Ologies with Alie Ward - Medusology (JELLYFISH) with Rebecca Helm

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

What even *is* a jellyfish?! How do they eat? What are they made of? Can we eat them? Your new favorite Medusologist, Dr. Rebecca Helm, is a ray of human sunshine in the depths of the deep sea. Truly one of the finest biology conversations you may ever hear. Get ready for PacMan ghosts, pet jellyfish, the biggest and smallest jellies, new band names, live medusas, secret formulas to incite jellyfish puberty, and the lengths that she will go to to see a jelly bloom. And next week, your ears will fill with Toxinology as we explore jellyfish VENOM. Duck into the Polyp Parlor; this is a duo not to be missed. Dr. Rebecca Helm’s Jellyfish Blog and website: https://jellybiologist.com/ Follow her at Twitter.com/rebeccarhelm or twitter.com/rebeccarhelm A donation went to The Vancouver Aquarium: www.vanaqua.org Look at their Jelly Cam! https://www.vanaqua.org/visit/live-cams-jelly-cam Sponsor links: kiwico.com/ologies For more links: alieward.com/ologies/medusology 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 Thorburn Support the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's that podcast that you thought dropped on Tuesdays, and it does, I promise, it's just been a wacky couple of weeks, and thank you for bearing with me. It's Ali Ward back with another episode of Allergies. Also, yes, last week's AMA went up on a Tuesday night, but it just mysteriously unpublished itself, and I was on the road to my folks house on Wednesday not knowing this, so apologies that it wasn't republished until Thursday. We got it up on Tuesday for you. Anyway, technical goblins.

Thank you for bearing with them. A lot has happened since last week. My pops is on the mend, and hopefully will be sprung from the hospital soon. Yesterday, though, I left his hospital room to check into the ER myself for an infected spider bite, and found out that I might have something called blood poisoning. So it's been an eventful couple of days, but I have some antibiotics. Thank you for everyone on Twitter, and my friend Mike Natter for your medical guidance. Yes, I'm doing a little bit better, but it's been a rough couple of days, but on Sunday,

I won an Emmy for writing for the Henry Ford's Innovation Nation with Moraka. If you were like, what? You're on a show? I'm very bad at self-promotion, but yes, every single Saturday on CBS, and also I host my own show on CW. Did I mention invention? So if you need science shows to watch with your kiddos, there are a few Emmy-winning programs with your weird old dad word.

Okay, so this episode, whew, I don't know how to prepare you for what you're in for, because it's so, so, so good. Okay, first, let's thank everyone on patreon.com. Slashologies for making the show possible. You can join for a dollar a month and submit your own questions for theologists. Thanks to everyone rating and subscribing and word of mouthing me. All of the folks who leave reviews, thank you. I read them in their entirety and it's proof, I think, a reviewer every week.

Nimo says they're a number one fan and also Space Apples wrote that the show highlights how beautiful, fascinating, and just freaking weird the world around us is and really brings a sense of positivity and appreciation during times where things are honestly pretty rough. Thank you for those reviews. Thank you for bearing with me on a couple of rough weeks here. We should be back on our Tuesday scheduling next week, promise. Okay, all I want to do is get to this episode. We're going to get into it.

So medusology, it is a word. It's the study of jellyfish and it comes from Linnaeus who named jellyfish medusae after the Greek gorgon who had snakes for hair and turned men into stone. And according to many scholars is a symbol for female rage. So I don't know what kind of complex feelings Linnaeus had about women or jellyfish, but perhaps hell hath no fury like a taxonomous stung. Now, either way, there are over 2,000 species of jellyfish. In forms that are teeny tiny and others like the lion's mane are over three feet in diameter

at certain points in their life. So this medusologist is about to become your favorite medusologist. She got her bachelor's in marine science, her master's and PhD at Brown in ecology and evolutionary biology, a postdoc at Woods Hole, and is currently an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville and a National Science Foundation postdoc fellow at the Smithsonian. No big deal. And as if this episode isn't exciting enough, it's also part of a twofer with next week

in which we will address toxinology, the study of jellyfish venom. Mother lovers, are you excited? Yes, you are. Okay, so hang tight for all of that with another oligarchist next week. But for this one, get ready to deep dive on everything from mouths to butts to space aliens to swimming in the bubble of your captive's stomach to peeing on yourself, to pool noodles, flim flam, if eating jellies is her jam, and more with the world's most charming medusologist, Dr. Rebecca Helm.

You know what? I mean, if it's just on my end, like if my internet is just being a little bit ish, because we do have like a massive storm happening outside. Oh, you do? Oh my God. Yeah, I know. It's so fun. It's like an adventure.

That is exciting. You're in Asheville? I am, yes. Oh, hence the storm. Yes. Okay, that makes sense. Before we get rolling to, is this like a one shot thing or, you know, like if I have to cough, can that be edited out?

Oh my gosh, I edit this shit out of things so please. Okay, great. I don't know jack shit about jellyfish, so I'm a blank canvas over here. You're going to tell me everything. I'm good. A doctor of jellyfish, do you know that you're a medusologist? I didn't. No, I was actually just telling a friend I was like, you know, I'm going to have this

interview and it's on medusology and she was like, what? I was like, I know, I know, I'm a medusologist. I'd never thought about it that way. You're going to change your business cards, man. Immediately. Immediately. Yeah. I mean, frankly, I need to get business cards.

Do people even, are we even going to do business cards anymore? I don't think so. How long have you been studying jellyfish? Gosh. I mean, I think professionally, like how long have I been doing a job of studying jellyfish? Probably 10 years and then probably another five years of like working for free at jellyfish. Like as a student or as an intern or whatever. Yeah.

What was your first free job working with jellyfish? Oh my God. It was so much fun. I went up to Friday Harbor, which is in Washington state. It's like in the San Juan Islands and it was in the middle of the winter and no one was there. It's like a very seasonal place. And I just went out on the dock and like counted and catalogued all the jellyfish that

floated by. Oh my God. Magical. How do you do that? Do you have to shine a light in the water? How are you detecting them? This is a legit question. Yeah.

There are tricks. So cloudy days are no go. Sunny days are the best. Okay. You don't want any cloud reflection off the water because these things are transparent. They're like crystals floating through the water, right? So you need that strong intense light from the sun to sort of shine a light on the side of their body.

So they stand out ever so slightly from the water around them. Most of these are really clear. You know, so you have to really be looking. You can go out at night and like drop a light in the water and find a ton of great stuff. So any type of light that can be submerged, a dive light, whatever you have on a rope, and then you just sit with a cup on a stick and wait until you see one that you want. And then you just, you know, like very gently like scoop it into the little cup and then, you know, pull the little stick in and then very gently put it in the bucket and that's

your day. Oh, and or your night, I guess, maybe. Or your night. Yeah. What is it about jellyfish? Did you accidentally become a medusologist or did you have a fascination with them forever? I loved them. So I'm from Arizona, which is very dry.

And you know, I knew I wanted to explore. I love exploring. And for a lot of my childhood, I thought I wanted to be like a space biologist, which isn't, isn't a really a thing. Like there, we haven't found aliens yet. But I was like, oh, you know, by the time I'm like 20, we're totally going to find that will be great. And then at one point I saw a documentary on jellyfish and I was like, why even go to

space? Like these are so weird. That's so true. They're so weird. I want to understand you. So that was really like what catalyzed my interest. And then it just sort of snowballed, you know, like you got a million interests when you're a kid and some of them stick and most of them don't.

And this one just kind of stuck like things kept popping up and I kept finding jellyfish and just falling in love even more. So now I get to study jellyfish for a living. It's wonderful. Oh, do you have a lab full of jellyfish or what is the work involved? Oh my gosh. So yes, usually. No.

How dare you. Sorry. I was like the crickets are out. Editing. I'm sorry. I did not edit that out because it was endearing as hell. And also I was like, could there be a jellyfish ringtone? Do jellyfish even make a noise?

And I did learn that millions of jellyfish coming up from the depths at night to feed on phytoplankton make a low frequency hum. So if you want a ringtone that's legions of hungry, soggy apparitions, I guess just download some static. Anyway, what does her work or her jellyfish look like? So under normal circumstances, I have a lab and I have a bunch of jellies, but they're not in the jellyfish form. So they don't look like jellyfish.

They actually look like little sort of proto jellyfish and they stick on the bottom. At the moment, they're all living in my house. So I've got maybe 20 species of jellyfish in my house right now. Well, it's a party. But then when conditions are right or when you as a scientist want to get some Medusa jellyfish, like the big charismatic kind that you used to thinking about when you think jellyfish, you can add a chemical and that will induce them to go through this metamorphosis and then you'll get your big jellyfish.

What is the chemical? Is it just puberty hormones? We don't know that's such a great question because it's this synthetic drug that people take for upset stomachs. But when you add it to jellyfish, they metamorphose. How did they figure that out? So this was me being in grad school and panicking and needing to find a way to get jellyfish to metamorphose.

