Ologies with Alie Ward - Mammalogy (MAMMALS) with Danielle N. Lee

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Mammals: you’re one. Your dog is one. So are giant rats. What do we have in common? Nipples. The incredible Southern Illinois University professor, researcher, science communicator and mammalogist Dr. Danielle N. Lee joins to chat about everything from nature’s parenting styles to hairy bellies, milk glands, nip counts, how a meteor paved the way for our existence, her favorite mammals and the mysteries of the platypus. An episode years in the making, Alie barely keeps her cool as Dr. Lee gives insight and perspective on what it means to be a human and a mammal. Also, we chat about Black Mammalogists week Sept. 13-19 and the important pivots that changed her career path. Follow Dr. Danielle N. Lee at Twitter.com/DNLee5 or Instagram.com/DNLee5 September 13-19 is Black Mammalogists Week! https://blackmammalogists.com/ A donation went to semsuccess.org Follow SEM Link at Twitter.com/semlink For more links: alieward.com/ologies/mammalogy Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and uh...bikinis? Hi. Yes. Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's that mark that you get on your chin when you're wearing lipstick and then you take a bite of a giant sandwich, alleyward, back with a warm-blooded and informative hour of chuckles that I just can't wait to get to. So just thank you up top to everyone on Patreon who submitted questions for this episode and who supports the show and to everyone keepingologies, a top science podcast with all of your ratings in your word of mouth and your reviews, which I read on purpose, everyone so that I can pick one, such as this from Kath Port, whose review on Apple was submitted in the form of this haiku.

Interesting folks, bright lights in their oligies, dadward, my friend too. Kath Port, I loved it, thank you. Also thanks to that one car guy named Frank and Anonymous718 for leaving your first ever podcast reviews and Lizzie's. Thanks for dreaming about me next to a campfire. It sounded fascinating. Okay, memology. So memology comes from the Latin for titties, gentle folks.

And we're going to get so into that, I can't even tell you. But technically, this is an allergy. It's not an ology, and I only realize that after spelling memology wrong approximately one billion times in a row. So this ologist is a big deal, a TED talker multiple times, a Nat Geo explorer, a longtime science writer and an advocate and a researcher, a professor, a tweeter, an icon, an idol of mine. And I sent my first breathless, very sycophantic pleading message to her in January of 2018,

two and a half years ago. And she was on another continent, busy with research. And I had been hoping for a time that I'd be anywhere near St. Louis and she would have an hour to spare. But time and remote recording finally brought us together. She hails from Tennessee and got her bachelor's degree in animal science at Tennessee Technological University, got a master's from University of Memphis and a PhD from University of Missouri, St. Louis.

She did postdocs at Oklahoma State and at Cornell University. She's currently an assistant professor of biology and urban ecology and memology at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville and is also an organizer of this week's Black Memologist Week, which runs September 13th through 19th. So you're definitely going to want to follow Black Memologist BLK Memologists on Twitter and get ready. They got Technique Tuesday. They got We Out Here Wednesday, Threatened Mammals Thursday, Forge Friday, Sea Mammal

Saturday this week. So there's more info and links up at blackmemologists.com. There's a link to that in the show notes. Get excited. So we talk about that. We also talk about this biologist work on animals of all kinds, especially the furry milky ones. And we chat about field work, platypie, furriness, and parenting styles, and nipples of every

stripe. And I was so excited to talk to her that I honestly was kind of speechless and just starstruck. And I just wanted to get out of the way and listen because she's just wonderful and insightful and informative. Please get ready to meet one of the world's coolest professors and mnemologists, Dr. Danielle N. Lee. Um, I'm ready to sit.

Oh, yay, okay. Of course, I want to talk to you about all these warm-blooded furry little creatures. First thing I'll have you do, if it's okay, if you could just say your first and last name, so I make sure I pronounce it right and pronouns. Thank you. So my name is Danielle N. Lee, and my pronouns are she and her, but I also just don't care. Okay. And I'll tell you why.

So in the process of doing my research in Tanzania and learning Swahili, there are no gender pronouns in Swahili. They don't exist. They just don't exist, like, because I kept asking, and I realized that because people who speak English would constantly get their pronouns mixed up. They would say he and she interchangeably. And I thought it was, oh, it's because they don't know English very well. No, it's because those words are the equivalent.

He and she are equivalent in Swahili because he and she don't exist. So that's why it's just like, so this is all a construct, it doesn't matter. That's so beautiful. That's so good to know. And this is the first time I've asked that up top because I had a listener say, hey, could you just start asking because that kind of normalizes it. It does. But I also just realized it's a very English thing.

It's a very, well, it's a language, it's not just English, but I suppose it also matters in Latin languages as well. Yeah. But like, that's very language specific. This doesn't mean anything in parts of the world where there's no gender pronouns at all. Oh, that makes my day. By the by, thank you.

That query Yana on Twitter, whose partner goes by they them, Yana says that cis folks can help normalize using and asking pronouns and that the acknowledgement really means something. And I would never have learned that about Swahili. So aces. Can you tell me a little bit about your research that you did in Tanzania? Absolutely. I study giant powstras, but those who get the reference, Princess Bride, I study IRLUSS.

They are large rotants that look like rats, they're not rats proper. They look like rotants. They are rotants. They rat like rotants and I'm holding my hands up across my body, but anywhere from nose to tip of tail, they can go anywhere from two and a half, one and a half to two and a half to three feet long. What was it like the first time that you saw one? The first time I finally got to see one, I was just like, I can't believe this thing.

It's big. It's the size of a cat, like a nice size house cat, like they're cat size. They're very strong. They're very fast. They are smart. They are the rats. They are the the rats of them. We can no longer live as rats, no too much.

They are they. No, and I mean that. So the first ones we got, we got a shipment from Ghana and we house them in rabbit cages. Nice place, spacious. That's what we house them in. In hutches. They're that big. Yeah, they're that big.

We house them in rabbit cages. They have a lot of dexterity in their hand, like they can grab things very easily. And when we give them, we have to process them because they're actually, they're not actually allowed in the United States. There's a moratorium on shipping African rodents and this particular rodent in particular, because in 2003, there was a monkeypox outbreak in this rodent, the species is responsible for it. So they're, they're on the, the no fly list.

So to get them, you got to have all special permissions in your track pass CDC and we have to do all these tests and submit them. And you have to submit saliva swabs to make sure that they don't have monkeypox. Okay, I know you're like, what's monkeypox? And it's a virus. It was first discovered in captive monkeys in 1958. And in 2003, there was a U.S. outbreak that, according to the CDC, involved 47 confirmed and probable cases of monkeypox.

