 2: their teeth are similar to that. So we've seen that
Speaker 2: in the evolution of cetations as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they look like they are absolute bone grinders,
Speaker 1: but really they're just for filter feeding tiny things grab
Speaker 1: the seals.
Speaker 3: Their diet is over ninety percent cri crill.
Speaker 1: Side note are these two inch long, shrimpy looking crustaceans.
Speaker 3: And they just seen just tea that basically seems to
Speaker 3: filter out crell.
Speaker 1: Are they eating any crabs?
Speaker 2: No, the any crabs? I think, Wait, they call crab
Speaker 2: eater seals. I think the reason for that is that
Speaker 2: it's a mistranslation from the German.
Speaker 3: Word for crustacean.
Speaker 2: Someone assumed that when they were calling them crustacean eating seals,
Speaker 2: and someone translated that as crab eating seals.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, because I saw those teeth and I
Speaker 1: was like, they must just be grinding for crazy crabs.
Speaker 3: Number seals similar teeth as well. The per seals actually
Speaker 3: eat cream as well.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you mentioned leopard seals because Jennifer Chran
Speaker 1: wants to know was a leopard seal depicted somewhat accurately?
Speaker 1: And Happy Feet and Scotti d, Kimberly Cooley, Ellen Skelton,
Speaker 1: Helen Moore, and rich Flight all had similar leopard seal questions.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read rich Flight's question verbatim. Are leopard seals
Speaker 1: just the most badass fucking seal in the world and
Speaker 1: do they actually have any predators? And Kimberly Cooley asked,
Speaker 1: do leopard seals only get a bad rap in movies
Speaker 1: because they eat penguins. Anytime a seal is a bad guy,
Speaker 1: it's a leopard seal. And yet other folks who wanted
Speaker 1: to know this include Jennifer Tran, Scotty D, longtime listener,
Speaker 1: first time asker, Helen Moore, Lee Guverson, and Ellen Skelton,
Speaker 1: who asked, are they like the pitbulls of the sea?
Speaker 1: People have made them have to be bad, but they're
Speaker 1: cuddly and adorable, So leopard seals are they vicious? Louis says,
Speaker 1: it's not really an applicable question.
Speaker 3: I mean there.
Speaker 2: Making a living and they have to do what to do,
Speaker 2: whatever they have to do survive. They do have a
Speaker 2: bad reps somehow fair. They do eat out of puppies
Speaker 2: and penguin chicks and.
Speaker 3: Adults, and that that's true.
Speaker 2: They also eat fish. They also eat krell. Some liper
Speaker 2: seals hide fish that they've hunted and they put on
Speaker 2: the rocks in the water, and some other animals that
Speaker 2: seees where they're hiding they gon steal their fish. So
Speaker 2: they're very smart like that that I've seen. I've seen
Speaker 2: a lot of leper seals. They do get a bad reputation,
Speaker 2: but the things it's just not fair. They are super
Speaker 2: aggressive predator. So a diver died because a lubber seal
Speaker 2: killed her. I think it was a woman. Basically it
Speaker 2: beat her her head. So I will never get in
Speaker 2: the water if there's another percil in the water. And
Speaker 2: then a lot of divers in Antarctica they know that
Speaker 2: if there's an other person in the water, you don't
Speaker 2: get in the water.
Speaker 3: That's wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, have you ever been chomped on bia seal?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I'm one of the few of my colleagues that have
Speaker 3: never been beaten.
Speaker 1: Oh good job.
Speaker 2: I also think to be very careful. I do get
Speaker 2: a tunnel vision better. I'm somehow been lucky.
Speaker 1: One question. A lot of folks had I'll list them
Speaker 1: all on a side. Sarah Raserah, Anthony Willis Junior, Becky
Speaker 1: the Sassy Seagrass, Scientist, Kathleen Sachs, Jennifer trand Diane Schuckman,
Speaker 1: shayel Zinc first time question asker, Alexandre Cattouol and Holly
Speaker 1: Spencer first time question asker one show. How badly is
Speaker 1: climate change currently affecting pinnipeds and are there any species
Speaker 1: which are in particular danger of extinction?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're predicting that some species are actually going to
Speaker 2: be able to exploit new habitats. So so the emphasis
Speaker 2: for example, they don't really like the ice. With the
Speaker 2: ice retreating Antarctica, they're now able to exploit new resources
Speaker 2: that weren't available to them back in the day.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of the seals actually living in.