And so I think the original study was done on a panel of 200 different chemicals. You can just call up a store, one of these chemical suppliers and be like, I want a mini sample of every chemical you have. And then you can just test them. And so the original study was done in Japan on moon jellyfish. So just one species. And then when I was in grad school, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm in year three and I don't have any data.

And every day I feel like I want to cry because I don't have any data. And so I just started testing all of these different chemicals on a really broad range of species. And this one just happens to work across tons of different species. It's amazing. Oh my God. Did everyone lift you up on a chair and carry you around? Did all the medusologists of the world say like, Dr, how did you do this?

All like a hundred of us? Yeah. Well, I mean, it was published eventually. And I mean, I hope people are happy. I think the biggest feedback I've gotten is from people that work at public aquariums because you need jellyfish all the time. And if your polyps just don't feel like it, then what are you going to do? So now you can be like, here's a little dab of this chemical.

And then they just go through metamorphosis. Whereas before, people were putting them in refrigerators. You can put them in little heat containers. You can add light. You can take away. It's a little voodoo science. So I think it's a little better now. What was it like when you realized that this chemical did that?

What kind of reaction did you have? Oh my God. I wrote so many bad words of excitement in my lab notebook. Like I still have it, but it was just like. What does it say? Fuck. Oh my God. I did it.

That's amazing. Like I cried. Like it was this whole big thing. Of course. It's dark. It's 11 at night. You're in this like cold lab by yourself. Which is the light of the microscope to kind of keep you warm.

Right. And then, and then I was looking at these animals and realized it was working. And I was just so, so happy. No one else was around. So I like didn't get to like celebrate or like have a Eureka moment or like walk into the room and be like, I did it. You know what I mean? It was just me and the jellyfish, but it was still great.

Who do you call first in that situation? Like in a Eureka contact number. Like who's first on the list? You know, how do you explain that moment? I think anybody that you've been excessively bitching to about how everything is working. Right. Like the people that are in the trenches with you and watch you suffer. It's like, cause they just, they're just like, oh thank God she's done complaining about

everything. I don't know. They're really excited for you too. So yeah, it was awesome. Oh, and so tell me what exactly is a jellyfish? You've already tossed around some terms, some polyps. We got some Medusa. It's like, what is a jellyfish exactly?

So a jellyfish is the last step in this complex life cycle of animals that collectively we could call Medusa Zoans. Medusa Zoans. Medusa, like, you know, lady with the crazy snake hair and then Zoa cause they're animals. So, you know, we got these Medusa Zoa and they have this three part life cycle, which is honestly why I love them so much. I mean, one of many reasons, but one of my favorite reasons is that they look like three totally different animals at different parts of their life cycle.

The first part is called a planula and it's just like this little itty bitty grain of sugar sized swimming fuzzy pill. It just looks like this little kind of moldy pill floating through the water, those little hairs sticking off of it and it can live like that for a while and that's just like the larva that forms when an egg and a sperm meet and fuse. And so it's very tiny. Sometimes if you get swimmers itch, that's a bunch of little babies getting stuck in your swimsuit.

No. Very sad. Yes. Oh, God. Can you imagine if there was like a Godzilla that just took a dip and then just had a ton of tiny human babies in its pants? Imagine just. I know.

I know. Right. Exactly. Yes. You're just like, I don't even know who to feel bad for like it's trying for everybody. You know what I mean? Like you get like itchy little jelly babies, but they're getting like smushed on your stomach.

Right. That's so weird. It's a very bad day. Oh, God. So those are the babies and then what's stage two? Right. So stage two would sort of be like, you know, if we're going to continue this analogy of like little human babies floating around, right?

Stage two would be when they settle and they form what's called a polyp and it basically in the case of a jelly, it looks like a jellyfish like got slipped upside down and it's kind of stuck to the sea floor. Okay. So it's got a little mouth and a little ring of tentacles around the mouth and then it's got this little body column, right? And just sort of sticks to the sea floor. It's very small, like a bread crumb.

Okay. And it would sort of, I mean, the polyp is really the stage that lasts for like decades. So polyps can live a super long time. So it'd be like, you know, human baby finds a nice place to settle down, you know, and it just like grows into like a person. Okay. You know, polyps are really like that stage. They're like the persistent long live stage.

Okay. So a planula is the moldy green pill looking teeny daddy baby and then they grow a little bit more and they become these bread crumb size polyps that look like sideshow bob in a tube dress. But what are they doing on the sea floor? What are they doing? Are they having orgies? Are they playing pinnacle?

Shootin' the shit. And they're not reproducing at that point in time? Not sexually. No. They might clone themselves. So they, they have some cool cloning tricks that they do where they like split themselves in half like a little cell dividing, they can just sort of split in half or they can leave like little footprints of cells behind them.

They don't really crawl very fast, maybe like a step in every week. Really slow. Take your time. But every time they do, they leave a little footprint of cells and those cells are like little polyp seeds and they can actually hatch into new polyps at some later date. This is happening on the ocean floor typically? It's all happening on the ocean floor. Wow.

Typically. You're right. Because biology is in love with exceptions, but yes, typically it's happening on the ocean floor. Oh my God. And then when do they decide that it's time to, to just grow up and get sexy? Right. Well, so they don't really grow up and get sexy so much as they like bud part of themselves

off. Wow. So they bud the little reproductive part off. So some jellyfish will actually fission down, down the side of their body. So like you can sort of imagine like, I don't know, whenever we go back to wearing like hard pants and belts again, it's probably going to look kind of similar for me when you're wearing a pants that are too tight and you got like a little ponch, they sort of look like that.

Like polyps get a little like ponch. Oh my God. I mean, we are all literally falling in love with this person's brain right now, right? Like they're wearing a belt that's too tight and then the top of that ponch will like grow into a little jellyfish and pop off. No. And others, they'll bud little jellyfish off the side. And then what do those do?

Right. Well, and so this, they're the reproductive stage. Oh my God. Okay. So I guess to continue our terrifying analogy, right, it would be like if your ovaries or testes like just like sprouted wings and popped off. Oh my God. That's what jellyfish are.

They're this like reproductive stage that has the gonads, right? That like sails into the sky or in this case, you know, the ocean and like reproduces. Unbelievable. Just like bye-bye, Nards. Have a good life. And are there more than one sex or is it just like kind of a blanket, one type of gonad? We are like learning so much about this right now. It seems like polyps are male or female much of the time.

So like in a lot of species, it's like either this or that. But there are some species where, you know, they start male and then as they get bigger, they become female. Oh, cute. Yeah. Do they have to eat more in order to go from a little tiny breadcrumb to these fluffy stinging, you know, long Medusa hair creatures? They do.

They'll sort of munch on plankton that are in the water. So you've got, you know, lots of little like swimming shrimp and crabs and fish and things like that. Some pull this cool trick kind of similar to their coral cousins where they actually have algae living in their body, in their cells. Oh, that is so fancy. So awesome. I'm so jealous.

Sincerely. Like, can you just imagine like I'm just going to go like eat lunch and then you like walk outside in sunbathe for like two hours. Oh my God. Medusa zoans, of course, belong to the phylum Naderia as do corals. So for more on their coral cousins, you'd need to treat yourself to the Naderiology episode from summer 2019 with Shail Mitsuda and then just go hug a reef. JKJK, do not hug the reef.

It is live. It does not want you to hug it. You do not want to hug it either. And then they have to go to the surface, obviously, for that. So they, their gonads just fly up, up, up, up, up until they get kind of to the surface and they can get the plankton and get the floating stuff and get the sunlight. Exactly. Yeah.

Some of them, some of them will go deep. The ones that don't have that luscious algae, they might go deep. They might already be deep, you know, different species of jellyfish. They like different places. Upside down jellyfish, they'll actually swim to the bottom and just like hang out on the bottom and like a shallow lagoon and just like sunbathe 24-7. Oh my gosh. What a life.

I mean, what a life. I know. How are they functioning because they are transparent? You don't see any brains or stomachs. Like, how are they even pulling any of this off? Like, what do they even have in that little umbrella? I know. They're so inspiringly minimalist.

They Mariek condoed all their organs. They did. Just none. None left. Just some gonads and they don't even have a butt. They just have one hole, right? So it's just like, forget this anus, right? We're just going to do everything using this one hole.

So they've just got this like central like mouth anus, this manus in the middle. And they'll take in food and then they'll digest it in this like big body cavity that sort of acts like, you know, a stomach, but it's also a circulatory system. Oh my God. Yeah. So they're just like, we don't need, we don't need two things for this. This can be, this can be done together. What happens in this vascular gastrocirculatory gut situation?

They, they, you know, they digest their delicious food, right? So like, if you were trapped, if you were caught by a jellyfish, right? Like if you're a tiny fish, you would be, you'd be stung. Okay. And it would hopefully just kill you because, because of what I'm about to tell you. Just like, let's just hope you just die and you're not like caught by one of those species that just like paralyzes it. Oh God.