They were reported from six states, sorry, the Midwest, it was all you, and all those cases stemmed from prairie dogs, which were infected by Gambian pouched rats than an exotic wildlife importer from Texas brought in. And if you're again, like needing a visual. So these pouched rats, they weigh like four pounds. They average two to three feet long, some not including their tails, and they have kind of big cute pink ears. So imagine like a Chihuahua with a long tail and a Mickey Mouse hat, or like a possum,

but the rats, just imagine huge rats. And I remember when it happened. So I'm assisting the vet who's swabbing the back of their mouth, their cheek pouches. That's why they're called pouch rats. They have cheek pouches like hamsters. And one of the rats, I swear, it looked him dead in the eye. And it reached with both hands and it grabbed the swab and yanked it out his mouth. And everyone who was there was me and it was a graduate student and the vet and we all

looked at each other and said, did anyone else just look at this thing? It just happened. It looked him in his eye and yanked it out his mouth. I will forever remember that. And in my memory, that was the same rat who escaped all he'd got out of the cage all the time. He always escaped. They were really good at removing their name cards, because at first I apologize now, but

I thought it was the animal care cleaning the cages and they forgot to put their name tags back on. Oh, no. And I was like, we can't have this. We got to keep the name cards on. And we come to find out it wasn't the staff at all. It was the rats. They were removing their own cards.

They were removing their own water bottles. We had to change a lot of our protocols and how we, the day-to-day husbandry of how you care for them, they're that different from regular rats. We had to change the materials we use. We can't use glass bottles because they're so good at flipping them out. They were breaking these super industrial expensive Pyrex bottles every night. They were just breaking them because they would flip them out and then they would use that little hole to either reach their hand out and undo the cage or for the smaller ones

they would move their food hutch because it slide in and then they would use that to escape out. So I asked what happens when they escape and she said, it's not like Monkeypox panic sirens go off and there's mayhem. There are double doors for safety, but it's certainly like a, come on, guys, moment. So it's my last institution where we housed them, which was Cornell University, part of what we did. We had one that escaped so often, like we just got used to it.

We would just put hutches around the room because what it is is they just go on these little jaunts. They literally would go on jaunts. So we would put just extra little hutches, which is just, it's a mailbox top. So imagine a mailbox thing without a door. That's their little housing hut. We would just put a couple of these in the room in the corner. And then when the staff would come in to do the daily checks, they just, you just take

a peek in them. And the good news is, because there's a handle on top, you can just, if you're very careful, just pick the hutch on up, open their home cage and put it right back in. But yes, once we get used to it and they get used to us, they'll go into a hutch. Otherwise, you got to get out there and you got to catch them. How do you catch them? When they're loose like that, I corner them and grab their tail. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. You did an awesome TED Talk talking about these animals and how little was known about the biology. And so are you really having to kind of figure out basically what's the life cycle, what's the reproductive cycle? Are you spending a lot of time in the field with them? I am. So I do the field work.

So we, when this project first started, I was brought on board and I was the start of doing all that, but now the project has expanded. So I now, I now have a faculty position. So there's been additional postdocs brought on board. So this has been an expanding team effort. So I wanted to make that clear. So a lot of the stuff I started just noting the questions and the patterns of behavior that we've been able to pick this work up by others and spread it out across multiple

teams now. So I'm excited about that. But yes, that's exactly how it started. We didn't know anything and we started from scratch. The first animals we got were the ones from Ghana, which we only got four, which wasn't enough to do any research. They just helped me get used to the animals and handling them. All right.

So in the genus Chrysotomus, I think you've got your Gambian pouched rat. And as it turns out, three other species with different variations, which Dr. Lee encountered once she started working with the ones in Tanzania, boy, howdy did she, but that's a different species. Oh, and, and from my observations, having handled both, they're very, they're different. They're different. They look different. They have slightly different behaviors.

I thought the ones from Ghana, cause I'd never seen an interact with anything that big and fast. I was like, Oh, these are the, these, these guys are, they're some tough customs. You don't want to come across them at night. And when I got to Tanzania, I realized the ones from Ghana were baby dolls. Oh my gosh. They were outright just, just snuggly compared to the Tanzania ones. Well, they're so smart and they're so dexterous.

You are able to research how they can be used to help with finding landmines. Right. So that's actually a nonprofit does this. So they do the training and they've worked with several academic teams from a little bit of all over. But yeah, they do, what they do is really basic, operate conditioning, positive reinforcement and they train them. Now they don't work with wild animals.

So some of the history behind that is, um, you know, in the early days trying to make it up, figure it out, they're working with wild ones because these are nuisance rodents. So that's the thing I learned in doing it because I work in the wild with wild animals. I learned that all the animals that have gone into the program, they were captured originally trapped the train, but then now they just go into breeding. They're all nuisance animals that are caught within the town because they were getting into somebody's house or food stores or just vexing them in some sort of way. They're all nuisance animals.

Wow. So I'm hosted by the local university, Sokowinie University of Agriculture. That's in Tanzania and my host department is the Pest Management Center. And so just as the name would say, they are pissed. It'd be like if we had a raccoon getting in the garbage and then we're like, you know what, as long as we got you, do you want to help us find some landmines? That's exactly how it works. Landmines and help us diagnose tuberculosis because that's also what they can do.

Really? And that's, are they using like old faction for that? All old faction. This is all old faction. That just means smell, but I was trying to sound more professional because underneath I was very giddy to be having this conversation if you must know. Anyway, her postdoc. So the postdoc that's at Cornell now, Dr. Angela Freeman, she's been doing some amazing,

again, basic biology and descriptive studies looking at really focusing on their old faction. And so she's really getting down to some of the questions to the answers of how is it they're so good at this? She's really doing a lot of that. So she's looked at old faction and then because old faction, we know we can use it for training for work. But then here's where the biology comes from and the ethologists and me is then what are they using old faction from in a while and it's likely for reproduction.

It's likely for social interactions. So she's been beginning to look at old faction from the reproductive point of view. And some of her, the stuff that's come out so far is just what you would expect. It's like, oh, they're good at smelling so they can identify who's receptive and who's not receptive for mating. So it's just like a extra sensory pheromone snooter looking around. And so they use it for that very likely they use it for finding food. And they already have the evolutionary mechanics for sniffing things out really well.