Speaker 2: Arctic and Antarctic latitudes and they depend on eyes, So
Speaker 2: with the reduction of eyes, you're basically losing your habitat.
Speaker 2: So if there's no eye, it still going to be
Speaker 2: a lot of negative sequests for all these populations and
Speaker 2: species of seals.
Speaker 1: And Louis says that the smaller inland seals are at
Speaker 1: the highest risk of extinction when the climate continues to warm,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wait inland seals. So yes, patrons
Speaker 1: Andrea Levinson, Ethan Potone, and first time er Olivia Goldsmith
Speaker 1: and also a little stumbo, all of you asked about
Speaker 1: the bi call seal the only fresh water pinniped species,
Speaker 1: and there are a few other species like these spotty
Speaker 1: ringed seals, and some freshwater colonies or freshwater subspecies of
Speaker 1: other types of pinnipeds that are in lakes or brackish
Speaker 1: water of the Caspian Sea. But these bi call seals
Speaker 1: are the only ones that are just straight up living
Speaker 1: in fresh water. How did they get so far inland?
Speaker 1: I pictured them just hopping along on their guts to
Speaker 1: get there, or maybe boarding a smoky greyhound bus decades ago,
Speaker 1: but Luis says that at some point there was a
Speaker 1: channel that connected these bodies to the sea way. Less
Speaker 1: romantic than a bunch of individual seals just saying screw
Speaker 1: this to the ocean after a breakup, but either way,
Speaker 1: they got there, and many many moons ago, the channels
Speaker 1: kind of let them float there like a log flume ride.
Speaker 1: But clearly when climates change, survival changes sometimes too rapidly
Speaker 1: for them to adapt. Now, on that note, Heather and Kate,
Speaker 1: both first time question askers, want to know what do
Speaker 1: pinnipeds need from humans, Like is there a start, stop
Speaker 1: continue list that you can share on their behalf?
Speaker 3: I think that depends on where you are.
Speaker 2: One to think that it's becoming more and more common,
Speaker 2: and maybe it's beeause of social media and the people
Speaker 2: to cell phones is harassment. What I was talking about
Speaker 2: earlier about not getting close to animals, let them be
Speaker 2: I mean enjoying nature, and you can take pictures of
Speaker 2: animals without actually having to disturb them, and that's probably
Speaker 2: the best thing to do.
Speaker 3: You can use a zoom to take a picture of
Speaker 3: the seals instead of getting.
Speaker 2: Too close to them, and the other thing. By far,
Speaker 2: I think that as a society, the biggest challenge that
Speaker 2: we're all facing this kind of change. So anything that
Speaker 2: we can do about kind of change to solve that
Speaker 2: problem is going to obviously help protecting these animals.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, we had a lot of folks
Speaker 1: who were kayakers write in rather than approaching seals on land,
Speaker 1: a lot of people wrote in about seals approaching them.
Speaker 1: Kathleen Sachs wants to know why did the seals slap
Speaker 1: a kayaker with an octopus? And Terry Goss wrote in
Speaker 1: I love this because Terry Gos wrote in a little
Speaker 1: story time I'm going to read you. While on a
Speaker 1: leisurely shore dive, I had a young harbor seal follow
Speaker 1: me around and came up to chew on my fins
Speaker 1: a bit, not unusual, I've had that before, but he
Speaker 1: started getting more and more touchy and started grabbing my leg.
Speaker 1: I swam ahead to shore, but he became more aggressive
Speaker 1: with my legs. Was his play activity or was he
Speaker 1: being sexual? Didn't feel aggressive per se Terry says, but
Speaker 1: he could have definitely ruined my dry suit. And Grace
Speaker 1: Anne Reid wrote in why would a seal be motivated
Speaker 1: to somewhat aggressively boop my kayak? This happened to me
Speaker 1: while in a red kayak and then the seal just
Speaker 1: stared at me a minute. I would like to know
Speaker 1: what it was trying to tell me. And Kathleen Sacks
Speaker 1: says why there's so many videos of seals climbing into
Speaker 1: kayaks rat a Tat Nat Nubie and enthusiast here they
Speaker 1: wanted to know why are seals so gloriously curious? I
Speaker 1: had one swim under my kayak last week unannounced and
Speaker 1: lost my actual bananas. What would so? Yeah, if you're kayaking,
Speaker 1: what should you do if one comes.
Speaker 3: Close to you?
Speaker 2: So the first one, I'm pretty sure that was I
Speaker 2: want to say he was going to start in first.
Speaker 3: And the one that's app that that kayak.
Speaker 2: With the with the ofs and and that is basically
Speaker 2: the kayakkers in the bad place at a bad time
Speaker 2: because seals, sea lions and particularly do that a lot.
Speaker 2: They bring this the prey up to the surface and
Speaker 2: then they shake their face their head violently and to
Speaker 2: sort of rep apart their prey. And this guy was
Speaker 2: probably just in the bad place at the bad time.
Speaker 2: So that's that's what happened all of these seals. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't really have a straight answer. I don't These
Speaker 2: are my hypothesis. I think basically, seals are seeing all
Speaker 2: these kayaks as potential hold out sites. So if they're tired,
Speaker 2: they just want to wrestle a little bit. Usually what
Speaker 2: seals do is they just go and hold out on
Speaker 2: a platform or a bully or a plant or whatever,
Speaker 2: or a rock or whatever it is. So we're offering
Speaker 2: them that in their environment, so they can come up
Speaker 2: to the surface see a platform that is available to them.
Speaker 3: Why not, right?
Speaker 2: And someone could think also, maybe there's a shark in
Speaker 2: the water they just want to get out of the water.
Speaker 2: That could also be an alternative explanation. So the best
Speaker 2: thing to do is just to stay calm, not try
Speaker 2: to touch the I might just let it be and
Speaker 2: at some point it's going to go back to the water.
Speaker 3: There's lots of video of.
Speaker 2: Animals that do that on boats, for example, that are
Speaker 2: being chased by orcasts.
Speaker 3: Oh, there are videos.
Speaker 2: Of theaters and seals, and I've actually seen sea lions
Speaker 2: also that are under attacked by orcasts and they get
Speaker 2: super close to the boat or ship or try to
Speaker 2: climb up to not be.
Speaker 3: In the water.
Speaker 1: So if you see a seal trying to stow away
Speaker 1: on your canoe, am I just need a break or
Speaker 1: it's evading up blood theirs sty predator? Just don't go
Speaker 1: bananas with speculation. Oh, speaking of which, Morgan Jennison and
Speaker 1: m Madeline Lewis, Jade Pollard, Andrea Levinson and first time
Speaker 1: asker Ness had one question that was bananas. Several people
Speaker 1: wrote in a question I had no idea what they
Speaker 1: were talking about, but Vespa said, what makes them go
Speaker 1: into banana? Pos? Are they expecting me to draw them
Speaker 1: like one of my French girls? And I looked it
Speaker 1: up and they really do look like a banana. How
Speaker 1: are they doing? I can't do that yoga move, But
Speaker 1: now that we know that they're ripped, that makes more sense.
Speaker 1: But yeah, why are they banana?
Speaker 2: So we also call it the donut? Sometimes they touch
Speaker 2: their flippers with their head and then take a little doughnut.
Speaker 2: The most like explanations that happens because they're trying to
Speaker 2: keep their flippers out of the water. If you think
Speaker 2: about that, when we're talking about the blobber and they're
Speaker 2: how well insulated they are. Their blobbers covering their entire body,
Speaker 2: so their entire body is really really well insulated. It
Speaker 2: set for their flippers. So if for whatever reason they're
Speaker 2: too cold or too warm, they use their flippers to
Speaker 2: sort of regulate their temperature. So if you're too cold,
Speaker 2: you want to keep your flippers out of the water
Speaker 2: and exposed to the sun so they warm up. If
Speaker 2: you are too hot, you can put your flippers in
Speaker 2: the water and that will help you cool that a
Speaker 2: bit faster. Because the rest of everybody, you don't sweat,
Speaker 2: you don't have you don't have the ability to dump
Speaker 2: heat as we.