Oh, what a nightmare. Okay, I'm dead. I'm dead as fuck. Okay. So you're like reeled up to the, to the mouth butt, right? To the mouth anus combo hole and, and sucked inside. So you're just kind of like, and some of them have these like really long, frilly like tendrils coming off the mouth.

We call them oral arms. They sort of look like streamers, you know, they're very nice. So you'll get sort of sucked into the mouth. And then they have some jellies anyway, have like inside tentacles. So you got like your outside tentacles. And then you might have like these tentacle like gastric theory on the inside that are also covered in stinging cells. And they just kind of churn around, you know, so if you are paralyzed, then you're just

like being like stung like over and over and like churned around and like slowly digested by like all the, all the enzymes in the stomach. Oh my God. Do you ever see a meal in digestion after a jellyfish eats? Can you see like a partially digested shrimp in there? Everything and it's terrifying for the ones that don't fully kill their prey. It's like they'll swim around, you know, so you can watch them and they're like trying and they're struggling and can't get them out and they're slowly disintegrating.

It's pretty upsetting. Do they breathe? They, they don't have lungs, but they do breathe most jellyfish breathe. There's like one really weird species of parasitic Medusa zoan that lives in like caviar. So like lives inside the eggs of a sturgeon and they might not actually breathe. They might be the only animal that doesn't really need oxygen. Are most jellyfish, are they usually transparent? What kind of array are we talking aesthetically?

Every color of the rainbow all over the place. Okay. Yeah. So we've got our like white jellyfish, like moon jellyfish, you know, they're kind of like opaque, milky white, you know, we got some really like not transparent super white jellyfish. One of my favorite jellyfish in the whole world is called the barrel jellyfish. Okay.

Just quick aside, the barrel jellyfish is a larger jelly and it can grow to be two and a half meters across. It's got these eight frilly tentacles and a big mushroom helmet top and it looks kind of like an oceanic version of the scrubbing bubbles commercial, which side note to a side note happened to be my favorite cartoon as a child and my mom had to break it to me that it wasn't an actual show, it was just a toilet cleaning commercial. Anyway, the barrel jelly is also known as the dust bin lid jellyfish or the frilly mouth jellyfish.

Can I read you this weird sentence from its Wikipedia page? Okay. I will. It says, quote, in European populations, barrel jellyfish evoke unpleasant and disgusting feelings. It seems like a generalization, but Rebecca loves barrel jellyfish and goes on to describe them a little as well as other jellyfish varieties. And they are white with this bright blue ring around the side.

So pretty. You're gorgeous. And then, you know, we've got like purple, blue, red, red's pretty common, black. Sometimes you'll see black. Black jellyfish? Not that common. I didn't know they were black jellyfish. That sounds so goth.

Gooey and gone. So goth. They're deep sea, too. So they're like just like cold and dark and black. P.S. looked them up and they look like a jellyfish wearing a crushed velvet dark purple cape. Like jellyfish who refuse to donate their cocktail twin CDs to Goodwill. Now black jellyfish are also called black sea nettle or the sarlacc jellyfish. Yes, the sarlacc jellyfish.

No, you're not imagining that jellyfish names are just up there in taxonomy treasures with mushroom names in terms of zany creativity. And as long as we're here, let's just bloop through a very tiny sampling of jellyfish names. Flower hat jellyfish, blue blubber, cauliflower jellyfish, the fried egg, which honestly looks like breakfast and a caramel flan had a baby. There's also the pink meanie who will absolutely shit talk to you in its burn book. And then there's blood belly comb jellies, which aren't really jellyfish, but they look like if your heart got lost and ended up on the outside of your body, but in the ocean

and was also full of blinking disco lights. Now why is there such variety? Why do some of them have really long colorful tentacles and some don't? Are there different types of jellyfish? Yes, there are four types. Okay. Yep. Okay.

Four plus minus types. You know, scientists, we fight. So we've got the box jellyfish, which is shaped like squares, and they've got like tentacles and four little corners. You do not want to get stung by one of those. I've heard bad things. Very bad. I mean, I love them.

They're like really clever. As far as jellyfish go, they're like quite smart, they can like navigate around obstacles and they've got these like really well-developed eyes that sort of like look at you and you're looking at them and it's like a little unnerving. Oh, okay. They look great. So that's one group. Then we've got the very poorly known, but very endearing star jellyfish or star zoans.

Okay. And they're actually jellyfish that sit on the bottom all the time. Not like an upside down jellyfish that's like, well, I just like to be here. They like have to be there. They're stuck to the bottom. Stocked jellyfish. Okay. It's another word for them.

They're really cute. They're like, you know, maybe size of your thumb. They don't really sting. They've got these really great like little tentacle pom-poms. So they're shaped like little wine glasses, but if wine glasses had little like pom-poms on them. Oh, what a switch little sweeties. They're very cute.

Yeah. I love them. And they do little somersaults too to get around. So they'll live on like a blade of seagrass, you know, and they'll think to themselves like, I want to be at the top of this blade of seagrass. They'll like bend over and like use their little pom-poms to sort of stick to the blade of seagrass and they'll flip their little, their little stock over to the other side and kind of attach and just do that over and over again.

Oh, they sound like I had a creation of Dr. Seuss. Yeah. I think they would be perfect. And then, and then we've got our water jellyfish or hydrozoans. They get diversity of jellyfish very, very poorly known by like the average person. Okay. So they're like 2,000 species, but they're all pretty small, like maybe, you know, your fingernail size, maybe bottle cap, and they're all pretty clear.

And they usually don't really sting. So just like, you know, it's kind of like they don't bother people. People don't really bother them, sort of ships in the night. Under the radar. Exactly. Okay. So to recap those types so far. There's box jellyfish, stocked or star jellyfish, and hydrozoans.

Now I would also like you to know that a group of jellyfish is called a smack. You're welcome. Now what about when we think of jellyfish, those flowing, vengeful, medusa locks that the rumbling, quiet majesty, the danger? And then the last group is called skyphizoa and these are like your big charismatic, like aquarium jellyfish, right? That got a little like frilly arm parts, right? And have their little like tentacles out and there are lots of different colors.

And these are the ones that also that, you know, will ruin your beach vacation. They've got, you know, sort of two, two modes. They've got the frilly long tendrils coming off the mouth mode. So that's one group. And then the other group is like this filter feeding group that has like a cauliflower stuck to the back of them. Oh, what are they doing with that? So they're filtering out seawater.

So they're like filter feeders, really very peaceful, beautiful filter feeders. And that big like cauliflower looking thing is actually complex of like a thousand little mouths that just suck in food from the water. Oh my God. What about brains? Do they have brains? They don't really have brains. How do they do anything?

They're like cloud computers. So they think like a cloud computing system might where they've got these central regions of concentrated neurons at various points along the edge of their sort of bowl or bell-shaped body. So like right on that margin, you know, like every couple inches, there'll be this little spot and it's called a rapalia and it has like a little sort of very simple eyeball and a very simple sort of up, down, where am I in the world sensory structure and then a little cluster of neurons.

And so each one of those kind of takes in its little wedge of the world that it sees and sort of reports back to every other one. And then collectively, they kind of all make decisions together. So but they are one single organism, right? Yes. Oh yes. Yes. Yeah.

But it would be sort of like, you know, if you had like a quarter of your brain on one hand, a quarter on the other quarter on one foot and a quarter on the other foot, right? And like no one was the boss, you know. Everyone has equal say, but when one is like really screaming like there's food over here, we should go over here and then everyone's like, I also love food, I'm going to go there as well. Yeah. And so when we see them in the ocean or in an aquarium, we are typically seeing like

them in their reproductive phase because that's when they're kind of the most attention getting. Yeah. Yeah. They're really, I mean, it's their sort of like flower phase. If we just want to throw around like a million different metaphors, right? Yeah. Like it's a very showy, attractive phase, very bizarre, hypnotic phase, polyps, I love

polyps, right? All I have at home right now are polyps and they're very low maintenance, but they're not charismatic like at all. So remember, the polyp is kind of the tween jelly somewhere between a baby planula and a hornball medusa. How long can they live? If the polyp can live for up to a decade, how long can the medusa form of it live? You know, I mean, like in the wild, a lot of jellyfish are seasonal.

So these are the questions where I'm like, you know, that sounds like a simple question. Let me talk for 45 minutes about why it's so simple, right? So in the wild, they like are seasonal and they seem to like mostly, if not completely, I'll die off in the fall, for example, or whatever their not favorite season is. And then the polyp kind of hangs out on the bottom until conditions are right and it turns out some new jellyfish whenever times are good again. But like I've kept jellyfish for like two years. And there are jellyfish that live in like Norwegian fjords where you can kind of track

like who's who by how big they are. So maybe not like, oh, that's Tom, the jellyfish. Maybe not like that detailed, but you can be like, you know, that's like a boomer jellyfish, right? This is like a millennial jellyfish. Like you can kind of tell based on how big they are, what generation they're from. And people, I mean, think they might be like 20 years old. Really?