It makes sense that they've been really good at sniffing out these other molecules related to either lung disease or TNT. Wow. And that's essentially what's, that's what applied science is, is using what we know about basic science and you hone in on it for applied science. So this is a big deal because between 15 to 20,000 people each year are killed or injured by landmines and our little rat friends are really great at sniffing out the TNT plus they're too light to detonate the landmines and they don't bond with their trainers like

dogs do so they can move around to different countries without getting emotionally butthurt. Now Dr. Lee notes that we know a lot about dogs but not enough about these rodents of practically dog size. The reason why the, like in my TED talk I talked about that they put the applied science, the organization that they train and they put the applied science in front of the basic science and they had a lot of trial and error. And what, and the reason why I talk about that is because when we don't take our time and invest in basic science, you'll, you'll lose a lot of time.

And that's what happened. It took them years and years and years to kind of perfect their protocols. And they're still working on perfecting your breeding protocols simply because they didn't understand what's their breeding ecology, what's their mating system. So what I do, I studied them in a while. So I take trips now at this point when I'm able to leave the country about once a year, once every other year, really trying to find out where they live and how they live. So finding and marking this, who lives there, who's visiting there, what's trying to estimate

their home ranges or who overlaps with whom. And this story is still, as much as I find out, I'm still figuring things out. So one thing she's discovered in her research is that depending on the age and the sex of these super sniffer rodents, they use their space differently. Also they like to get down. Like many mammals, they're probably not monogamous and that there's lots of visitation and checking up on one another. So old faction is very important.

But then one of the things that's always been an issue since I began visiting there since 2012 is the fact that if I were looking at my data, as far as age, ages of individuals I trap, you never trap young ones. You never trap babies. Really? They don't come above ground. They don't come above ground. And then when I'm talking to my host, so that includes my host at the university, includes

my technical host. And so the person who I'm amazingly indebted to is Shabani Lutea. So he's a tech at pest management center. And he's truly the authority on pouch rats. I just get to work with him. I'm very, very lucky and I get to codify and I get to work with him. But he's taught me everything I know. He's the one who's caught every single animal that has gone into that training program.

Like he really is that person. And he was the one who, as I'm out with him catching animals for my research, that's when I kind of start putting the story together. He's like, yeah, all these animals came from basically the equivalent of his backyard, his backyard and throughout his neighborhood. So like I literally, I spend, I spend a lot of my time on one street. One street is notorious, it has contributed more to saving lives and repatriating land. One whole street.

Oh my gosh. This one street in Untuala, which is a, we would call it a neighborhood. So a neighborhood in Moragoro, this working class neighborhood in Tanzania has done more for that. But in the process of doing that, in the process of spending time with these families, in the process of them letting me not just come in their house, but tromp all through their property, that really started awakening me to thinking about, so what does this research mean to them? Like this is an animal that bothers them.

But Dr. Lee says, in their eyes, yes, it's nice and it's great that it saves lives, but they're literally like, we've been catching rats for years and giving them a way of getting rid of them because they're bothering us. When is this research going to mean something to us? And that really stopped me in my tracks and I started thinking about it. I was like, you're right. You know, I need, this research has to matter now. And so trying to understand their habits and what makes them good at exploiting these things is now,

it's now what I'm focused on specifically trying to understand their distribution and their movement patterns, such that we can come up with solutions to help people to either divert these animals from coming into their houses or coming onto their property. But it's interesting, despite all of that, folks don't, they're not overwhelmingly antagonistic. Their feelings aren't overwhelmingly antagonistic. Like they'll say they bother me, they vex me, could you do something about it, please? But like it doesn't come off as, you know, I'm ready. It's not like the groundskeeper of cat-chat.

And they have every right for it to be. By full, my enemy is an animal. And in order to conquer him, I have to think like an animal? This is what I'm learning. So this, I'm going to be very clear. This is what I'm learning as, as an American, as a Western scientist doing science in a place where people have a historical and indigenous relationship to an animal. Like I really believe that's a very Western way of thinking of it.

Like this idea that you have to, the human wildlife conflict have to all be contentious or people have to feel antagonistic against it just because there's a conflict. I really, I'm really beginning to think that is a construct that we've created because we compartmentalize ourselves outside of nature so much. Yeah. And so, yeah, it vets us them. But they also, you know, it's not a deal breaker. In other words, people haven't picked up and moved, you know, you know, and they need.

So sometimes it comes down to what better resources can we provide for people? So some of it is, you know, if we had better resources and infrastructure for how we built our houses or the foundations, what materials are available to people for laying the foundation of their home? It could, some of these, some of these issues could be addressed for that. It won't fix all of them. Or it could come down to if we had infrastructure grants so that more people had indoor plumbing because they usually, I found them accessing near the, we would call it an outhouse.

So they're, they're toilet. Well, if folks have indoor plumbing, this isn't an issue anymore. I've come to realize there's so many different ways to think about this. And some of it just comes down to if we're just sharing, you know, intellectual capital resources with one another in different parts of the world. And what about you growing up? Were you someone that was out in nature a lot? Were you looking at particularly mammals or lizards or bugs or flowers or when did you

kind of start to really appreciate wildlife? I was like, I was an outside kid. So I grew up outside. My mom was working in parks and wrecks. So I got to go, I went to work with her every day. So like childcare was a minimal thing. I got to hang out in tow. So I spent my days outside on the park, outside in the park, in the front yard, backyard.

This is, I'm also genetic. So, you know, kids were expected to go outside and just play, just go figure it out. Yeah. And so I liked, I've always liked animals. I was that kid bringing stuff home. I really was. I've been a little bit more attentive to the, to the cute furries. I tried to have a bird once that didn't go so well.

But I liked, I liked the furries. I didn't see my first lizard until I was an adult almost. So no, I didn't see like reptilian wildlife was rare for me. Like I think I saw a turtle once or twice, but turtles were always far away. So like they weren't part of my, my urban wildlife scape. So for me, it was all, it was mammals, it was birds, and then it was insects. And I don't like insects. I've never been a big fan.

That's my no go. But the cute furries. The cute furries, absolutely. And I was always asking questions. Like I've never not been asking questions about why and how and what and explain it to me. And I was, I was just consumed nature programs. Like if it was an animal show on, it was like, I was watching it. Like I'm going to watch all the animal shows, everything.

And so that's really what did it for me. At what point did you know that you were going to become a scientist? What was that path like? I didn't know I was going to become a scientist until I was in the middle of doing the masters. Really? I didn't know. I did not understand. And how that path, back to the whole always asking questions, I started a project,

which wasn't even my thesis. I wasn't even trying to get a thesis. I was just taking classes because I wanted to be, I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian. And I needed to improve my GPA because I had applied and undergrad and didn't get in. So I was writing papers and kind of diving deeper into what we call the theory behind biology, as opposed to just the facts and the history of discovery. And my professor told me, you ask a lot of good questions. I'm like, because I'm always asking questions.