Speaker 3: Do easily do.
Speaker 1: They not sweat, no.
Speaker 2: Cool so the only way to dump heat or warm
Speaker 2: up is through their flippers. And they have other other
Speaker 2: spots in their body there are highly vascularized. A lot
Speaker 2: of blood flows through those areas, and that's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why they do the banana posts.
Speaker 1: M hm, oh my gosh. One last question from a listener,
Speaker 1: Lizzie Carr summed it up for a lot of us
Speaker 1: wants to know our seals mean? Are nice? I read
Speaker 1: something recently that said they really mean, but they look
Speaker 1: so sweet my heart can't handle lip their decks.
Speaker 2: I wonder if I say that, I'm kind of whenever
Speaker 2: I teach Amara mcclass some play that I try to
Speaker 2: apply a little bit of short therapy to my students
Speaker 2: and tell them seals, even though they look adorable and
Speaker 2: you want to hug them, they are wild animals and
Speaker 2: they can be mean animals. But I don't mean like
Speaker 2: like like that. I just basically mean that we have
Speaker 2: some sort of we sort of idealized seals and think
Speaker 2: that they are these cuddly animals and they're no, they're
Speaker 2: wild animals. They can buye they can transmit diseases to humans,
Speaker 2: so and we can transmit diseases to them. So it's one.
Speaker 2: There's a way. I always tell everyone to stay away
Speaker 2: from the seals.
Speaker 3: There is animals.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's I think humans are mean, I
Speaker 2: don't think animals are mean.
Speaker 1: Well said, agreed, agreed on the topic of things that
Speaker 1: do or do not suck. That is the worst part
Speaker 1: about being a professional penepedologist who gets to travel so
Speaker 1: distant parts of the globe and gets to boop snoops
Speaker 1: and gets to walk on the ice. Like, there's got
Speaker 1: to be something that sucks.
Speaker 2: It's not really about being a pinnipedologist, but it's more
Speaker 2: about I guess it goes back to being human, I guess,
Speaker 2: but in is I guess that's because of the competition
Speaker 2: is so fierce and so there's so few resources. Sometimes
Speaker 2: people forget about their ethics and the fact that they're
Speaker 2: humans and they do things that are not not very nice.
Speaker 3: Let's just put it like that. So it's a very minority,
Speaker 3: very very minor minority. There's not that many case where
Speaker 3: that happens, but it does happen, and that's that's a
Speaker 3: big bummer to me.
Speaker 1: The fact that you recognize that means you're probably not
Speaker 1: doing that, which is good. What about the best thing
Speaker 1: about your life as a pedopidologist.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of goodly good things.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was very negative about humans in the
Speaker 2: past answer on the first answer, but my colleagues are
Speaker 2: by by far one of the best humans beings that
Speaker 2: I've ever met, like I have, my best friends are pinnipedologies.
Speaker 2: My whole suple of colleagues just amazing. So that part
Speaker 2: is it's incredible. Travel is a really good thing. I've
Speaker 2: been to every continent on the planet for either meetings
Speaker 2: or fieldwork. But by far, I gotta say, working with
Speaker 2: the animals is just beyond what anyone can imagine. The
Speaker 2: fact that you can be so close to these animals
Speaker 2: in Antarctica, for example, I never imagine, well the stream
Speaker 2: that I will be sedating up with the seal, which
Speaker 2: are by far the most adorable seals on the planet,
Speaker 2: and working with them, and taking care of a pub
Speaker 2: while we're working with the month for example, And just yeah,
Speaker 2: all that experience working with animals is by far the
Speaker 2: most incredible part of my career. And I wouldn't show
Speaker 2: you for the world. I would keep doing this until
Speaker 2: basically I can't move anymore. But yeah, yeah, there's so
Speaker 2: many there's so many opportunities to enjoy being in the world,
Speaker 2: but having that close counter with animals.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's there's no other thing like that.
Speaker 1: Oh, just make sure to keep out running.
Speaker 2: Them, Yeah, keep booping them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, keep booping it out, running them. Oh this has
Speaker 1: been such a joy. I just can't thank you enough
Speaker 1: for you have been on my list for so long.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: So ask Arctic explorers adventurous questions, sometimes embarrassing ones. Because
Speaker 1: our time on the planet goes by fast, you might
Speaker 1: as well fill your skull with wonder So cut bangs,
Speaker 1: text your crush, leave your hair dye lifter on twice
Speaker 1: as long, and make the buttery jack reverse ombre a
Speaker 1: summer trend. If you have no idea what words I'm using,
Speaker 1: you can see my instagram at Ali Ward. I had
Speaker 1: a hair mishap and we're calling it the buttery Jack.
Speaker 1: It's what we're doing, summer buttery Jack. It's happening now.
Speaker 1: To follow Louise, which of course you want to do,
Speaker 1: you can find him at Louise takstat on Twitter or
Speaker 1: la huxt on Instagram. Those handles and his website are
Speaker 1: linked in the show notes below very easy click follow,
Speaker 1: as well as on my website at aliboard dot com
Speaker 1: slash ologies slash pinapedology. There are links to a ton
Speaker 1: of things we talked about and videos. There are also
Speaker 1: bleeped episodes and transcripts on my website. Those are transcribed
Speaker 1: by Emily White of the wordery dot com. Thank you
Speaker 1: Caleb Patton for bleeping the episodes. Thank you to every
Speaker 1: patron who submitted questions and who supports the show. You
Speaker 1: can join them for as little as a dollar a month.
Speaker 1: You could submit questions to Ologists. That's at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Ologies. Thank you Aaron Talbert for moderating the
Speaker 1: ologies podcast Facebook group. You're also nice there. Thank you
Speaker 1: to everyone on the discord and the subreddit for ologies.
Speaker 1: Hello out there. Thanks to everyone who came to the
Speaker 1: live show. By the way, super fun ologies merch dot
Speaker 1: com has t shirts and hats and socks and stickers
Speaker 1: and face masks and more. Thank you Shin and Felts
Speaker 1: and Bonnie Dutch of the comedy podcast You are That
Speaker 1: for managing that, as well as help from Susan Hale
Speaker 1: and Noel Dilworth who helps schedule the interviews as well.
Speaker 1: Kelly Dwyer designed and maintains aliboard dot com. Thank you
Speaker 1: to a duo of recently shorn editors, Jared Sleeper, who
Speaker 1: has agreed to marry me, and Stephen Ray Morris, who
Speaker 1: hosts the per cast and see Jurassic Right and has
Speaker 1: never agreed to marry me, but both are top notch dudes.
Speaker 1: Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music and he is in
Speaker 1: a very good band called Islands. They have new album
Speaker 1: coming out soon. If you stick around until the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, you know I tell you a secret
Speaker 1: this week. It is seven forty eight pm on Monday,
Speaker 1: May twenty fourth, hours before this comes out. I'm in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: I'm in a hotel. I have seen one alive cicada
Speaker 1: from two hundred feet away. I am so thrilled. I
Speaker 1: can see their shells on the tree trunks from afar.
Speaker 1: I'm finishing this episode and then I'm heading out to
Speaker 1: get dinner with anetologist Cole and Perry and Victor and Perry,
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing the cicadas at their house. I've waited
Speaker 1: over thirty years to meet a periodical brood ten cicada.
Speaker 1: And when I saw the shells the xuvii on the
Speaker 1: tree trunks this morning, I legit got teary eyed. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited. I'm so excited to see coal Victor. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hug him so much. Everyone's vaccinated oh Man decades
Speaker 1: of wanting to see Brouten. It's about to happen. I'm
Speaker 1: just very excited, so I'm gonna send this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: send it off. I'd say I have butterflies, but I don't.
Speaker 1: I have billions of squirming, fluttering cicadas in my belly.
Speaker 1: Very stoked. Okay, byebye, pacadermatology, hombiology, crypto zoology, lithology, zerinology, meteorologyology, anthology, seriology, elinology,