Yeah. You can't tag them, can you? You know, people are working on it and you can do like short term tags. Like you can now tag a jellyfish and like let it go and then just like follow it around. Just like behind it in a canoe for a while. Yeah. But are there aquariums that can tell you like, oh, yeah, you know, we've had Bill for, you know, six seasons now or.

Probably. I mean, I I know when I had jellies for like two years, like they all had names, like none of them were supposed to be named, you know, because they're like science jellyfish and you want to get attached, but like eventually, you know, you just end up kind of naming them on accident. So I was like, big guy, little guy, middle guy, middle guy became the big one. So then it was like middle one, but he's the biggest one. And yeah, I mean, they lived a really long time and they're ups and downs, you know,

it's like a complicated life with injuries. And, you know, there's one time where everybody accidentally ate a bunch of paper towels that fell into the tank, you know, but yeah. And I'm sure they're aquarists that could tell you the same thing. Like, oh, yeah, you know, we've had these jellyfish for five years. And, you know, that one, you know, he wasn't doing so great this fall, but he's really picked up now, you know, and they all got sick from eating paper towels. I love them.

Did you ever notice different personalities? Like, are there some that are more hyper than others? I mean, it's so hard to say because you're like, how are you feeling today? I just don't know, you know, like maybe you're just having an off day. Maybe you're having enough months. Like maybe you have, you know, like a jellyfish migraine and I just can't tell. I never, I just, I never really noticed a ton of difference, but, um, but I mean, it was again, it was like, well, you know, I know you lost like five of your tentacles

the other day on the little Swiffer mop I used to clean your tank. Like maybe that's why you're behaving differently. I just don't know. And how did they get it on? They do a bunch of different things. So most jellyfish are, you know, kind of like the standard, like ocean sex thing. It's just like, don't even worry about meeting someone. Just like release everything into the water and hope for the best.

You know, just, just, just dribble some eggs out as you're sort of like munching. And, you know, it's like, good luck. I hope you're fine. Right. Um, some jellyfish, you know, the, the female will keep the eggs like in her body and then if essentially sperm, just like swim up her mouth and find them. Whoa, my God. Yeah.

Up her mouth, but up her mouth. So it's just like one day you're just like, Oh, I got fertilized. I don't know when that happened. Oh my God. You just get knocked up while you're trying to munch on a plankton. You don't even know about it. Totally. Yeah.

I have a million babies now. That's romantic. And she will. She'll, she'll, you know, like keep all of her little babies, um, actually in little special pockets in the sort of like long frills on her mouth, but imagine, if you will, a science fiction program about an extraterrestrial alien that has a mouth butt lined with poison arms and holds babies in its pockets. So, you know, some jellyfish, like moon jellyfish, they've got all those like

beautiful, like luffa, like tentacles kind of around their mouth. And they're just like, for females, just like pockets full of babies. Oh my God. It's just like a kangaroo. It's like a very slimy kangaroo. Yeah. But like, like millions of babies and they're all kind of like crammed together in these little like stomach pockets.

You can see them. Like if you go to an aquarium with a jellyfish biologist, which I 100% recommend, you know, we'll give you all the dirt. I'm like, Oh man, that female, she's got a lot of babies. Check out all the little white straights, millions of babies. When does she kick them out? Good question. I don't know if they get kicked out or or they just kind of after a while,

they're like, Oh my God, I am so sick of, you know, my 99 million other siblings, right? Like I'm just going to swim out into the world and and do my own thing. I don't really know when that happens. Usually I just kind of put a moon jellyfish in a bucket and kind of give it a little like shaky shake and I get, you know, a couple thousand. If only human birth was that easy. Just go in a hot tub, birth, like I'm done, done.

Just jostle me gently and I'm a baby fallout. I didn't even notice that they were gone. Oh my God. What about myths? What about flimflam about jellyfish? Is there any myths that you just cannot stand? Oh man. Well, you know, they're not fish.

Right. Should we be calling them jellies? I don't know. You know, I've kind of just decided like, I'm going to lean into it because like everybody knows what I'm talking about more or less. Yeah. Like when I say jellyfish, like you get a mental picture, even if you think it's a fish, at least we're kind of on the sort of same page, you know,

and we can kind of correct that later. Whereas like, if I say, see jellies, it's like, what do you, what do you mean? Right. What is that? I don't know. I mean, maybe it's a good idea. And unfortunately, like I don't work in an aquarium, so I don't have to really like make this distinction.

But yeah, you don't have to change signage. Yeah, exactly. I sort of go back and forth. I'm just like, okay, whatever. But I will say that like, for me, for a lot of scientists, I know like a jellyfish is like a Medusa's Zoan. And there are lots of other things in the ocean that also look like floating boogers and they are not jellyfish.

Right. So you've got your comb jellies and you've got your larvations, which are basically like little tadpole animals that make these giant snot cars that they drive around. Oh God. Yeah. You've got your salps, which are like little barrel shaped animals and they just like eat tons of algae all the time. Right.

And none of these are jellyfish, even though they all look like jellyfish. So a comb jelly is not a jellyfish. Yes. Oh God, I didn't know that. Okay. More on comb jellies in a bit. But one thing it does have. It has a butt.

What, wait, what about the, um, the wind or the sails or the, what are those ones with the blue mohawk? Oh, by the wind sailors. Those are fancy polyps. They have jellyfish. Oh, they do. They do. So those are just like fancy polyps that live on the ocean surface instead of

like on a little rock or something. Oh, okay. Do they, do they metamorphose? Metamorphosize? Metamorph, me casually trying to say the word metamorphosize to a scientist I desperately want to be friends with. Cool. Cool.

Also, I did look it up and apparently you can say metamorphosize or metamorphose. So now we all know that. Also the Vilella are indeed jellyfish and they're these inflatable blue little wedges, but you can call them by the wind sailors, even though it does sound like a Hemingway book you're required to read in sophomore English. Rebecca says by the wind sailors, they're like a jellyfish factory underneath. Can you imagine if someone's like, Oh, wow. Yeah, I looked at their butt and they are just a baby factory oozing babies.

So if you like flip one over, you'll see it's got like a little brown sort of ring in the bottom and that's where all the little jellyfish butt off. And the brown is from the algae that like live in the jellyfish. So they just kind of hang out in the sun. Oh my God. Okay. Cause I've seen those all over the beach. If I see those on the beach, should I be tossing them back into the water?

Are they there for a reason? Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, I love them and I'm studying them. So please, if you ever see some serious moment, like I would love it if you would report them on like I naturalist or jelly watch, which is this like citizen scientist jellyfish community of like jelly, jelly watchers. Oh, and citizen science side note is also called a community science. And you can be part of it.

Yes, you, everyone. Yeah, because, you know, we don't really know why they roll up on beaches when they do. We think it's maybe something having to do with currents, but who knows? I mean, I will say, like by the time they're on the beach, it's kind of been a pretty bad day already. No. So you could try to toss them back and they might do okay. Or they might just kind of be eaten by fish.

And your particular research, what are you researching now? Or are you researching like 10 different things about jellyfish? Yes, I'm researching like two or three different things about jellyfish. So I'm looking at the jellyfish life cycle. So like, you know, how does one stage like switch to another stage? Like what is what's really happening in there? Right? Like, is it jellyfish puberty or is it like more dramatic than that? We don't really know.

So that's sort of like one, one thing I'm looking at. And then the other thing of the three is, is sort of like, how do open ocean jellyfish get there? Right? Like, you know, because most jellyfish, they have this polyp. It's very important. That's a lot of really good things. Kind of helps you weather the bad times, you know, just hanging out in the bottom.

But some open ocean jellyfish, like they've just lost that part of the life cycle. So they just, they're just go directly like one, one egg becomes a little planilla, becomes a jellyfish, skipping the whole middle part. And it's just like, how do you skip a middle, you know, it's like development. How do you just cut out the middle part and still look normal? Oh, oh my gosh. So you're trying to find those like nature's riddles out? Yeah, I love that.

Yes, it's, it's like very, it's very perplexing to me. Like, how can you do that? That doesn't seem fair, right? That would just be like us skipping puberty. Like you just wake up as an adult one day. So confusing, so hairy all at once. And the third aspect of what she's studying is how does the environment inform this process? But let's move on to a hard hitting question.

How do you feel when it's Halloween and you see a lot of jellyfish costumes? Like you do you love them, the clear umbrella with the streamers? Have you ever done that? I do. Yes, of course. I did that like back in like the early 2000s, like it was the beginning of it. I was so into it. Yeah, I love it.

I mean, when trick or treaters come to my house, I always like have little info packets that I give with the candy about like a cool animal. Oh my God, that's amazing. I'm not sure how the kids feel about it, but I love it. So yeah, whenever I see jellyfish, I'm like, you get every info packet. Like you get all of them. What are the info packets on? Do you make the info packets?

I do. Yeah. Noice. Yeah, they're just like little leaflets. So last year I was a baby snail for Halloween. Uh huh. And baby snails are like the most amazing snail life cycle stage to me because they have fairy wings, like they have these huge angel wings and they just like swim around the ocean being like little baby wing snails.