But I was asking questions from the point of view of, I just wanted someone to tell me the answer because I was certain those answers existed. I just didn't know where they were or what the answers were. And it was in the process of taking these classes. I realized, oh, a lot of these questions haven't been asked. It's a great question. And so he started me on a project based on one of the papers I wrote in class. It was Animal Communication and Cognition.

That was my, ah-ha, that was the beginning of kind of leading me on this path. And he was like, this paper can be a project. And he outlined how it could be a project. So I started working with him just on a research project, still not a thesis. I think I had to imagine it with birds because it was all just, I was just writing hypothetical papers, like imagine this and imagine that. And he worked with field mice, vole. So he's like, we can do this project with the animals at work,

trying to ask if there's different levels of communication, if there's synonymous signaling. And I was like, okay, you know, I was following along. And so I started the project and I started getting into it. And it was in the middle of that project that I was like, oh, this is what the scientific method is for. How wonderful is that? Okay, get ready for some more inspirational goosebumps.

I really got into it and it hit me. I was like, I don't need anyone to answer my questions for me anymore. I can answer my own questions. That was when I decided to be a scientist. And I literally, I had an application in prevent school and I withdrew it. Oh my gosh. And I was just, and I got a call from them because I had interviewed with them. It was my top choice school.

So they knew me because I had interviewed twice. And they were like, just, just get your scores in. You're, you're good. You're good. We've seen your progress. This time we think it's it. They were like, like, without saying you're guaranteed, but they were like, we promise you. It looks really good for you this time.

And I was like, no, they were like, but you're really, I say, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take my chances in a five foot PhD. They were like, what? Oh my God. I was like, I want to, I want to research animal behavior. I realized this is what I've always wanted to do. I just didn't know this was a job that I could do. I didn't know science was a, like I knew science,

but I'd only thought new in my own life from a very applied practical point of view, like to help people, to fix things, to solve a problem. I didn't understand. I know that basic research wasn't even, was even a viable pathway. And I didn't really like, this is how weird it was. I was in college, love college, did not put together one in one that my college professors were researchers. Right.

No, I, I completely understand. Like they're, you know, when you go to elementary school and high school, they're there to teach you. So when you go to college, they're just there to teach you harder stuff. And then yeah, it doesn't click that they're also publishing papers and continuing their ongoing stuff, right? Right. Yeah.

And that's, that's how I was like, oh, and I was like, wait, you get paid to watch animals all day? I want, I want in on that. I want in on that. And it was in the middle of, it was the, and that's when I went, did the paperwork. I was like, I want to get a thesis. I'm going to do the thesis now and I'm going to apply for PhD. And I was like, I want to be a college professor because then I understood that a professor

was someone who not only taught college classes, it's the person who teaches college classes and trains students in science. And so I was like, that's what I want to do. So yeah, I didn't know I wanted, I didn't understand that I could be, nor wanted to be a scientist until I was in my master's. Oh, I think that's amazing. Were there any, any movies about scientists or about mammals or rodents at all that really get it right or wrong?

I know you mentioned the princess bride, which is burned in all of her mind, or any myths about scientists that you'd want to debunk. Oh, most of the movies don't get it right. Yeah. Most of them don't get it right. So that I feel like I wouldn't even want to use my time. Yeah, just know they don't get it right. Most of them don't get it right.

Okay. What about mammals? We're mammals, but so are pouched rats and wolves and test mining deals. Is there more variation among mammals than say reptiles? And so now if we're going to look at the whole thing, reptiles, big, big umbrella, then of course they got the spread. They win. They wind up.

We're more weirder than you. That's a very good point. If we do it that way. But yeah, mammals are interesting. So we have a little bit of everything. So we have the live birthers versus the not live birthers. And among the live birthers, we have the fully developed versus the barely developed. Among those that do the fully develop, stay with mama a long time,

or I need you out the door as soon as possible. So this, what I like to call diversity and investment strategy of the species. Like how much do you invest in it offspring to make sure they're big and strong before they're out there on their own in that big, widening world? It literally can range from years to moments. Yeah. Years to moments. Why do you think that is?

And what influences that? So it's a lot of things to influence this. Some of it is evolutionarily. Like, you know, just part of it is you got to work with what you got. So, you know, if you're a certain type of animal, you're kind of locked into that strategy. So as humans, we're locked into, you know, these long gestational periods of nine or 10 months. We're locked into these long post birth periods of nourishment of at least two to three years. And even then, just because they don't need to suck a milk anymore, they're not really out there.

They, you just can't set them free at seven. Yeah, just can't set them free. They won't make it. So we have this. So part of it, but as humans, like the fact that you're born a human, you're locked into that strategy. You just can't decide. I want to be like a, you know, I want to be a mama kangaroo.

And I want to drop this egg in five days. And that's it. Like, it's nothing you can do about the evolutionarily. You're locked into, into whatever you are because of your species. So part of it is evolution, but it's also ecology. In other words, so where you are, the time you are, how much space you have to do your business and make a living. All these inputs determine how, how you make a living and how well you live. So all these different evolutionary pressures, like if you're dodging predators constantly,

or if you gorge food and then store it really well, or if you have a fast metabolism, those will affect your internal furnace. And if you're like, I need to know more about thermophysiology, definitely listen to the thermophysiology episode of allergies with Dr. Shane Campbell Staten, his episode is amazing. Also, check out his podcast, The Biology of Superheroes, which is so good. Okay. But yes, evolutionary pressures and hot blood. All these different strategies determine a lot of stuff.

So like going back to comparing birds and mammals, so we're both warm-blooded. And so in order for, in order for gestation, in other words, for your babies to develop really, really well, and this is a cross out species, even for reptiles, you gotta have that right temperature. You gotta, you gotta, it literally has to cook. When we say it's been in the oven, it literally has to cook. It has to cook and it has to cook at the right temperature. Too hot or too cold, you mess up the whole recipe.

Nothing's gonna, nothing, it's not gonna happen. But there's a few different ways of doing it. So a lot of reptiles, they drop their egg, they put it in the soil, they cover it up, they do a little kiss, throw it up to the sky, be like, hope it works out. Like mama reptiles, like I did a little temperature check. This ground is about right. And I know I'm gonna be gone for forever because I ain't gonna ever see you again. Yeah.

Hope this stays, literally kiss up to the sky and I'm out. So that's like, like turtles. Birds on the other hand are like, you know what, I still gotta get this temperature right, but I still need to be able to move a little bit here and there to go get some more food. Because carrying on these eggs, they're heavy, they're heavy. Female animals, when they're grabbing or when they're sitting on a nest, they got to be careful because it makes them easy pickings for predators. So that's the reason why, you know, mama turtle holds on to them, to those eggs as long as she

can. Yeah, she incubates them and cooks them. Otherwise she's like, I'm too slow. I'm going to get gobbled up by these sharks or whatever else is out here in the water. I got to drop these eggs and lighten my load. Mama bird is very similar, but she's like, you know what, I can kind of get up and move a little bit. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make this really nice nest.