I did not know that. And they're called villagers, baby snails are called villager larvae. And so I just my Halloween costumes, like I had a big shell and then I put little angel wings on it. And then I like handed out little villager info sheets. Oh my God, have you ever had neighbors come up to you and say, hey, thanks a lot for that. You know, Melissa is now really. No, but that's mostly because I give out info packets at my friends' houses.

So it's just like, like, you know, just kind of like bomb education, right? And then like leave rapidly before anyone's like, oh my God, did you really just hand my child like a little info packet on baby snails? Oh God, I love it. Can I ask you Patreon questions? Yes, of course. OK, they submitted like 300 questions. People have so many jellyfish questions, they're pumped.

OK, but before your questions, a few words from sponsors who make it possible to donate to a cause of the oligest choosing. And this week, Dr. Jellyfish chose the Vancouver Aquarium, which has had a rough go of things with the pandemic closures, and they've just reopened with a limited number of ticketed reservations, but they put out a statement that said, although our doors are open, we still need your help to secure the future of the aquarium.

We can't survive without you and your donations. And the Vancouver Aquarium, if you've never been, is home to thousands of incredible ocean species and aquatic life. It's also ocean wise headquarters where scientists and educators and conservation experts do all their work to not only protect the oceans, but to inspire others to join them. The Vancouver Aquarium opened in 1956 and it's connected more than 40 million people from around the world to oceans.

And the wonders within them. And you don't even have to be in Canada to enjoy the aquarium. I just went on their site and I lost my marbles, realizing that they have a live otter cam. They got a penguin cam. They got an underwater otter cam and a baby otter cam. I just watched a baby otter with a pacifier.

Don't be jealous. Just go on their website. They also have, you ready? That was a drum roll. It's like a drum roll that I tried with my mouth. A live jelly cam featuring like billowing medusa jellies gliding by like someone in a ruffled 1980s prom gown. It's devastating.

So a donation went to them. It's devastatingly beautiful. So a donation went to them and you can go check out their jelly cam or you listen to the rest of this. That donation was made possible by award approved sponsors of the show. Who you may hear about now. OK, your questions. OK, are you ready for Patreon questions?

Yes, yes, please. Lightning round. Here we go. So many questions. We're just going to blaze through as many as we can. Sound good? I'm ready. Anna Thompson wants to know,

can they control their tentacles or are they at the mercy of the current? They can control their tentacles so they can contract them and relax them. And when they contract, it's like one of the fastest muscle contractions in nature. Really? OK. OK. So next week's episode, we're going to learn all about how fast the venom comes out. So for the next six days, you have to wonder, does it dribble like fresh blood?

Is it ejected out like tiny harpoons? Stay tuned. Shit gets weirder. I will say for like slow drifting animals, they have their moments. Yeah, badass. That's being really fast. They're tentacles contract really quickly and they're stinging cells fire really fast. OK, Natalie Perkins wants to know, can they feel pain?

Can they sting each other? And can they sting themselves? OK. I don't know if they can feel pain. That's like actually a really hard philosophy question that even like fish biologists can't agree on. Like, can fish feel pain? No one really knows. Really?

OK. Yeah. So they definitely do not like things and avoid things. So like if you'll poke a jellyfish, they'll be like, ugh, and swim away. Aw yeah. Interpret that how you will. Over it. Oh god.

Exactly. Jellyfish of different species can sting each other and sometimes do eat each other. So they're called medusibores. Ooh. So jellyfish that eat other jellyfish. I ate his liver with some father beans and a nice chianti. But they can't sting themselves as far as I know. They seem pretty comfy with themselves.

OK. Oh, that's really good to know. Star, simple question. I didn't ask. Glad they asked it. Is what is the clear part that looks like the top of a mushroom made out of? What is it? The technical term is called mesoglia.

OK. And it's kind of like cartilage. It's got a ton of collagen in there. Really? And if you ever find yourself in an Asian market, you can actually buy them and eat them. Oh, you can? Do you cook them first or do you just raw dog it like an oyster? No, you got it.

So there's this whole preparation process that they go through. So you can actually buy them packaged, pre-prepared. OK. And you sort of soak them and soak them again. And then you just sort of slice them up into like little rubber bands. And then you can make a salad or you can fry them. Some different options. But they kind of have the same texture as cartilage.

Like if you've ever gotten kind of like that grizzle at the end of a chicken bone. Yeah. Yeah. Have you eaten them? Yeah. Yeah. Not a fan. OK.

Really? And also, like, culinarily, it's not good. A little chewy. Do you put it in barbecue sauce or something? You get like a honey mustard? There is a really nice, like, kind of like a soy sauce base. The sauce tasted good. OK.

Like, I mean, aside from like my deep sadness at eating my favorite things, like, I was kind of like, you know, flavor-wise, this is not terrible, but like texture-wise, it's just, yeah. Yeah, but you're going to go, you're going to go ahead and pass on that. Yes. Hard pass. OK. Let's look up mesoclea preparation.

And first off, if you have ever been frustrated that you can't eat a breast implant, boy, howdy. Have I got good news for you? OK. So the mesoclea is about 95% water, the rest protein, and it makes a hydrostatic skeleton of jelly that holds things in place. But when it comes to inserting this substance in our mouths, I scoured food blogs and YouTube videos, and I saw its texture described as slimy leather.

Some folks said it had a mouthfeel somewhere between a cucumber and a glass noodle. And one taste tester described it as a shrimp-flavored gusher. Now in Rebecca's own blog entry from 2013, she says, quote, my restaurant jellyfish tasted like soy sauce and a balloon. The soy sauce flavor came from soy sauce with the jelly adding that scrumptious balloon equality. But she also adds that they're better deep fried, as is pretty much everything. But remember, fear is the mind killer.

Don't be afraid of jellyfish because chicken nuggets are so much more terrifying if you saw them made. Don't look that up. That's what the little clear mushroom top is. It's called mesoclea. And it's just like lots of like cartilage and water. Wow. We learned a new thing.

No cells. No real cells to speak of. There are a couple, maybe like their little wandering cells that kind of like float through the mesoclea, or really they crawl because it's kind of thick and jello-y, but it's mostly not cells. Wow. How does it exist if it's not made of the things that a life things are made of? It's just got two layers of cells, and that's it.

So it has like the outside layer, and then it's got the layer around its stomach vascular system. Love it. And then all the middle stuff is just like a cartilage. Wow. That is absolutely nuts. I would have thought that that was all just, yeah, just goopy stuff made out of animal cells.

Oh, that's crazy. Oh my God. It's very, it's honestly though, it is the way to go because like they can just not eat for ages because they only have like two cell layers to take care of, right? Like, I mean, how many, how much food does like a layer of cells need? Not that much. So many Silicon Valley biohackers probably have like holographic notes in their brain implants that say, convert flesh to mesoglia.

I didn't realize that they've really figured out life pretty much. They're so zen, so simple, so zen. Oh, okay. Chelsea Primo wants to know, do jellyfish have any control over their lives or are they like me and just at the mercy of the ebb and flow of the tides of life? I mean, yes. Yes and no. I mean, I think we're all kind of in the same boat right now.

Some jellyfish, like those box jellyfish, they can totally control where they're going. They've got a mission. They're on it. But that being said, like it's not like they're really good swimmers. And so if the currents even just a little bit strong, then they're probably going to get swept away. That's true for most jellyfish. Like most jellyfish kind of have like an, I would like to go up or I would like to go

down or maybe I'd like to go this way or that way, but they're also kind of at the mercy of the currents. Okay. This next question was asked by Stephanie Hancock, Lily Sakers, Roxanne Parker, Andrea Marsh, Melissa Hutton, first time question askers, Kristen See and Mercedes Maitland, and Adam Weaver, who says about this topic, can we talk about how weird it is for a minute? Now let's talk about a lot of people had this question, which I had no idea this existed before I put this up on Patreon and asked for questions.

You were talking about currents. What about freshwater jellyfish? Who are they? Where do they live? How are they not salty? They're beautiful. They live all over. So these little buddies are called Craspidicusta.

And that's sort of like the fancy science term. They are probably, maybe we're not 100% certain, but until more science is done, we'll say from around the Yangtze region in China. And then at some point, maybe 100, 200 years ago, someone was like, I really love this aquatic plant. I'm going to bring it back to Europe. And there was a little jellyfish seed stuck on one of the plants from those little polyps when they leave their little footprints behind.

And so that then grew into a polyp, which started making jellyfish and one pond. And then it seeds spread to other ponds. And so now they're like all over. So we have them in the US. They're in almost every state and they love to live in cool, calm water. And they can be transported between ponds like on shoes or kayaks or if a bird steps on a jellyfish seed and then swims to another pond. Oh, my God.

And then is that screwing up a lot of freshwater ecology? Who knows? I mean, they've been there for a while. Not a lot of pre-freshwater jellyfish pond studies, right? Like we're kind of pushing it in terms of American naturalism. Like it doesn't go back like so, so far, right? So sort of hard to say, but I mean, they've been there for a while now. So hopefully it's not so bad.

As far as I know, they kind of eat like little pond animals, like little shrimp and water fleas and things like that. We'll usually show up for like a month or two, sort of at the end of the summer, beginning of the fall, at least where I live. I saw some of all places walled in pond, like Thoreau's pond, yeah. And how did you see them? Did you have to really focus or were they pretty apparent? Well, so the sort of narrative for this was like someone saw one.

And so of course it made the paper because like so weird, right? And then I read the paper and I was like, oh my God. Okay. Just an aside, I looked us up and they were first spotted in September of 2010. And headlines in Boston papers read, Walden pond invaded by jellyfish and mystery blooms on Walden pond. Now in one story, an aquarium representative was quoted as saying that the freshwater jellies were wickedly cool, which is the most 2010 Bostonian way to comment.

Anyway, Rebecca describes the wicked cool nickel sized floating water bags. And so, you know, they were all concentrated in one side of the pond. So we get to this pond, it was beautiful, like all the leaves were turning. It was really cold. My friend who was with me was like carrying all my gear, right? I like snorkeled out into the middle of the lake. Holy shit. And yeah.

And just they, after swimming kind of encircled and getting sort of frustrated and chilly, you know, I eventually ran into someone who was like swimming laps across the lake and they were like, I saw them over in that corner over there. And so I like swam over to that corner and sure enough, it was like no jellyfish, no jelly, no jellyfish. And then it was jellyfish everywhere. Oh my God. Did you take some back to study at all?

I did. I took some back and my goal was like, I am going to start my own freshwater jellyfish culture in the lab. This is going to be so great. I just need like one boy jellyfish and one girl jellyfish and that's it and I'll be ready to go. I collected like 300 jellyfish and every one was female. Girls only.

What? Every single one. So I think what happened in Walden Pond and what happens in a lot of ponds, this is not an unusual thing for freshwater jellyfish is that like only one of those little jellyfish seeds will get into the pond and then the polyps will just split themselves and split themselves and split themselves and eventually, you know, you'll get hundreds of thousands of jellyfish, but they're all genetically identical. Did you have to run any DNA on any of them?

I didn't. I didn't get to run any DNA, but that's sort of my suspicion because people have like tracked ponds over the years to try to figure out like, is it temperature? Like what is it? And just get one, one potential clone line. I mean, it would be really cool if someone ran some DNA to see, but as far as I know, that hasn't been done yet. So if there are any, any like undergrads or grad students that need a project.

Also who's doing laps in a, when it's that cold? So cold. I guess if you're like a triathlete, maybe, they had a wetsuit and I did not and I was so jealous. Oh, okay. The fact, when you said you had scuba gear, I pictured you in the wetsuit and that person in a Speedo. I wish.

I wish. No, I had like snorkeling gear. Like I had my little swimsuit and some like pool noodles because I was like, I'm going to need to stay afloat and I don't want to have to swim to stay afloat. So I was like, yeah, like really sexy science right here. Like October in Massachusetts with like me floating on a pool noodle in the middle of a lake. Nope.

Nope. How big a hot chocolate did you have after that? Huge. Huge. I was so cold. It took like most of the drive for me to warm up. It's like an hour drive. Oh.

Can you imagine? But you know, for jellyfish, for jellyfish. I mean, for jellyfish. But for jellyfish. Wow. Oh my God. I'm going to send you a wetsuit. Swimming on a pool noodle in October outside?

I wouldn't swim out to see my boyfriend in those conditions, even if there were thousands of clones of him bobbing around nude in the water. I'm sorry, Jerry. It's just too wicked chili. So man, this woman loves jellyfish. Now from ecological pests to pets, who among the patrons had captivity questions or wanted to domesticate one and to love it and squeeze it and name it George. Well, Karen Burnham, Diana Weiger, Mark Sweeney, first time question asker Kylie Torres, and

suspiciously asking for a friend, wink emoji, Jen Anathes, as well as Mariah McGregor, who says that jelly pets sound wonderful, but also like it might be illegal. Okay. Question from Mariah McGregor wants to know, are there jellyfish that people could reasonably and responsibly own? Like a little home aquarium? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, there's a whole like aquarium industry for people that want to start home aquariums. Moon jellyfish are the ones to go with. They're pretty tough. They can tolerate your moments of forgetfulness, right? They're tough in terms of like, they don't mind so much if their aquarium is a little bit dirty, which a lot of jellyfish are like such divas, and as soon as it's just like the tosh bit dirty, they're just like, I'm gonna die. Like, I don't want to be here anymore.

There's a spot. I'm dead. Moon jellyfish are better for that, for sure. The one thing I will say is like, if you get a pet jellyfish, just like with any other pet, don't let it go because there are some moon jellyfish from Japan that are now all over, you know, they're in California and Washington and right, like they're spreading. So whatever moon jellyfish species you bought, because there are tons of moon jellyfish species, you just want to make sure that it doesn't get out and then like compete with whatever

your local beautiful moon jellyfish species is. Right. So don't pull like a Florida Python situation. Totally. But even more important, like because they have these really tiny embryos, don't even throw the water out. Okay. Like, you know, when I work with jellyfish and I'm close to the ocean, when I clean

their water, I'll dump the extra water on the dirt. Okay. Like, don't even, yeah, don't even put it in the drain. I mean, maybe it's in the drain is probably fine just because it's going to get diluted and like mixed with like a bunch of soap and like other like weird things people put down the drain, right? But, but like if you're at the ocean and you have like a jellyfish tank and you know, you've got maybe like put a little sea numbing fish or something in there or whatever and

you're just going to toss some water out. Just make sure you don't toss it anywhere close to where it could get into the ocean. Oh, good to know. Just toss it on the dirt. Okay. Yeah. And B. Abbott has a question from Lauren, who's nine and Clark, who's seven. Sorry for the swearing number one, but they want to know if jellyfish poop, what's the

deal? Well, they don't really have butts exactly. So, so it's more like we call this is not the official scientific term, but among my like jellyfish and sea and eminy friends, we call it throoping because they kind of throw up poop. They do not digest. Oh, no. Yeah.

So they threw out their main is, is it their main is, is it like a gelatinous also, or is it just like fish poop? It's more like just leftover, like it would be like if you peel the shrimp. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. So it's not really like a pellet of poo, right? It's just sort of like if you peel the shrimp or if you, you know, like deboned a fish,

right? That stuff just kind of comes out the mouth again. Oh, that's one way to do it, man. Yeah. So simple. Y'all, they throw up poop from their mouth anus. You sauntered into this episode, not having any idea you'd be walking a lap around the park or harvesting radishes in the backyard or filing paperwork, hearing the term throoping

out my main is. And yet is there anything more efficient? More aspirational than a main is throop. Sounds clean and easy. Also, this next question, we will cover in great detail in next week's venomous toxinology episode with real life toxinologist, but here is a topical preview with Rebecca. Have you been stung? Yes.

Yes. Like a lot? Stung, maybe half a dozen times. How bad is it? So it depends on the species. Okay. So those species kind of tickle and they're kind of itchy. So the moon jellyfish that I was stung by, it sort of felt like I was being very mildly

electrocuted. Whoa. Yeah. Okay. So I wouldn't really put it on the pleasant end of the spectrum, but it wasn't terrible. It wasn't like I'm never doing that again kind of a moment. It was just like, I'm going to think harder about the next time I touch a moon jellyfish. There are stinging nettles and they stink.

They do not. I would not ever recommend grabbing a stinging nettle. And I totally made this mistake and it was so embarrassing. So most of the time when I grow jellyfish for whatever reason, when we grow them in the lab, they just don't really sting that bad. Oh. I don't know if it's because they're just like happy and well fed or if they're just like not eating the right stuff, but it's fine.

And so this one time I was on a boat with a bunch of people and I was like, you know, my first time like really out collecting jellyfish in the wild and I was like trying to be like cool like I knew what I was doing and I saw jellyfish and I just like plunged my hand in the water and grabbed it, like instantly regretted it, but it's sort of like, you know, when you take a bite of too hot soup, like it's really not clear what the best solution is. Like do you swallow it? Do you spit it out?

You just don't really know. And so like I had this jellyfish in my hand and I was like, okay, like bucket or ocean, bucket or ocean, right? So I put it in the bucket, you know, kind of tried to pretend like it wasn't that big a deal, but everyone was just looking at me like, I thought you were a jellyfish by all the time. Oh no. What's wrong with you?

Oh my God. I promise. This looks really bad, but I know what I'm doing. So what did you do? Did you throw it in the bucket? I did. I did in the bucket. Yeah.

I mean, I was like, just okay. Well, I've already been stung. I might as well get something from it, you know, so I put the jellyfish in the bucket, but it bruised, it bruised for a while. I will say like the third time I was stung, I was kayaking by myself and afterwards I was like, you know, I've heard this pee thing and I just don't know if it's true, but I want to try it and I can personally and professionally tell you it does not work. Yeah.