I'm going to insulate it as much as possible. If there's a partner involved, we'll take turns sitting on it and keeping it warm. But like, they have to be careful with that too. If they stay gone too long, that throws the temperature off back to the cooking. Like, oh, that's the recipe up. But what happens in mammals is, you know what? I need to be able to move and I need to be able to keep the temperature going. So what female mammals are able to do is they're able to keep their babies with them at all time.

They know their temperature is going to be right. They're going to go where they go. There's still some trade-offs and loss of movement and dexterity. But compared to other species, female mammals are able to still get quite a bit done even though they're pregnant up until the last day. So that's why some have strategies of sitting still in the end. But think about cats. They stay hunting till near the end.

But so that's one of the advantages. So we have these trade-offs, but that temperature control is really important. And what we see are these three very dramatic strategies for that temperature control across the three main groups of vertebrates. Drop them off, wish for the best. Yeah. Drop them off, but keep up with them. But if things get real, real bad, I'll bug out and I'll start all over again.

Or this, we are all, we in this together. That's, that's the mammal that we are in this together. Oh my gosh. I got you when you got me. Oh my gosh. I have so many questions from listeners that know that you're coming on the show. So yeah, I announced that you're coming on and everyone's like, so I could ask it, but I would rather let them ask it.

Okay. Okay. We're going to let those questions cook a second longer while we take a quick break to hear about sponsors of the show who enable us to make a donation to a cause of theologist choosing. And this week, Dr. Lee shows SEM link that's science, engineering, and math link, which is a nonprofit. It was founded in 2005 by Tawika T. Smith in Atlanta.

And SEM link promotes student achievement and career exploration in math and science while increasing student exposure to STEM communities. And their mission is unveiling potential through exposure. So to learn more or to donate yourself, you can see SEM success.org. There's a link to them in the show notes. So a donation went to them in Dr. Daniel N. Lee's name. Thanks to some sponsors of the show who you may hear about now. Okay.

Your questions. This was the most asked question, y'all. Patrons Ashley M. Gelhouse, Lauren Kruppens, Asia Yeager, Ellen Skelton, Clint Herber, Alia Meyers, Hardy Kem, Michael McLeod, Addy Capello, Madeline Winter, and first-time question-asker Miranda Chavez, who wrote in simply, Platypus, man. What the fuck? What is happening with the platypus?

Natalie Landon Brands is first-time question-asker, essentially says, like, why are they so weird? Do they even have nipples? They've got eggs and venom, but they're a mammal. What's happening? Yeah. All right. So platypuses are mammals because they meet what I call the base criterion

of what makes a mammal a mammal, and that is they make nourishment from mammary glands, but they don't have nipples. So you would think nipples, so you can have mammary glands without nipples. So what happens with the platypus is they have tufts of hair. So we think milk glands are actually just special sebaceous glands, those special little glands that hang out around here anyway. 00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:46,400 So that's what we think mammary glands are.

Still deep research needed to figure that out, to be honest. Oh, wow. But so they make nourishment still. They make a milk, but they don't have nipples. And so basically the babies just kind of suckle on little tufts of hair. And little, like, little cowlicks, just milkshake cowlicks. Yeah, and they just, yeah, so, yeah. So they're what we would call on the evolutionary tree.

They're, like, high up. So they're really in between. Like, they are a really good example of that bridge of our connection to our other vertebrate cousins, like the birds and the reptiles that we mentioned, that I mentioned before, because they have that kind of, they have so many traits that a very bird slash reptilian like. But they have eggs. They lay eggs? They do lay eggs.

And so you don't have to have live birth to be a mammal? No, the drop dead criteria is do you make milk for mammary glands? That's where the word comes from, mammal, mammary. So it doesn't matter if you drop some eggs or have a bill? It doesn't. I got a, I have to apply to post expert on because there are a lot of people that are just convinced they're not even real. So I can't understand thinking that.

Yeah. So platypuses, they're real and they're spectacular. Also platypus experts, watch your DMs because I'm on to you. This next question, by the way, was just begging for the drama of the superlative and was asked by Ann Over, Colleen Selwood, Alia Myers, and Adam Weaver. A lot of folks just want to know if you have a favorite mammal. I do. So when I was younger, like a little, like I love wolves and dogs.

I am a dog person. I like them all, but I do like dogs. Okay. My favorite to brag on though. My favorite to brag on are all like mustelids. Like I love, they're the bad answers of the entire animal kingdom. Those the weasels? Weasels, honey badgers.

I love them. They just regularly take on animals 50 times their size. I like to call them, they're the ain't never scared. They ain't never scared. They're spitfires. They're spitfires. They don't come unless I send for you. Barrets and weasels and just, yeah.

I feel you on that. That's amazing. Let's see. So, so many questions. I'm skipping a lot of questions about platyphuses because they were all under the same. That's neat. I love that so many people have so many questions. I know.

So many. Plata pie. The plata pie. And Alia Myers is a first time question asker and wants to know, are there any mammals that can't make facial expressions? Can most mammals make facial expressions? Is that how they, is that how they communicate partly? Many of those that use visuals.

So what we call facial expressions, that's, that's a lot of our interpretation. But what many of them are able to do is that there's a lot of dexterity around their nose, their muzzle and their nose. And they have a lot of movement around their ears and around their eyes. And so what we would call facial expressions, they actually do use a lot of being able to manipulate those muscles for a lot of animal communication within their species. So we have what's called graded signals or discrete signals. So like ears up, ears back, they all communicate just slight tweaks of how they're,

you know, of information to conspecifics or even to other animals that they live in these really large communities and they need to let things know, especially for animals that are communicating with predators like not today, I'm going to put up a fight. What is that expression on your face? But what we call facial expressions, that's actually a bit more of an interpretation of us because of us as people. And so we're looking at it because we have facial expressions,

so we've kind of put that on to other animals. We do, but yeah, but do they have this dexterity in the muscles in their face? Absolutely. Ellen Skelton wants to know why have so many mammals evolved to cooperate or stay in large groups as opposed to other animals? So, sociality is really common in a lot of species that we see, that we attribute a lot of high cognitive function to. We see that.

And that's because sociality yields a lot of benefits. Think about it, you don't have to look for a mate when it's time to mate. You can conserve your own physiological energy when it comes to keeping warm the right temperature. Being around others is a really good way to exploit them for information and other resources, so I don't have to be really good at hunting. I can let you be good at hunting and I come around and pick up scraps. So, sociality has a lot of benefits. Now, there are costs to it as well.

So, likelihood of spreading communicative diseases, whether it's like parasites or things like the mange or even sexually transmitted diseases. So, you're like, oh, it's too many of us and bad things can be passed around really easily or even sicknesses, like what we're experiencing now, like with COVID among us. You know, sociality counts against us. Yeah. But so much of what we need to do to make a living requires, for many species, outright cooperation or even just passive cooperation.

And if nothing else, we gotta find each other, you know, in order to reproduce. Yeah. That's true. Unless you've got parthenogenesis going for you, you're gonna have to. So, here's the thing. We know that that can happen with some medical assistance. But without medical advances, we're back to only working what I call an evolutionary toolkit. An evolutionary toolkit does not allow us to do a lot of things very, very well for long

without the aid of others. Right. Someone, I read somewhere about thinking about everything that you have in your life, everything that you touch, whether it's like a, you know, a shirt that you're wearing to glass that you're drinking out of, how many human beings had to be involved in the process of that, whether or not you're drinking tea that came from somewhere else and someone had to grow it. And, you know, there's so many people are involved in objects that you don't even think about.

Facts. Facts. So, even if you're alone, you're touched by others, but not like creepy ghosts with bad boundaries, just metaphysically. We all affect each other and we're in this together. Moe Casey had a great question about life expectancy and why does a mouse have such a short one compared to a horse, which lives for decades? And is it just size?

And speaking of which, with the pouched rat, how long do they live? All right. So, starting with them, we know in captivity they can live seven to eight years. Oh, wow. Okay. We're not sure how long they live in the wild. And that's because from what I can tell, I don't see anyone else that's interested in tracking them in the wild.

So, of the animals I have tagged, fingers crossed, I keep finding them. So, we usually, whenever something lives for a long time in captivity, we estimate about half that in the wild because, you know, there's no antibiotics in the wild. Yeah. There's hunting, there's life. Yeah. Things that happen. The reason why different things live different times is not just about size.

Size is a correlate with it, but it comes down to what's happening with them physiologically, their metabolism. How long something takes? So, being large enables you to avoid a lot of predators. So, that's, so big things don't have as many other things that can take them out. If you're not taken out, then you can live a long time thereafter, assuming everything else in your body is in pretty good shape. You just got to get through that, that scary small period of your life.

Ah. So small, so fragile. So, that's one reason. So, once you get past that scary juvenile period, then you can pretty much live until what we call that natural death when your body just wears out. But little things live for a short period of time because part of it is their metabolism. Their metabolism is real fast. They're burning themselves up.

We don't use that. That's not technically what's happening, but that's just one way to envision it from a late position is that they're always going. But the other thing that you got to keep in mind for things like mice is they don't tend to die of old age. Like, we really take for granted as people that most things don't die of old age. They just are predated on? Yeah, predated on, or you just kind of die.

You just return to the earth in the arms of the angels. So, that's, but yeah, they do have a relatively shorter lifespan. Like, so small mice species can live one or two years. They don't tend to. Yeah. But yeah, but that's part of it. And so, basically, you accumulate these effects. And so, longer-lived animals, we tend to see what we call age-related disease,

what we call natural causes of death. So, things like diabetes or heart disease or later onset diseases, either due to metabolism or structure. In animals that tend to be predated upon or die early, those things just don't accumulate because they tend to die when they're still just in or just past the prime of life. And by prime, I mean like the height of reproductive life. So, in other words, when you're at the height of having the most babies. And even looking at people, old age is a relatively new thing for us.

Living to be a hundred would not have happened without antibiotics and shelter. No, that's magic. Let's be honest. Yeah. We're the transport and talk to someone from 200 years ago. 100 years is magic. Yeah. The demography, if you look at it like 50 was considered old 100 years ago.

Our 50, isn't our parents 50 either. Yeah, yeah. We technically, so back when my mom was younger, 55, 60, seeing, even like the image of what a 55, 60 year old looked like is completely different. Like we started joking, say, oh, today's 40 is 30, starting with Demi Moore. 00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:38,560 Because she's defined. But that's actually becoming progressively true for our generations.

We are a younger 40 and 50 than our parents were. For sure. Just a side note. Retirement communities start at age 55. And Wilford Brimley, rest his recently, dearly departed soul, was just 18,530 days old when cocoon started filming, which is just 50 years old. Now, you can see this generational incongruity at the Twitter account BrimleyLine as they tweet out other celebrities who have crossed this age line.

Matthew McConaughey, Will Smith, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Jay-Z, and the entire cast of Friends are now older than Wilford Brimley was when he starred as an elderly curmudgeon in cocoon. So life, man, it comes at you fast. Oh, Ferris Bueller crossed it eight years ago, but he looks good, right? OK, speaking of ancient things, this next one was asked by patrons Scott Sheldon, Megan Walker, Vincent Hyde, Fernando, and Mark Chavez. A lot of patrons wanted to know if it weren't for the asteroid

wiping out the dinosaurs, do you think that mammals would have survived today? No, that had to happen for mammal evolution. Like that is a critical, like when I teach mammology, that's one of the one historical events that is critical. If it had not been for that, mammal evolution would have. There were still mammals, but they would have stayed small. They would have stayed in the ground. We would not have had a mammalian radiation.

That's what we call it. That's when the explosion, like the mammals came above ground and they were able to diversify and form shape in species. If the dinosaurs hadn't died, none of that would have happened. We would not be here if it had not have been for the KT event. Really? This is literally the first I've ever heard that. That's amazing. Yeah, we said they had to go for us to flourish.

Is that why there are, say, 5,000 species of mammals, but like 30,000 species of beetles? Insects have been around for a long time. So they've experienced some radiation as well. So there's been more mammals and we've lost some, but what we call these radiation events, so think of radiation as spread out. So it's not just spread out physically, geographically across the globe, but it also comes with this diversification and new form and type. Big events, so stochastic events,

are often the reason for radiations of any type across any type of organismal species. So like you need like this, like the spark that caused it, but not necessarily. Beetles are just, there was just a lot of them to begin with. You know, just, it's just a lot of antsy, just a lot of them. Your favorite, which you love. No, I do think most, many beetles are pretty. Yeah, we are.

I appreciate them, they are beautiful. Many of them, not all of them, because roaches are technically beetles and I hate them. Yeah, roaches are one. I love bugs and roaches are one that I'm just like, uh-uh, nope, nope, nope. Okay, just quick aside, bug nerds. I know you're like screaming into your windshield or your partner's face. Roaches aren't beetles, technically.

And yes, we hear you, you're correct. They're more closely related to termites. I did some light reading about it, but Dr. Lee is here for mammology. This is not a cockroach episode, but also don't make me dip my toe in the Venn diagram between milk and roaches and remind you that cockroach milk is a thing. And it comes from one species of roaches who blurp out this substance that is being touted as a super food for humans. Are we done with this?

Okay, moving on then. Courtney Ryan had a great question. Do you think there are any undiscovered mammals out there? Absolutely, there are. Yeah, there are places where we're really not, so undiscovered from the sense of Western science, absolutely. Wow, let me see. I want to, oh, first time question asker, MJ Kayla Queen,

who says I love you both and is excited you're on. Oh, thank you. First time question asker says, I love mammals. Why are some people afraid of mice, do you think? You know what? I can't speak for everyone, but are they afraid or are they startled because it just shocks you to see something scurry? And so even, so I'm not afraid of rodents by any means,

but if I catch something in the side of my eye moving that I wasn't expecting, I'm going to jump. That's a very normal startle response. So I believe it's natural to be startled by them, but I wonder if this whole fear part isn't socially conditioned because then we tell ourselves we're supposed to be afraid or someone tells you, oh, that's a fear reaction as opposed to, oh, stop. What is that?

Let's figure it out. And so I don't know if a lot of people are truly afraid. I do believe being startled is natural. Yes. I think that's why some people are more afraid of certain bugs too, because they're just faster, you know? It's the startle. Yeah.

It's something, and that's why I don't like them. They sneak up on me too. Yeah. Roaches are really fast, but like a pill bug, no one's ever like, what is it? You know what? I play with Roly Polys as a kid and I love them. Right. So Roly Polys, I'm okay with.

Yeah, they're so slow. A lot of people, and I will include this in a side, want to know what is up with the variation in the number of nipples. Looking at nipple conscious listeners, Anthony Stoll, Elliot Warden, Jasmine McLean, and first time question asker, Yacob Joaquin. So hold up, even in pouch rats, I have counted like the females in my colony. Some females have seven, some have eight, some have six. Oh.

So because that's usually a very species specific thing. Like that's one of the things we can say, oh, this species has this number of nipples and that one that. And so we were trying to figure out how can we differentiate, let's say the species that live in West Africa, versus those that lived in Eastern and Central Africa. And some early one or two papers were saying, oh, the West African ones have six nipples and the East African ones have eight. Yeah, I can tell you for sure that is the jury still out.

I have counted animals. I've caught myself from the exact same place, same species. And I've caught literally six, I've counted six, seven or eight nipples. I had some females with odd number of nipples. Well, okay, Markey Marks got three and he's a dude. So what's up with dude nipples? Third nipple, I'm not aware of that. You're not aware of that?

Is it true you have a third nipple, mom? Yes. So, you know, just the carryovers. So like, so, so one, there's some evolutionary biologists who say it's because males either historically may have been able to produce milk back in a day, like evolutionarily back in a day, and then it was lost, or it's just a physical vestige. So it's a vestige just left over. And so it's like, oh, that's just part of the form.

It doesn't mean anything. So you have all these just leftovers. But nipples usually, usually are a good indicator to the number of young an animal can support at a time. Oh, so if you birth triplets out there and you're listening to this, my heart and at least one extra boob go out to you. I mean, I would definitely donate them if I had extra nipples, like Markey Mark and his funky bunch of three.

And by the way, those are called supernumeric nipples. Zac Efron is a member of the triple nipple brigade. Harry Styles isn't because he has four nipples. Isn't that fun to know about one in 500 humans have bonus nipples? Most people think they're just moles. So if you have a bumpy birthmark somewhere on your milk line, aka between your armpit and your crotch, take a closer look. Although surprise nipples have shown up on backs, on faces,

and in the case of one 22 year old Brazilian woman, the sole of her foot. She went to the doctor in 2006 to be like, hey, is this thing I've had on the sole of my foot normal? And they were like, yeah, it's a normal nipple in a really creative place. Can we take 4,000 pictures of it? It rules. Also, if you're wondering why approximately half of humans

have perpetually swollen breasts, well, all the other rodents and mammals don't need sports bras unless they're nursing. One theory is that as humans evolve to walk upright, and our derriere areas were less swollen in estrus, there needed to be an indicator of sexual maturity. They was closer to high level. Although judging by the phrase, my eyes are up here, buddy,

perhaps face nipples would have been the better adaptation. But back to the mammals, the Dr. Lee studies. I'm, we're still talking about nipples though. What about do male rodents have nipples? They, no, let me think twice. Do male dogs have nipples? They do, but they stay really, really flat and flat to the body. Oh my God, that's amazing.

So here's the other thing in a lot of mammals. Males have hair on their bellies, and that's one of the things four-legged females lose if they're a hairy species. They'll lose that hair. That's also another indicator of, we can sometimes use it for indicator of sex and reproductive condition,

is if her belly is bald or not. Because if her belly's bald, that means she's, she's at the very least brooding some babies because they gotta be able to get to those nipples. Oh, they gotta be able to find them. And that and the babies rub it off, because like in the process of nursing babies, they're pretty rough on it, on that underbelly.

You know when you see like an older guy who doesn't have any hair on his legs from like the knee sock area down? Yes. No. Just worn off. Just worn off. Oh my God.

Okay, questions I always ask. Uh, the thing that you hate about being a memologist, it can be as petty or as big as you want. It can be anything from email to cleaning glassware to- I hate dealing with poop. I hate poop. Nothing ruins me more than having to deal with poop. Do rodents have smaller poops at least?

They are, but I just don't like dealing with the smears and the messes. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. But that's where a lot of important information is. Nothing icks me out than getting pooped on, or stepping in it, or smashing my finger into it.

Ooh. I hate the poops. Do you have to analyze rat poops? I keep some for it. So I'm beginning. Actually that's one of the, if I can use this as a commercial, I'm looking to form a long-term relationship with some microbiomes, gut microbiome biologists.

So then we're able to use that. Because they do poop on me. I feel like that's just free data. Collecting it, and then asking some really good questions about that. I had a sceptologist on who is like Dr. Poop, they call her. She's at the Lincoln Zoo in Chicago, but she has 13 freezers full of poops from every animal. Yeah.

But if there's someone out there who's looking to do some studies on perhaps some rodents of unusual size, with poops of slightly unusual size. Yeah, so here's one of the things. I can't bring that over. Like because of international rules and laws, I can't take samples out of Tanzania. Oh.

So what do you have to do it there? I either have to do it there. So I have some historical data from before they stopped it. So I have some old stuff. But I'm still working with local mice species. But that's also kind of one of the things. Like cultivating it and kind of like, yeah. But that's, so I would say my other thing I don't like

about being a scientist in today's age is, it's sometimes hard to do some things based on a lot of the rules and risk. That's the other thing, like there's rules because there's a risk of bringing disease agents over. I get that. But then sometimes just not having the capacity to do everything because I haven't cultivated

all the relationships that I would love to cultivate, not just here, but also on the continent. You know, cultivating relationships with more continental scientists to do more research. Having more of it just happened there. Right. It's not like CSI where you have the same person collecting blood swabs is doing a footprint analysis.

In our dreams. Yeah. Not what's happening. Okay. What about your favorite thing about being a memologist? The travel. I do science to travel. I grew up in my family. We never got to go on family vacations.

So travel was always a dream of mine. I just, I just grew up working class poor. So my biggest dream was to grow up to be middle class. And so there are certain things that I was envious of. So like being able to travel and go places and back to those nature shows that I love. They just seem to always be all over the world. And so for me being able to travel to see a lot of things for myself,

I love being able to travel and visit places. Where are some places that you've gotten to go? Most of my travels have been because of science. But so travel for research related things and learning. I've gone to, I've been to Guyana. I love that. So I got to spend, I took a tropical biology class and stayed in the bush, Tanzania.

So I've done research in these places. Other places I've been able to travel to talk about my research. So visiting Mexico, Canada, Brazil, parts of Europe. So the Netherlands, France, the UK. Oh my gosh. Again, all places that couldn't have gone on my own dime. Yeah, yeah. For real, that's why I work in TV too.

I get to travel for that. And that, that was a big part of it. Got to go to Alaska for TV. Yeah, I'm like, when would I get to go do that? Never, you know. So yes, your passport must need extra pages. Not lately these days. I do usually get up right to the mark and I'm like telling them,

no, no, no. There's a space in there, right there, right there. Oh my God. Oh, and did you want to let anyone know about September 13th? About exciting black homologists? Yes. We're super excited. So I'm joined by amazing colleagues, everyone from

undergraduate students to fellow professionals and faculty members. We're celebrating Black Mammalogists Week. Celebrate not only the research that mammalogists have done historically and even today, but also kind of invigorating the spark of curiosity and interest in mammology and in science in general. Just among everyone who's interested,

letting folks know that there is expertise in mammology historically and contemporarily. And we're just excited to share our science and our, essentially our blooper reels. There's a lot of bloopers in doing science and mammology in particular. And our goal is to inspire folks to become mammalogists, to become scientists, and to just join this larger community

of scientists. We're really excited to share this with everyone. Do you have any that you, any previews of any science bloopers that you're going to share? I'm probably going to share when I got bit by a pouch rat. I got bit. Were there antibiotics involved? Probably should have been.

Oh no, where did it by you? But bit me on my left thumb. And that happened in 2015. And to this day, I still don't have feeling back. Do you know where that pouch rat is? You know what? It was funny. We were moments away from releasing her back into the wild

about to take your measurements. We were just getting some last minute measurements and we're going to release her back in a while. So we released her back in a while. I want to imagine she's living her best life. And telling amazing stories about that one time. She, she took me down. I was physically taken down.

It took three grown men to get that rat off of me. Oh my gosh. I physically went down with her. Yeah. So she's telling it amazing stories. She's like, this one time took out this human, took her down. Oh my God. Oh wow.

So every time you give us a thumbs up in the left, there's a lot going on behind that. It's a lot. Like if we were in person, like you can actually see my thumb. Like I have divots in my thumb. I like have little marks and divots. Wow. Oh, that's a good story.

I'm, people need to tune in to hear the whole thing. Oh, amazing. This has been so great having you on. I just, I feel like I'm such a fan girl. I've been like so nervous and excited to talk to you. Oh, thank you. I don't know what to do with folks say that because I'm always like, are we talking about this?

You talking about me? So ask smart people stupid questions because the answers may be sniffing out landmines or tuberculosis or inspire you to make you count your nipples in the bathroom mirror at work. Now you can follow Dr. Lee, do it ASAP on Twitter and Instagram at dnle5 and follow BlackMemologists at blkmemologists or at blackmemologistsallspelledout.com.

And those links are in the show notes. Plus there are more links up at alleyward.com slash oligies slash mammology. And we are at Twitter and Instagram at oligies on both. I'm at alleyward with 1L on Twitter and Instagram. So please do follow. There's more info up at alleyward.com slash oligies. There are free transcripts for deaf and hard of hearing folks

or anyone who wants a transcript up at alleyward.com slash oligies-extras. Huge thanks to Emily White, who is a professional transcriber who heads up the efforts to get them done alongside a group of amazing oligites. And if you need transcripts for anything, email higheremilywhite at gmail.com because she is amazing. Thank you, Kayla Patton for bleeping episodes, for kiddos. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for admitting the oligies podcast Facebook group.

Thank you, Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch. They manage merch at oligiesmerch.com. There are shirts and hats and totes and visors. So much available there. Even cozy fall blankets in oligies print available at oligiesmerch.com. Shannon and Bonnie also host the Comedy Podcast. You are that and they're hilarious. Thank you, Noel Dilworth for helping me with all the scheduling

because my brain is bad at it. Thank you to Assistant Editor A.K. The Butcher, Jared Sleeper, who hosts the Mental Health Podcast, My Good Bad Brain. And of course, to Lead Mustache, Editor Stephen Ray Morris of the podcast Sea Jurassic Right, which is currently airing a back-to-school series with dinosaur scientists, so that is Sea Jurassic Right, his podcast. Also, Nick Thorburn of the Band Islands wrote the theme music and performed it. And if you stick around all the way through the credits to the end of the episode,

I tell you a secret. And this week, the secret is that I read some hack that if you put dish soap on your shower floor and then baking soda and you let it sit a couple hours or overnight, and then you come back the next day, your grout has never been cleaner. So I tried it. Y'all, it works. Also be careful because it's slippery. Nobody needs to fall naked. I was on a date once where a guy told me about how he passed out in the shower

because he had hemorrhoids so bad and he cracked his head open. And I was like, this is a lot of information. He also mentioned that he had a fiance, but he was planning on breaking up with her over the phone. And I was like, this is not going to go forward. And my point is, don't slip and fall in the shower, but sparkling grout. What a daymaker. Okay, enjoy Black Memologist Week and then get ready for a very creepy October.

Not too creepy, but pretty creepy. Okay, bye-bye. Hack-a-dermatology, homiology, cryptozoology, letology, nanotechnology, meteorology,

peptology, nephology, seriology, selenology.