Oh no. Oh geez. Where were you stung? Hands, always on the hands. Okay. Yeah. It's not easy to pee on. Exactly.

If it were your neck, I'd be like, good luck with that, you know? I know. I know. I was honestly thinking about that when I was like, you know, having this like really weird moment of peeing on myself was like, how do people do this when you're like stung on the abdomen? Did someone else have to pee on you? That's just like, I don't even know.

I guess it's like a splash bath, you know? It's like a sink bath. I don't know. I'll look into it. How bad would it have to feel in order to pee on yourself? Like, it's one thing to just, you know, kind of be peeing and just kind of like be like, like boop. But it's another thing to be like, I'm going to collect this pee and then like, flash it

on my body. I mean, that must really, I'm so sorry for the people that have been stung that bad because that, that takes like thought and effort and energy. Yeah. And it's even worse. It's not really that effective. So they're just like, okay, well now I'm just like covered in pee and still hurts. It's a bad day at the office.

A little bit. The temperature though, like, so it turns out that like warm, like warm, hot, but not so hot that it burns really helps inactivate some of those like bad jellyfish venom proteins that make it hurt so bad. So like the pee itself is like not necessary, but the fact that it's, it's warm might actually be like part of why people keep peeing on themselves. Make a thermos with you instead. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Make some tea. Yeah. Hold on to your main assist because there will be so much more on this next week. This was a great question. Edward Rice wants to know, first time question asker, do they sleep? Maybe. Okay.

Maybe. So some evidence that they sleep. So, and I actually learned this too and I read the paper, there are lots of different criteria that you have to use to determine whether something is sleep or whether something is part of what we call a circadian rhythm, which is basically that sort of natural cycle of I don't want to do anything and I want to do things that happens to all animals. And for us is like jet lag. You can only think about the fact that you have this natural cycle of like doing stuff

and not doing stuff, but, but we do. And we feel it when we get jet lag and we're suddenly like it's three o'clock in the afternoon, you're like, I just don't want to do anything right now. Okay. So if you're more on this, see the chronobiology episode that went up with now doctor Catherine Hatcher, it's going to change your life and probably your bedtime. So even things that don't sleep like plants have this circadian rhythm. And so it's hard to figure out if something's sleeping or something's just having the same

natural day, night cycle rhythm. Jellyfish do show some additional signs that they might be sleeping. If you disturb them a bunch during the night, then their next rest period will be longer. But they don't show all the signs. So I think there's some compelling evidence that they have like a sleep like thing going on, but are they like dreaming? Do they drool? Right?

Like how sleepy is it? No one really knows. Oh, okay. And obviously they don't write in their diaries that you can read or anything. Right. Exactly. I know. But they know it's so obvious to them and we're just like desperately trying to figure

it out. Okay. Ooh. Jellyfish experts figure it out. This is the blobby gossip that the world needs. Also this next question was asked by Ari Librik, Ford Gonzalez, Emma Hendrickson, Ellen Skelton, and Elena Klemink and Charles. We had a bunch of people who asked about their population explosions with ocean acidification.

What is happening with jellies? Are they having a good time? Bad time? You know, they're kind of like everybody else. They're sort of having like a mixed time. Okay. So sort of think about jellyfish like the same way we talk about like mammals. Like it's a huge category, but most jellyfish people never see.

And so it's kind of like if the only mammals people saw were like rats and squirrels. You know, we would be like, oh my God, like mammals are going to take over the world. Right? Like in a big city, you're just like, these are everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the future is just going to be like nothing but rats and squirrels. But you know, but actually like a lot of mammals, they're having a tough go of it.

Like it's not been great for tigers, you know, elephants are sort of plus minus, right? Yeah. Like they're not having the best century. And it's similar for jellyfish. Like some jellyfish are like the rat and squirrels of jellyfish. Moon jellyfish are a great example, you know, we'll call them squirrels because squirrels are really cute and moon jellyfish are really cute, right? But they're prolific, they seem to be doing well in a wide variety of conditions.

But then there are a lot of jellyfish that are like the tigers, right? That are just, they're really having a rough time. This whole changing ocean thing, this, you know, tons of ships suddenly parking where like my polyps used to live kind of thing. It's not, it's not been great. So, so the narrative from like 10 years ago was like, oh my gosh, it seems to be the jellyfish are taking over. But it turns out that they were really just looking at the squirrel and rat equivalents

of jellyfish. And now that we've taken like this much closer look, we've realized that some jellyfish aren't doing great. Some seem to be doing better. I don't think any single jellyfish is going to like take over because they're part of a food chain. Right. Some of things love to eat jellyfish.

There are tons of fish that love eating jellyfish, birds love eating jellyfish, jellyfish are never going to be like that abundant because whatever eats them, it's then going to become more abundant and just eat more. Oh, just a buffet, just a buffet of jellies. Exactly. I thought this was a great question. Lee wants to know, are they ticklish? Are they what?

Ticklish. Oh, I was like, I thought she said ticklish, but that can't be right because I never really thought about that before. No, I love that. That's so great. I mean, possibly. Possibly. Possibly.

Possibly. I could see some things tickling. I mean, you know, there are lots of, so on the scale of things jellyfish do you to do not like, right, like a gentle boop, they seem to be not too terribly offended by. So that could be like the equivalent of a tickle, right, where it's like a more aggressive like poke. They're just like, oh, no, and they'll swim away. So maybe maybe just get a little boop.

I don't know if they're ticklish. You'd have to ask a jellyfish, but. Okay. Hey, any jellyfish listening, just please let us know. Just come forward, make a statement with your mouth, but our ears are open for it. Last patron question, Davis Bourne wants to know, what is the cutest jelly and why is it the sea walnut? My God.

Are they cute? What is the cutest jelly? There are so many cute jellies. Oh, gosh, this one is hard. So like, first of all, any baby jelly. Okay. And my favorite cute baby jellies are from a species called the mauve stinger. The scientific name is pelagia noctiluca.

Well, I know, very fancy. Yeah. And they are there, like as adult jellies, they're very fancy, but their babies look like little Pac-Man ghosts. Oh, stop. So they're like the size of like a sugar crystal and they're shaped like little Pac-Man ghosts. And their little sort of like ghost arms actually do pulse just like little jellyfish. Oh, my God.

Those are so cute. Okay. So of course I looked up pelagia noctiluca and yes, as adults, they are wearing a Marie Antoinette dress of elegant ruffles and tendrils and gorgeousness and excess, but as little baby bluffs, yes, they look like little awkward Pac-Man ghosts with no brain, but tiny weapon legs. Also, Google image search pulled up a whole bunch of jellyfish sting scars. And I just want you to know that if you were out there listening to this and you have a

jellyfish sting scar, I think that is rad as hell, a very bad ass. I say this as a person who was legit maimed by a department store escalator. So just own those jelly ribbon memories. So I kind of want to see a picture if it's provided it's not in your bathing suit area. And then what is a sea walnut? A sea walnut. A sea walnut is a comb jelly, which I'm just like so impressed. Whoever looked at that thing and said walnut, it's just like, I would love to talk to them

about how they came to that. I can kind of see it. You know, maybe I just don't spend that much time around walnuts. I looked these up too and warty comb jellies or sea walnuts, I could not find the history on who was responsible for these names and they do not resemble a walnut to me. I mean, honest to frogs, a sea walnut kind of looks like, let's say that you ate a papaya and then it's three to four inch ghost haunted your kitchen. But instead of seeds, it had a few glow sticks that when agitated began to blink at you.

Also these rainbow hearted papaya ghosts are not even actual jellyfish and they do have a butthole. And it's called a transient anus because when their gut fills up, it just balloons out and it forms a poop chute through its skin that then vanishes like it never happened, which is how most boys think girls poop. Oh, speaking of. And now, shittiest thing about a jellyfish. What's the most annoying thing about your work other than swimming in Walden pond in

October in a bikini? What sucks the most? I think the two things that are really frustrating are that you just never know if you're going to find them when you like go on your jelly fishing expedition, which is like not a huge deal if you live by the ocean, but like I don't a lot of jellyfish biologists don't, right? And so you're like, all right, I'm going to go to Florida in June and I'm going to get some jellyfish. They're there every year.

It's going to be great. They'll go and they're just not there that year. That is always such a bummer. Why is that? Just weather, tides? We don't know. So like with those by the wind sailors, which is sort of the, I guess the last big research project I have going, like I just got so frustrated that I actually started working with a collaborator

who studies ocean currents to see if we can figure out when did they show up when they do? Oh my God. It's been so fun. I've learned so much. It turns out, like I know about things that live in the ocean. I do not know a lot about like the water of the ocean, so it's been really fun. So it could be tides, it could be currents, it could be in the case of those little by

the wind sailors, they had a little sail on top. So they seem to be concentrated by wind, but it could also be seasons. So I remember the first time I went jelly fishing in graduate school. Jelly fishing. I was in Rhode Island and so I was like, I'm going to go to Cape Cod and I'm going to go jelly fishing. And like keep in mind, I'm from Arizona. I went to college in Florida, like I'm kind of like a sort of a warm climate person at

that point. And so this was like December, January, so like I got my bucket and I got my net and I like drove to Cape Cod and it just didn't even occur to me that the ocean froze. Oh my God. And so I walk out on the dock and I'm just like the entire dock and like all the water around the dock for like 30 feet is frozen. I didn't even know that it did that. I'm going to be honest with you.

Born and raised in California. I was so upset. Right? Didn't realize that. I thought it was like vodka in the freezer. I thought there was too much salt to do that. Oh my gosh. Me too.

Thank you. Thank you. Because like when I told people what I was trying to do, they were like, hello, duh, like the ocean freeze. I did not know. I didn't know that. I mean, I guess I never seen a frozen ocean. Like conceptually, like I guess that's kind of what like the Arctic is.

Yes. Yes. I suppose. But that's the Arctic. You know, I just. It's really far away. Yeah. I would not.

That's so funny. So and obviously you didn't go walking out there. No, I didn't get any. It was an unsuccessful mission. So that is probably like frustrating thing one is just like you don't know where they are, when they are. And I feel like that's probably how a lot of people feel like if you knew that jelly fish were going to be at the beach during your beach vacation.

Yeah. Just reschedule. Yeah. That's a good point. So use the iNaturalist app. And if you see jellies, if you see something reported to iNaturalist, you'll help people like you. Or go to jellywatch.org.

Right. Exactly. Thank you so much. Yes. And we're working on these questions. So there are people who are like, I'm going to make like a jellyfish predictor. And for some places there are jellyfish predictors and they're pretty darn good. Nice.

So the more people report when they see jellyfish and also just as helpful when you don't see jellyfish, then that just makes it so much easier for scientists to then try to like come up with, you know, the fancy math algorithms and stuff that fancy predictive biologists do to figure out when and where jellyfish are going to be. Right. But how do you say like, I didn't see this thing that's literally clear and invisible? I know. Well, on jellywatch, there is like a little option of like all clear today, you know,

you just like click the little box and you're like, it was a beautiful empty day at the beach. Right. Okay. Wait, she said two things. What was the second sucky thing about the jellies? Oh, Rebecca says it's that they do not make great pets. Well the older sexier ones.

Why are they so hard to keep? They are very fragile. They're just very fragile. Some of them are a little bit easier than others, but, you know, they spend their whole lives like out in the middle of the open ocean. If we went to their habitat, like we would be so screwed. Right. Right.

Yeah. So they're really adapted to live in this world that's just so different from ours that, you know, even hard surfaces, it's like too much, right? I've never had this happen to me before. I've like never bumped into a thing in my life and I just can't handle it. I've heard that even on corners of tanks that can just rip them up. Oh, corners are the worst. Yes.

They just don't know what to do in a corner. You just watch them and they're just like perpetually swimming in this corner and you're like, do not know that this is like a thing that you can't get past, but they don't. They don't because they've never had a corner. And so that's why they have to be in bowls or in cylinders. Exactly. You want a constant current kind of keeping them in this like pretend open ocean environment. Okay.

Where they sort of feel like they can go in any direction because if they get too close to the wall, then the current will kind of sweep them back in the middle. And then what about keeping polyps? Can you just do that easy peasy? Oh, polyps are so great. Yes. You can keep them in like a little pepperware and you just feed them sea monkeys like once a week and, you know, they're very happy.

Like I've moved like all over the place. I was put my little polyps like in the foot well of my car. And how many, you said you have 20 species. How many polyps do you think you have in your home right now? Like individual polyps. Yeah. If you had to just wing it. Maybe a thousand.

Oh my God. Oh my God. I know babies and a cat. So I've got like a thousand polyps and a plant and a cat and a fish tank. Yeah. It's a strange new world we live in. Oh my God. It's like a party.

That's like a rape. That's a monster polyp rape right there. It's for sure. For sure. And they're just like, what is even happening right now? So you've got their own little room. So it's like the polyp room and then there's like the, you know, the bedroom and the living room and the bathroom.

They get their own whole place. I love that you like we have a jellyfish den down the hall and the MTV Cribs. I know. I realized when I said it, I was like, they're only two rooms. Like it's not like I'm living in a mansion, right? They're like 80 rooms. They've got one room and then, you know, the cat and me and the plants and the fish get everywhere else.

That's amazing. You have a polyp parlor. It's what you have. A polyp parlor. From now until the end of time. That is what it will be called. That room is forever the polyp parlor. I love it.

Every modern home should have one. Oh my God. And now this is going to be such a difficult question. What is your favorite thing about jellyfish? Do you even know? You know, I love that no matter how much I know about, about jellies, I'm almost always surprised by something new every time I go to the ocean. So it's just like there's constantly something weird or unusual or bizarre that you're just

like, I didn't even think what's it doing? How's it happening? What? Right? Like I love, I love that. And you know, not a lot of people have studied jellyfish, right? Like there are certain things that if you're like, I really want to study this. It's like, well, okay, like you and 50,000 other people, right?

Like I really want to study fruit flies. Well, there is like a lot of work done on fruit flies, which isn't to say that there's not new stuff to be done. There's always new stuff to be done. But you have to like really dig deep. Whereas with jellyfish, you know, you just kind of look at it and you're like, I don't know what that is. Do you know what that is?

No, I don't know what that is either, let's just study it. So that's awesome. I also, I feel like jellyfish are very much like my aspirational kind of like, like state of being. I'm so neurotic and they're just so, so chill. They are so soothing to look at. I wonder if they've ever done like human physiology tests while looking at jellyfish if like heart rate and respiration rate like slows.

I, I will volunteer, let me know. I will sign up because I feel, you know, very like, very calmed by jellyfish. And I think, I don't know. I feel like a lot of people seem to get kind of like, well, well zoned out. I hope you know, this has been one of the most delightful interviews I have ever done. I, you are amazing. This has been so much fun. Also, I have a friend who has been asking me for like a year.

He's like, have you, have you reached out yet? Like, do you have you tapped to Ali? I think you should really go to all of these. And I'm like, I'm too scared because I also listen to your podcast and it's like, this has been so fun. You are just amazing. I'm a huge fan. And this has been so awesome.

Oh my gosh. So ask smart people silly jelly questions because we're all just a bunch of talking heaps of meat. Nothing matters. Anyway, now that you are firmly, thoroughly obsessed with Dr. Rebecca Helm, please find more of her work at jellybiologists.com. She's also on Twitter and Instagram at Rebecca R Helm. You got to love a consistent handle across multiple platforms.

Do follow her. Also, thank you to Rebecca's friend, science illustrator, Julie Johnson for urging her to tweet at me about being on Julie Johnson's science illustration website is life science studios.com fyi. The world owes you both a debt of gratitude. The world owes you both a debt of gratitude. So we are at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm on both as Ali Ward with 1L and you can find more links to sponsors of the show and

the places that we donate to in the show notes reach episode or up at aliward.com. Oligies merch is also available at oligiesmerch.com. Thank you to Shannon Feltis and birthday girl Bonnie Dutch for managing that. They are sisters who are hilarious. I host the comedy podcast You Are That which you should definitely listen to. You'll love them. Thank you to Aaron Talbert who admins the wonderful Facebook group. Thank you to all the transcribers and professional word recorder Emily White for all the transcript

work. I love you all. Thank you, Kayla Patton for bleeping episodes. Transcripts and bleeped kids safe episodes are up at aliward.com slash oligies-extras. There's a link to that in the show notes. Thank you to Noel Dilworth for keeping my schedule on track, Kelly Dwyer who makes my website and assistant editor Jared Sleeper who upon further reflection, yes, I would absolutely swim in Walden Pond in October if it were filled with thousands of your

clones, even without a pool noodle. And to the peanut butter to our jellies, lead editor Stephen Ray Morris who also hosts the kitty themed podcast The Percast and the dino themed sea Jurassic Wright for stitching these episodes together, Nick Thorburn did the music. He's in a band called Islands of Very Good Band. So special shout out to Sarah McCarthy and her mom, Beth. Beth, I hope you see Sarah and all of the wonders of nature that's around us. Now, if you sit through the whole episode, I tell you a secret and this week, my wonderful

pop is in the hospital and when he goes to the hospital, he leaves his trusty gold timex behind and I have this secret pleasure of cleaning it for him because it's a very sweet item that he wears every day and I want to somehow care for him in that way, but also because those metal wristbands gather kind of a lot of gunk and it's just fun as hell to sit there with a little toothpick. Scrape off in between the links in like a watching Instagram videos of steam cleaning carpets kind of way and just shine it up. Thank you for all the well wishes and the congrats and the patience this past week.

Here y'all just a bunch of sweeties. Okay, next week, Venom Toxinology. Okay, bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye.