Ologies with Alie Ward - Saurology (LIZARDS) with Earyn McGee

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

Saurologist and professional lizard scientist Earyn McGee visits Alie to go on a little lizard hunt, then they hunker down to chat about everything from tiny chameleons to drooling dragons, venomous thiccbois, legless lizards, geckos’ antigravity grip, festering dragon mouths, gila monster sightings, close encounters with lions, tangles of snoozy lizards, virgin births, and blood shooting from eyeballs. We also discuss Earyn’s wildly popular #FindThatLizard Twitter game and she gives us all some sound advice on social anxiety and how to succeed in literally any field or ambition. You’ll be squinting at bushes looking for lizards and when you see one, you’ll salute it. Follow Earyn at Twitter.com/afro_herper and Instagram.com/afro_herperSupport #FindThatLizard via Patreon.com/findthatlizardA donation went to: the Doris Duke Conservation Scholarship Program Sponsor links: Stitcher.com/ologies; WithCove.com/ologies; KiwiCo.com/ologies; TrueandCo.com/ologies (code: Ologies); Progressive.comMore links up at alieward.com/ologies/saurologyBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's the cup of hazelnut-flavored truckstop coffee. You're too ashamed to admit you love Allie Ward. Back with another episode of oligies, ooh, tiny chameleons, drooling dragons, venomous thick boys, legless lizards, and more, but first, thank yous. Thank you to everyone supporting oligies on Patreon. Thank you to everyone who gets oligies merch from oligiesmerch.com. Thanks to everyone keeping oligies up in the science charts and for telling your friends and family and foes. Maybe those overlap. And thank you for leaving such nice reviews that you know that I creep on days when I'm wondering, do people like this? So to prove it, I read a fresh one. For example, Katie Derrick says, prepare to

change your life. This podcast is life changing. Did you hear me? Life changing, all caps, they say. Start with the episode on fear and then listen to every single other one. And thank you to everyone who listens as they do field work in Alaska or do chores or paint your kids' rooms or do the dishes or go on road trips. I'm honored to be in your pocket. Okay, lizards, serology, let's talk about it. Guess how fricking elated I was when one day I was very busy lamenting that my wonderful herpetology episode with Dr. David Steen covered too many scaly bases. And then I stumbled upon a Wikipedia page identifying herpetology subfields. My eyes landed on the most beautiful word, serology, some angel saying, some clouds

parted, just a single tear raced down my cheek. And I looked at a window and I whispered to this guy, fucking love lizards, man. Soros in Greek means lizards. I had just the serologists to make all of our dreams come true. I followed her on Twitter for months and months. And on Wednesdays, she posts a game called hashtag find that lizard. And these are photos from her field work that you swear zooming over all of the pixels. They got to be a hoax. There's no lizards in there. But in fact, there is a lizard. So find that lizard made me love lizards and Wednesdays even more. So I had her over to have a real time find that lizard session among some local grasses and cacti and also my neighbor, Donna, who's

awesome and wondered why I was in my bushes. She's a lizard scientist. We're looking for lizards. Yeah, this is Erin. Hi, nice to meet you. Really? We were looking. Are they, I guess they're warming themselves, right? Yeah. So she's like a professional lizard scientist. And I see a beer bottle. I don't know what species of beer bottle. It might be a genus Budweiser species light. Oh, every once in a while, I think I see something out of the corner of my oh, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, you see it? Yes. Oh my God, I thought it was hallucinating. Does it ever happen where you you don't know if you saw a lizard or if you hallucinated? Yes. Yeah. All the time. Everything is a lizard. Ever. That bush is a lizard. That

rock is a lizard. That piece of grass is a lizard. I'm just like movement. It must be a lizard. So we ran with it and we crouched near a cactus to watch for some tiny movements and listen for scuttly wrestling. And we saw three dang lizards. And then we settled into my couch to chat about everything from geckos, anti gravity grip to Komodo dragon mouths to Godzilla to her wildly popular find that lizard hashtag game on Twitter to field season to heal a monster sightings, close encounters with lions, balls of snoozy lizards getting huga as hell in a hibernaculum to some sound advice on social anxiety and how to succeed in literally any field or ambition. So spread out on a rock, soak in the warmth of this ray of science sunshine

serologist, Erin McGee. Now you are, I looked this up, you're a serologist. Yes. Did you know that before? I did not. Really? No, no one really uses that word. But you know, I'm very happy it exists. It works. It works. Now, when you tell people what you do, like at a dinner party, say, or someone's just introducing you, do you tell them that you're a lizard scientist? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Hopefully people are curious enough to ask you like leading questions so that you can dive it. And I mean, I would love to leave a dinner party and know more about lizards. Who wouldn't? That's true. Now, why, why lizards? Are they your favorite kind of wildlife? Or did you

just like being out in nature and fieldwork? And then you found that you started to do a lot of research here. So I always knew that I wanted to work with animals from like birth to undergrad. I was like, I'm going to be a veterinarian. And like, you know, I was like one of those teachers type of kids, but like in the second grade, this one time, this lady was like, yeah, you can't be a veterinarian. And apparently, according to my parents, I told her off. Why did you just say to me? Because I got sent to the principal's office. And like, in my family, you don't get sent to the principal's office, you just don't do that. And so like, they had to come get me. And I was like, listen, but then I got to undergrad and I went and I talked to like some med school students. And

they were like, yeah, we have friends in med school. And they're miserable. I think that the requirements of going through the process of med school are just different where it's a lot more intense because you actually have to save these animals lives and treat them and you know, give them medicine and you don't want to overdose somebody's pet. So pressure's on. Yeah. So vets, thank you vets. I appreciate you. We appreciate you. My puka, my dog. His vet is awesome. But you were like, maybe, maybe not for me at some point. When did you get to pivot a little bit? So my freshman year of undergrad, I did this program called H-COP. That's the acronym. Erin went to Howard University in Washington DC and participated in H-COP, Health Careers

Opportunity Program. And a mentor there introduced her to Dr. George Midendorf, a herpetologist who became her undergrad advisor. And then one of my other friends was like, hey, you like animals and you also need money to pay for this school. You should apply to the Environmental Biology Scholars Program. She applied and she got in and got to poke around in some different types of fieldwork to see what floated her boat. One guy was working with fish and I was not really interested in fish like that. And so then I started working with lizards. And then I went out to the Chiricow Mountains for the first time the summer after my freshman year. And I was like, wow, this is perfect. I get to be outside. I get to catch lizards. And this is like,

you know, doing this work is like, it's hard, but it's not like vet school hard. I was like, this is like the perfect, this is perfect everything that meets all my criteria. Erin says she realized doing fieldwork that there are still so many questions about ecology and animals that were never answered. And that really excited her. And she graduated from Howard with a bachelor's in biology and then headed out to the University of Arizona to get her masters in wildlife conservation and management through the School of Natural Resources and the environment. And she's now working toward her PhD in the same field. And speaking of being outstanding in the field, when you are catching lizards, don't walk me through

what that is like in the field. Like, well, how early do you have to get to a field site? What is it like? Like, where do you start? All right. So for the projects that I've been doing, I've had already, I scouted, you know, sites. And so we would start about eight in the morning or so. Because like, for the most part, the lizards aren't out like super, super early. You want it to be warm by the time they get out. And normally about eight, eight, 30 ish. It's warm enough. I love that these lizards are like, it's too early. Like, like eight, 39 o'clock, you know, and that's also perfect for me because I am not an early bird at all. So like, birds are out. I was just like, listen, you can't do it. I guess there's, there's no like the early lizard gets the fly. You don't

hear that. Yeah. So we'll get, we'll get up, have breakfast. Then we go grab all of our stuff. We have to make sure that we all have our lizard poles and everybody has to make sure that their line is good. And then it's not too short. It's not too long. Erin, by the way, has a very cool piece of equipment called a lasso. And it's essentially a little knot of silk thread. And it's on a fishing pole. She can extend it out and then she can loop it around a lizard and zip. She's got the lizard. So we have like a whole fanny pack system. And so like the fanny pack has like the notebook that we take our notes in, pencils, pens, rollers, scissors, all that kind of stuff that we need. And then like we just pass off the fanny pack to the people who meet them who needs it at whatever time. And so

then when you're like, you walk through however far you need to get to get into the site. And then once you're in the site, pole is in hand. So that way when you see a lizard, you're ready to you know, go for it. And so then at that point, we're just walking up and down the site. However, many times that we've decided that we're going to walk up and down the site, normally it's just walk up once, walk down once, and then leave. If there are no lizards, occasionally in some sites that have been no lizards, it's pretty quick. And then in sites where there are a lot of lizards, you know, we might spend two, three hours in a site catching lizards. This is such a stupid question. But what is a lizard? I mean, we're talking a reptile.

Yes. We're talking not a snake, it has legs, although there are legless lizards. Correct. But what differentiates a lizard from say a snake other than legs? I feel like somewhere in between a toad and a snake lies a lizard. Like an event diagram of limbs and such. But I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the bones of their head shapes and their skulls, something to do with how their back bones and stuff that makes it together. Turns out that defining a lizard isn't the easiest because there's so much variety in them. Y'all, there are lizards that have venom, that have third eye organs at the top of their heads. They have scary Shakespearean collars. There are ones that dive and eat algae in the sea. Others that walk on water. What? Like a Jesus?

They can take down a water buffalo that can clone themselves. There are wall crawlers, night singers, blood shooters. Also, it's early in the episode, but I'll go there. The males have two dicks. Why not travel with a spare? But don't worry, female lizards are known to have two clitorises and researchers don't know what they're for. But, you know, maybe they should just ask. But the book definition of a lizard is, any suborder of reptiles distinguished from the snakes by a fused inseparable lower jaw, a single temporal opening, that's a skull hole, kiddos, external ears, eyes with movable lids, and two pairs, total four, well differentiated functional limbs, which could be lacking though in burrowing forms. So there's your definition of a lizard.

And also, yes, there are wormy looking legless lizards. Also, I just Google image searched lizard ears because I just needed like a little dose of cute and somehow popped a photo of a person who had gauged ears with a live anole resting in the rubbery hammock of this person's lobe flesh. So that's enough of that. Also, some lizards like green anoles and monitor lizards and Komodo dragons, which are monitor lizards are super smart. Researchers say maybe on par with some bird species. So does Erin find that when she's out, catch and releasing them for her data? So it depends on a lizard. Okay. Some lizards are smarter than other lizards. And it also depends on if they've been caught before. Really? Because then they've learned,

they now know what it is. And so sometimes like, a lizard will see you and it's just like, they're not going to bother me or they don't see me. My camouflage is good enough. And then you can like just walk right on like right up on them. Or like, sometimes they'll see you and they'll run and then you have to run with them. And you're chasing a lizard and you know, sometimes it takes like there are four people to catch one lizard because you're just like, hmm, Erin told me that to track them, her research team, like her pathologists all over the world sometimes has to snip off a few toes in a certain order as a marker. So toe clipping has its critics, of course, but catching and releasing lizards to monitor them, especially with climates are changing and

water sources drying up is important to the work that herpers are doing. And she says she takes just the minimum she needs for identification. And I did not ask what she does with the toes. I started researching to see if you can buy small bags of lizard toes, like maybe she could put them to use and sell them to a site for witches. And then that landed me on a Wiccan page to see if they actually do use lizard toes for anything. Honestly, they didn't have anything about lizard toes, just some helpful info on candles and herbs and crystals. Before I knew it, I was on Wiccan Living reading a really great article about gratitude that really made my day. I was like, thanks, witches. Most of you are probably vegan anyway. So yeah, if wild lizards

don't respond by name, how else can you recognize them? I also paintmark them on their back. So I'll just give them like a little number. How long do lizards live? Are you seeing the same ones, like later on in the field season, maybe next year? So they can live generally a little while. And it also depends on the species. But like the lizards that I'm looking at normally don't get too, too much older than five or so in the wild. Like my undergrad advisor was just like, he would see this one big male lizard year after year, just like displaying everyone. And one day it got souped up by a bird. Oh, did he see it? Yeah, he was there for it. That's pretty opportune, I'd have to say, like in terms of getting some closure on where that lizard went.

You know, oh my God, was he just like so screaming? I probably would be like, no. He didn't go into all that details. You do see them year after year. You're like, hey, what's up with you again? And they like to hang out in the same areas for the most part. So it's not like they're finding a different rock. They're like, this is my rock. Pretty much. You've come to my rock shocker. I'm here on this rock again. It's not like they're going to move to New Jersey out of nowhere. And so for the most part, most of the lizards didn't move more than five meters. And so we would see lizards year after year after year in the same places. I look back like five years because my undergrad advisor, George, he has been going out to the same site

for, you know, like 40 years. So he had all this historical data that I could look at and grab onto. And what do lizards usually eat? Are they out there eating mostly bugs? So again, it depends on the species, but like lizards that I work with, like they eat like small insects. Do they do the thing where they throw their tongue out? Or no, is that just chameleons? I'm not sure if it's just chameleons. Is a chameleon a lizard? Oh, okay. Just for one of those, where I was like, I don't know, it's got these foldable toes, you know, it's like, it's toes are like a PETA pocket. I was like, I don't know, man. Maybe it's not even a lizard. Yeah, no, it's totally a lizard. It seems like a souped up lizard because it's like a curly tail,

yes. Weird toes, yes. I change colors and I have a telescopic tongue like it's got cone eyes. Why does, why did a chameleon get all these features? Got lucky. I'm like, yes, man. Okay, side note, I tried to research this and types of lizard tongues was turning up relatively little. Then I tried to get fancier, searching for lingual morphology in lizard species. And I found this paper evolution and function of lingual shape in lizards with emphasis on elongation, extensibility and chemical sampling. But that was more about sniffing more on that later. So then I went on a chameleon deep dive and I had to hold on to my butt for the info that came next. So number one, chameleon's tongues can be up to twice the length of their bodies. And they're made of bone and

tendon and elastic tissue folded like an accordion. And then they stretch it back like a bow. And then they flick that thing out accelerating. You ready for this? Carve buff people from zero to 60 and one one hundredths of a second. There are over 200 species of chameleons. And there are some they're so tiny that they can sit on the tip of a match, which I hope they only do for natural photo ops because imagine sitting on a giant ball of highly flammable explosives just so people could get an idea of like how much you weigh nightmares on nightmares. Okay, but to summarize, these little buddies are native to Africa, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Southern Europe, and they have prehensile curly tails that can grab stuff. They have swivelly eyes with cone shaped lids that can move

independently from each other. And they can switch from monocular to binocular vision when they need it. They can change their skin color by moving the spaces between pigment crystals under their skin. Certain chameleons have bones that glow under UV light. And yes, their toes face each other. And this is called zygodactyl in case you're ever playing Scrabble. And you have a Z and two Ys. I thought damn, these lizards must be the newest models on the market. But they've identified species around 60 million years old, they may be up to 100 million years old. So they have some special features. But how do other lizards eat? Do they just order pizzas and give up on life? So a lot of times, some lizards, they kind of like, are sitting in wait predators. So they'll

just like, hmm, I see you run up and then go back to where they were preached. So they'll just use locomotion to go in and catch a fly or whatever. Yeah. And now do you have to see if their diet's changing year to year, like if there's different insects or they're, they're hungry or one year than another? So I was looking at if they were eating emerging aquatic insects out of streams, because no one has actually looked at whether like their fruit sources are purely terrestrial, or if there are any aquatic ones. And so because of, you know, climate change and stream drying and drought and all that, I was like, well, if they're eating these aquatic insects and they're important, then, you know, they could be negatively impacted when these streams go away.

So how does she figure out what wild lizards are eating? Well, she sequences their poop. They're not using it anymore. Okay, she might as well. She figured this is the same technique they use with lions and tigers and bears. So we were in the middle of talking about poop, and I got distracted by something on my porch. I'm so sorry, there's a lizard on the pole. Okay, see that pole? I swear, I didn't hallucinate, but there was a big western fence lizard on that pole. I believe you. It went on the other side. I believe you. I got so excited and it ducked out of you. It was there though. It was taunting us. So you figure if you can do it with big cats, why not? People have like the DNA sequences of, you know,

aquatic insects. So if they have it, and then I have the poop, and then the DNA is going to be in the poop, only makes sense. Do you think you're the first person to analyze lizard poop? Probably not. What's the most beautiful lizard? The most beautiful lizard. Well, for me, it's going to have to like, slap or share. Y'all are spawning lizard has a very special place in my heart. Really? Always be, you know, my favorite, the most beautiful to me. Yeah, because it was just like once that was like the main species that I worked with, like during my undergrad. And so like, for me, it's just like a symbol of like the world opening. Like I didn't know like that was like my whole new world because I was like, I didn't know that

this was like a thing that I could do. And now I do. And you're now my special lizard. Quick aside. So the Yaro Spiny Lizard goes by Scaloporous Yorovi informal occasions. And it is quite a stunner. Their backs can have an orange glow, kind of like an Edison bulb in a good first date bar. And its tail has this gray ombre that fades into this brilliant turquoise color. It's so gorgeous. It's the kind of blue you would see in pictures of like shallow tropical waters in Instagram vacation photos of a person that you hate follow. Aaron explains, what do they look like? So they are a medium-sized lizard. The males get these nice blue patches on their stomachs and on the other side of their stomachs and on their throat. They can get like really like

brilliant like orangish colors on their back and blue and like there's their little variable, but they're really pretty and especially in the sunlight. Why do you think they have those blue patches? What do you what does that serve? What purpose? So mating and to show you know who's boss don't come over in my territory. I am the big bat male. You see how dark this blue is? You see it? You see it? Go away. Really? You're like unless you're a female. In which case come closer. Right. Is there any truth to the flimflam that if you rub a lizard on its stomach it'll get like so entranced. You can just hang out with it for a minute. No? I mean once you catch it it's just I mean sometimes they're gonna like try to bite you and then some of them are just like

well this is the end. I'm just gonna sit here now. They're like you got me like the game over pretty much. But really you just mark them and then let them go again right? Yeah. So it's kind of a happy ending right? Yeah they're alive still. They're alive. Sometimes they might be missing a couple of toes but. And now you have a poodle. You don't have any pet lizards? No. Okay what do you think about pet lizards? As long as you know how to care for them and you do so properly and you are not getting any illegal pets or things that are bringing disease because you went through a person or a company that is just like well we're just gonna grab up these lizards and send them around so as long as you do it responsibly then I don't see any issue with it. So also don't get

like a baby iguana and then let it loose in the backyard when it gets ugly? Exactly. Yeah because like shelters do take lizards. You have an unconventional pet and you don't want it anymore and you're worried about getting rid of it. You can take it to the shelter. They'll take it. Don't take your your middle-aged scaly iguana? Yeah. I know I do feel like everyone gets a baby iguana and then they're like oh right this thing is kind of living. P.S. Florida you are overrun with iguanas right now so the green iguana in particular has just flourished after folks who got him his pets in the 80s bailed and let him loosen the bushes and then more hurricanes that we're having recently blew him over from some distant lands and then also global warming

just keeping Florida nice and toasty. So what is the problem with having 80 feral iguanas in your yard? I'm glad you asked. South Florida residents do not enjoy swimming pools fouled with iguana turds which can also carry salmonella. Also iguanas can grow to be five feet long. They love to eat gardens and they also like to eat power lines meaning sometimes there are power outages because iguanas have eaten the power lines. Sometimes they turn up in people's toilets. It sounds like an iguana party but the state's not into it. So what is a Florida to do? Well the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission released the directive a few months ago that people can and should kill them quote whenever possible. Did this lead to a Florida man iguana hunting

but shooting his neighbor's pool guy on accident? Yes. Yes it did. Non-fatally but still. So the Fish Commission had to release another statement just a few weeks ago saying kill them humanely, i.e. quickly, preferably with a bow and arrow or traps or a rock and try not to shoot each other essentially. Now another option, eat them. Locals apparently refer to iguanas as boyos de arbolis or chicken of the trees and historically they're a menu item in western Mexico. People eat iguanas all the time. So sunshine staters are like why the hell not? Florida Sun Sentinel published a helpful video on how to cook and fashion these local pests into burritos. The meat is lean, the protein contents high and reports are it has a body like a rabbit with a bony fishy kind of tail

but tastes like chicken. Is this chicken what i have or is this fish? What are some flimflamories about lizards that you feel like myths that you would like to bust? They're not slimy for one and for the most part they're not going to hurt you. They want to be left alone. Like if you see a lizard there's no need to be afraid. They're not scary. Are there people who are afraid of lizards? There are people like i encounter lots of people who are afraid of lizards and i get it but then it's just like but it's a lizard it doesn't want to bother you it just wants to eat the bugs. That seems like a great thing to have in your house. Like if you find a lizard in your house should you just let it hang out or should you escort it outside? You

should probably escort it outside because it might not be enough bugs in your house for it to live off of. It needs some water sources and it probably got in there by accident. It probably was hanging out on the door and you opened the door and it got scared and so like it just went inside by accident. It probably wants to go back outside. Okay so don't keep it as your personal extermination service. Yeah okay good to know. I could see having just like a house gecko that you're like go get it get it you know mosquito get it. Let's talk about Aaron's viral twitter game that runs on wednesdays called hashtag find that lizard. So part of the reason we went lizard hunting is that i'm obsessed with find that lizard and i wanted to experience it

with its creator. Boy howdy was it a damn throw. I see him he's just chilling out. I can't believe I didn't bring my phone to take a picture. This would be a good find that lizard. He's playing with us. I figured it would want to be in something like this because it's easy though. Have somewhere to hide and it's also pretty decent to get some sun. Yeah you've made finding a lizard like seeing a celebrity in the grocery store. You know what i mean. So you have uh you've taken over my wednesdays with find that lizard. Yeah hashtag find that lizard. It's my favorite thing to do on the internet. You and Kagu Swift's uh crow or no it's like wednesdays of the best oh and then who's poop is this is also another fun game. But find that lizard. I like wait until it's five o'clock

central time. It's gonna go up. I know i've got a couple hours to find the lizard. Yeah how did you start this and why is it taken over my brain. So i just posted a picture one day because i was i was upset well i wasn't upset i was just you know energized like i was just you know really hot in the moment because i was i was trying to catch this lizard and she was giving me like a really good chase and she almost got away and this is like i was about to give up and then i looked back i was like am i really gonna give up on catching this lizard today and then i saw it i saw her and she was in this tree and i was like i almost missed her her camouflage was so good but she was a recapture so she had this bright orange five on her back because i had already

marked her and so i was like if it wasn't for this five on her back i would have missed her look guys and then people were like i know you said she has a mark but i don't see her and so i was like really and then they and then people were just like yeah this is fun i think it gets their competitive nature going yeah because they're just like there's not a lizard in this photo and i'm like there is and they're like don't don't you touch that phone don't you take i'm still looking i'm still looking for the lizard do you have your phone on you so when you're in the field you see a lizard and before you advance on the lizard you're like i got to get a picture of this no one's going to be able to see this lizard yeah i totally do that how many

do you have in a backlog because i want to know that like we're covered for a long time with this 52 at least please sometimes sometimes i do yeah that's how i make this podcast pretty much it's just like well if i can if i'm in the space and i can get a bunch of pictures i will like there there has to be some because like i recently had to upgrade my storage with iCloud because they're like yeah you have too many pictures well i'm not deleting anything right now because i don't know if i have any good ones in here but i also probably have thousands of pictures with no lizards in them is that because you thought you saw lizard or like i was about to like i pressed the button but as soon as i pressed the button it moves or it ran away you know so like

i spend a lot of time going through pictures looking for lizards that aren't there but that's what i love about the game is you at first glance you're like there's absolutely no way that there's lizard in this and then when you find the lizard it's such a triumph and then it makes you appreciate the lizard and how much evolution went into that kind of camouflage yeah um do you feel like hashtag find that lizard has gotten people more stoked about lizards yeah like people um have told me that it's made them like more interested in lizards and made them think that it's cool and i'm just like yes lizards are cool yes lizards are cool what is it about kind of the predator-prey relationship where they're so hard to spot but you have to listen for the

wrestle or you have to see this little flicker movement like are they prey for a lot of animals yeah yeah they're prey for pretty much everything bigger than them even like other lizards oh no like lizards will eat lizards snakes will eat lizards small mammals will eat lizards large mammals would be eat lizards really birds are eating the lizards everything eats lizards so they have to play for the long game they're kind of the sandwich of the natural world like you know everyone's like i'll take a lizard yeah sure my undergrad advisor calls baby lizards ecological popcorn because everybody just snaps them up just you know handful at a time now where are lizards having their babies because i'm picturing the desert and um

or like rocky ground are they are they having clutches nests so um it depends on the species so um some lizards are live bearers so they'll just you know pick a spot and pop them out and then other lizards like they lay eggs and so then they're well the vast majority of lizards lay eggs but some of them give life birth but uh so they'll scloppers frigates the striped plateau lizards will wait until like it rains and when the ground is nice and soft and they'll go out and they'll dig and then they'll bury their eggs and cover them up and then uh sometimes when you're walking them on the trail and you see all these like scratch marks it's because something came by and ate the eggs they dug them up oh no that's like ecological jelly beans yeah i know it's

going to depend on the species but do some lizards have like two eggs and some are just like oh i got like 50 babies in here i can only really speak for the ones that i study and like a lot of times they pop and out a lot of them yeah because they have to survive the numbers game mm-hmm let's talk big lizards who can regulate temperature more slowly because of their mass to surface area ratio and for more on that get all into body heat fun facts with annul researcher and thermophysiologist dr. shane campel statin in the previous thermophysiology episode he's amazing stupidest question alligators they are lizards no no thank you for telling me that i just realized i was like how big does a lizard get is an alley why isn't an alligator a lizard

i'm sorry is it a komodo dragon maybe the biggest is a komodo dragon i think i think they are the biggest yeah they are lizards and when you see those pictures those videos of them like slow motion eating a deer right what is life komodo dragons by the by hail from the indonesian islands and can get up to 10 feet long and weigh 150 pounds and we'll touch on them a little later but i don't mean that literally because there were none in my backyard and no thank you i don't want to lay any hands on any one of those no way know how side note i just looked it up and there is a place in jakarta where according to trip advisor user goldie six from ohio quote the komodo dragon building was gorgeous and for a little extra you can touch a live but well-fed komodo dragon

for the thrill of a lifetime goldie six here from america isn't life here thrillingly scary enough anyway we're going to get to your patreon questions but before that a few words about sponsors i like who make it possible each week to donate to a cause of the ologist choosing and this week erin picked the doris duke conservation scholars program or ddc sp which is a highly selective two-year undergraduate research program focused on preparing the next generation of diverse environmental conservation professionals and it offers immersive experiential learning opportunities and access to mentorship opportunities so for more information you can visit doris duke conservation scholars dot org now some words about the sponsors who are making that donation

possible okay back to your questions i have some patreon questions may i ask you yeah ask it into it yeah some people submitted several questions themselves like some people were like i have five questions about lizards and i'm going to submit them all bethanie cispansky a lot of z's in that just saying wow took me a minute figure out how to say that okay says i've read that western fence lizard blood reduces the prevalence of lime disease and is any research being done to create a vaccine based on this have you heard about so i have actually recently heard about western fence lizards being able to help fight uh lime disease i know absolutely nothing about it besides that that is a real and actual thing okay side note when lime infected nymph ticks feed on

western fence lizards a certain percentage become lime free as adult ticks and this was first discovered in 1998 by uc berkeley entomologist robert lane and a certain protein in these blessed beautiful blue bellied babies blood kills the limespiracy bacteria for more on this you can see the acrology and disease ecology episodes which were out a few months ago and by see i mean here and in no time you're going to be lovingly screaming at your loved ones to check their crevices and you should check yours also so don't eat a western fence lizard let them go out and do their do their work exactly jude kenny wants to know if a lizard loses its tail does it grow back if so can this be made to happen in other animals by some kind of genetic engineering and crystal

mendoza says this question please ask this one so who else wanted to know about lizard tails like all of you because it's a good question but by all of you i mean specifically andreas arie richard gents lizard lover and first time question ask her jennifer alvarez james urvine b wilson shannon snyman carolina and peter dupuy jr so what is it about the tail it's like okay i'll make another one i do not know the exact mechanisms that like tell the lizards body to start regenerating a tail but they totally can the idea is that they have vertebrae along the tail and at certain sections it will just break and so that way it just it just pops off and so that the tail will still be moving and hopefully it will just draft whatever predator has grabbed the lizard and then

that the lizard itself can run away and i have no idea of people are looking into like using it for other things like for people or whatnot but i would assume that someone at some point has actually looked into this i wonder if you could just crisper yourself a tail you're like you know what i'd like i'd like to just grow a tail today um danielle rever wants to know why are parthenogenic lizards so cool parentheses they are so cool um so wants to know the i guess can they just make more lizards without a mate yes all that said i mean you know sometimes when you don't need men it's just it's just the cool thing you know sometimes you want things done and you want it done your way and that means that nobody else is involved but you maybe they're career lizards

yeah like i'm not going to wait around are they clones or are they a mashup they're clones they are yeah oh my gosh i wonder if they're all named like Sharon shana shara i knew someone who's whose family was all named like sharyl and shan and shana like just name them all after you you're like see that's cool does that happen when maybe there aren't resources or there aren't males or does that just happen because like time's right now it's good so i was looking this up for some whoop tell species especially the ones that you can find and so they're in Arizona and it happens when one closely related species mates with another closely related species and then the babies they produce ends up being parthenogenic i started reading some research

papers on this but i want to give hardcore props to the wikipedia page titled parthenogenesis in squamata which sounds like actual gibberish verbal coleslaw but once you know parthenogenesis means literally virgin birth aka all the single ladies and squamata means snakes and lizards squada means scale in latin so one species of snake but 50 species of lizard roughly undergo obligate parthenogenesis and that means that's the only way they do it that's how they reproduce and then there's an unknown number that mostly do it when there just aren't dudes around and that's called facultative parthenogenesis i think that is how you say it also apparently busting out children solo can benefit reptiles if they say wash ashore on an island they find themselves

dudeless and while the whiptail lizards are all clones of their mothers and no males even exist other virgin lizard births can happen as full clones of the mother or half clones if she mixes up her own dna into different alleles but what if they are of the clone variety once they have the cloning ability it's parthenogenic you know party apart the party yeah just all the guests look identical right i would like to attend that lizardly clone party and just be a gawking wallflower speaking of clinging to walls this next one about magic lizard feet was also asked by sarah clips patrick mcmillie wants to know how do lizards stick and climb on vertical surfaces so easily when they are relatively large

so i think these are some vanderwall forces right how are they climbing things well some lizards you know they have their claws they can just you know get up there with their claws but then with things like geckos but they have like these little itty bitty things that allow them to like grip on you know the little bitty molecules like like we feel like the solid wall whereas they would have like oh there's like these little indents on this solid wall and i can grip on them because i have all these little i don't know exactly what they are but i have all these little things on my pads that so that's how those intermolecular forces are working that's vanderwall that's cool i never understood that before so i did a little digging and apparently geckos feet

are covered in fine hairs called sedi and that each of those is frayed at the end like an old rope giving their feet billions of little bristles called spatulae so geckos feet are just a fuzz factory and the vanderwall's forces a kind of physical bond via electrostatic attraction between those hairs and the little contours and the wall keeps them looking glued to it when the surface is super slick or those hairs get covered is when their wall walking starts to wane and i read that a single gecko crawling on a ceiling could support 90 pounds of weight and one biologist who studied how the precise angles of those hairs help the geckos switch the forces on and off someone named keller autumn is quoted as saying geckos are vastly over engineered they're over

qualified for their wall walking they're too good at it and somewhere there's a chameleon raising its icons like a bitch and muttering yeah yeah well i guess an invisibility cloak isn't enough anymore also i fear a dystopia where robots can climb walls and disappear into their surroundings and flick a wet sticky muscle 30 feet to catch things so for now just make like a happy witch appreciate that you were born a cricket can you imagine that would suck this is a good question mark turner asked what's the purpose of the forked tongue so it is uh sensory again back to surface area but it's like if you have like more space to have more of those things to collect uh scent chemicals on your tongue and then you can like bring it back up to

like there's a little thing right here in the face where they can put um the tongue and then it analyzes like the chemicals and let some know things about the environment there's a whole name for it and i learned it in class and i just don't remember i'm sorry dr corprosky you definitely explained it to me but i remember what you were talking about this is what the sides are for us so this organ is called a vomeronasal organ or a Jacobson's organ which sounds less like vomiting and is easier to pronounce a Jacobson's organ is there for lizards to jam their air samplings into the roof of their mouth so that they can figure out what's in the air don't you wish you had a vomeronasal organ don't worry we do scientists just think it's hanging out

and we don't really use it but elephants use theirs and so do a bunch of other animals but we don't care about those other animals we care about lizards so it's kind of like putting a broom out there like the more bristles you have the more information you can collect oh that's cool um christine weaver wants to know what makes a komodo dragon's bite so terrible they have a big head with a whole lot of sharp teeth and then they also have venom glands and they will inject you with venom and it's nasty stuff really yeah what is that is that to kind of paralyze prey or to stone it after a while you will start to get paralyzed but uh it basically starts breaking down your body from the inside oh my god yeah that's effective

what are those big old drooly things that they've got is that drool or do they have sensory organs you know sometimes you watch like a komodo dragon in slow motion and it has like stuff coming down just like dingle dangles yeah that's drool oh nice oh that drool is it's stink oh we're ripe it's stinky i would assume so oh hopefully one day i'll get close enough to find out you know like close enough where i just like a cool thing but not close enough where they're gonna eat my face maybe a sleepy one yeah a sleeping dragon yeah i mean compared to fire breathing dragon venom and drool isn't that bad yeah you know quick aside on komodo dragon drool so for decades it was thought that the bacteria in their mouths acted as a venom and that was what was killing their prey

before researchers realized oh no it's just actual venom they have they even went so far as to swab and culture komodo dragon mouths and found out that they're relatively clean for an animal that eats a bunch of rotting meat so their teeth rip apart prey and then their venom toxins lower the prey's blood pressure and prevent clotting so that their victims bleed out and then they eat their corpses now water buffaloes when injured though they'll go hide and usually in a pool of stagnant water so why water buffaloes get such terrible infections from a komodo dragon bite well an expert in this brian fry in queensland explained thusly it's the same as if you dumped a whole bunch of cow dung in your pool during the peak heat of summer shaved your legs with a very old

razor and then went and stood in the water for a day says fry you'd end up with some very tasty infections this just makes me want to hang out with more lizard researchers and i would also like to hang out with youtube uploaders team hazard rides again who filmed a bunch of male komodo dragons mercilessly slapping each other in the face with their huge tails each lizard is really like it had just had a skinny margarita tossed in its face on a yacht but please enjoy their wonderful delicate moment in dad punnery oh sorry knockdown dragon on fight not done dragon fight is that what you were going for christopher ruzo wants to know deadliest lizard um i guess as far as venom and stuff goes like komodo dragons but it then is also like

either the asian monitor or the now monitor wonder it's between one of those two are like the most aggressive i think that those are the ones where they've seen the most one of those two that they've seen the most deaths with and that's just like people getting you know too close and harassing a lot like leave the lizard alone what do they want do they want to selfie with a lizard maybe can you eat those big lizards i mean i'm sure you can eat just about everything well that's you really wanted to i wouldn't i personally i mean you know well you actually if i was stuck in stranded somewhere i might eat a lizard yeah if it's between me and the lizard i love you but i'm sorry if you're naked and afraid enough it seems like anyone will eat a lizard charlemagne

wants to know why do lizards insist on having babies in my ivy plants are they going to eat my plants um probably not it's probably just a safe space for them where they're just like hmm i can get around here and then i can hide from stuff and like you might have some little aphids or something that fits in baby lizards mouths and they're just like this is the perfect place to have my babies they can hide and they have food so charlotte just you should be proud that you're such a good host yeah you know pretty much make yourself at home in my ivy just i left some aphids out in case you and the kids are hungry um james urvine says so many questions many os nine os um is it painful when they drop a tail i don't know if it's painful like the way that we

think about pain i mean i couldn't even imagine what that would feel like if i had the ability to just like let one of my limbs go i know like you know i would feel like it probably would be sore but i feel like it wouldn't be a whole lot of pain if it's like one of those things where it's like this is what it's supposed to do right you know what i mean like if you've evolved the ability to drop your tail chances are you've also evolved not a whole lot of really wrong bendings there maybe exactly one of the main points of it is to escape predators and survive then it doesn't make that much sense to drop the tail and then to have that process cause so much trauma that you know it impacts your survival later on of course it's going to like be negatively impacted by

having to heal it regrow it and then not have like as strong as a tail as it did before but at the same time it's just like it should be not painful so so painful that you can't keep on living as a lizard who's dropped his tail good point side note i did some digging and yes all experts seem to agree that it doesn't hurt but can you imagine if you've gotten a fight with someone and as a distraction you just dropped your butt at their feet and then ran and it didn't even hurt another reason why lizards deserve you stopping and physically saluting them when you see them like me with a migraine i couldn't fight anyone um and also james urbine wants to know what's with the whole eye blood shooting can we talk about horned lizards my undergrad advisor george menendorf

was one of the people who like did the experiments with them and like growth that up and so it's basically they're bursting an eye vessel a blood vessel in their eye to like shoot the blood and hopefully you know get away and that's just to terrify the shit out of whatever's trying to eat them yeah oh my god that's so little my might also be like a little nasty super nasty it's so hardcore death metal though where it's like instead of just dropping a tail or i don't know like having a fan behind their head that comes out they just burst their own blood vessels and shoot it at somewhere that's so respectable i love that so much just google horned lizard shooting blood from its eyes if you don't believe me again salute the lizards jennifer alvarez wants to know do

anoles raise their young or stay in packs i saw a dad anole with a much smaller kid anole the other day and wondered um as far as i know they don't raise their young um it might have just been that they were occupying the same space at the same time which lizards do sometimes so if it's like a lot of times lizards do get pretty aggressive and territorial but other times you might see a couple right next to each other especially if it's like early in the morning and everybody's just waking up and everybody has to warm up and no one has the energy to fight just yet and that type of thing where are these lizards sleeping are there bunk beds full of lizards so yes and no okay so um like during like the regular season so like you're in the winter the

winter's ending spring is coming out and like you have a hibernacula and in this hibernacula is like hundreds of lizards and so then like dream it starts to get warm and everybody's like we're coming out and we're spreading out and like the big you know dominant lizards are staying in the closest to the hibernacula and everybody else is having to go further and further away in order to find their own territories and then they find crevices or something to to have their own little houses or whatnot and then like for anoles stuff that live in trees then it's just like well we got to share this tree and this is this is my spot on the tree and you better go to your spot on the tree and and are they are they overwintering are they hibernating and all

yeah they do do most lizards hibernate yes really so they start to come out like in the spring then maybe oh my gosh I love like in Tucson their their period is shorter because like it's a shorter period of like really cold weather so like you'll see them all the way up until like December and then they'll go away for a while and then they'll come back out and like the end of February beginning of March oh I love that when we're in the middle of holiday nuttiness and we're having warm cocoa and wearing mittens just to think of all of these little lizards just snoozing right like in a big hibernacula just a big ball of lizards right pretty much see in a couple months Brandon Altamos wants to know does parthenogenesis make a species more susceptible to pathogens

and other diseases due to reduced genetic variability compared to sexual reproduction yes because if everybody is the same and then the same thing is killing everybody then you know there's nothing to protect you from yep you're all going down with the shit um you're like thanks mom you're right and she's like oh I know right but oh porka katie chavez wants to know which lizards make the best pets I have zero knowledge about the pet trade okay comes to lizards I'll ask the internet I love you all and I did not want to leave you gazing out of a bus window thinking but what is the best pet lizard so I asked the internet and one site said that the leopard gecko is probably the most popular pet reptile in captivity today they say these small lizards

are available in a variety of pleasing colors and patterns their care requirements are very simple and they are generally docile now where did I get this information about best pet lizards you ask well at bestpetlizard.com so I'm gonna reckon they must be either an authority on the matter or they are just very crafty deceitful gecko lobbyists but katie chavez another patron sarah clips did chime in on the question thread and added crested geckos forever with five hard eyed emojis and I think that lends a certain impassioned authority to her council which brings us to a semantics Amanda rincon wants to know hello what are the differences between lizards and geckos not all succulents are cacti but all cacti are succulents yes so in this the cacti is the gecko

kind of like toads or frogs yeah I guess you have like different families of lizards so then yeah that that works it's all under the lizard umbrella right Renee coley asked I had a green iguana for a while and she made one clutch of eggs while I had her but she ate them um well I would off the top of my head I would just assume that she knows that they weren't flared a wise and so I was like well that's energy I put out guess this energy I'm putting back in instead of just letting them sit there and rot thank god women don't have to do that once a month right you're like I made it let me use it yeah last patreon question megan mclean says are there poisonous venomous lizards besides the komodo dragon so uh there are other venomous lizards so you have the mexican beat

it lizard and then you have the healer monster the healer monster is venomous why do the healer monster has such beady skin you know what I mean to let you know that it's venomous don't mess with me I am a very like interestingly brightly colored thing and I am slow moving and I don't want to be bothered but if you bother me you can you can you can have the smoke it is all for you if you want it really I'm telling you you don't what happens with their venom um so it doesn't it's not like that bad for people like for like small mammals and stuff when they eat it it's just like oh I guess I'm dying now but like for people it's more of like their jaws because like when they clamp down on you like that's it you this is if it's on your wrist this is your new watch

so like don't don't mess with them because they had to clamp down and they won't let go how do you get a healer monster off of you the hospital yeah professional yes you do need a professional at that point and you love healer monsters I want to see one in the wild so badly it just has not happened where do you go to look so people have been telling me to go like bear canyon and Sabino Canyon and I've been going and like I haven't seen anything yet although I might have seen a mountain lion I'm not sure I might have gotten eaten almost eaten by it I'm not 100 percent sure and so like we were walking from the parking lot to the trails and we didn't even make it to an actual trail yet and then I was just like hmm that looks interesting hmm are those eyes

and they're like kind of high up and like they're forward facing and I was just like do you see that and like she was like no let's go and so like we just turned around and left at that point we weren't even looking for healer monsters anymore we were just like let's just let's just walk around because she's never done it before and I was because like like I'm the friend who's like drags my friends to go do no experiences and what would you do if you saw a healer monster in the wild I'm probably cry I'd be so happy this happy tears where do they hang out in the wild under rocks around rocks underground from the vast majority of the year people have been telling me too is that everybody who's seen one this year has been

telling me that they've been seeing them on the roads like just crossing the road really I never see it when I'm driving along the road Erin says that between the two summers she spent as an undergrad in Arizona plus three years in grad school she has wanted to see a healer monster for five years five years I'm gonna cross my fingers that there's a healer out there that you get to spot and you have a moment with it that doesn't involve the hospital same yes you know have a safe distance with wildlife it's totally cool to go out looking for it and finding it but safe distances y'all like oh good and now that would be a good and a bad thing but what is the worst thing about your job what's so it sucks uh-huh something's gotta suck I guess like

you know once you're in the field for like four weeks at a time and you still got you know another two weeks to go you're like okay I'm I'm tired of this now I'm ready to be home do you travel a lot for field work um so and the the cheer cows are about two and a half three hours away from Tucson so like once I'm out there I'm out there and I'm not coming back until the season is over and when is that season usually like so it varies um for lizard people it can be anywhere from like May through September but I'm going in July yeah which brings me to another question is there such a thing as a shape-shifting lizard person I wouldn't know because it changed its shape so that it could you know conceal itself for me but I'm not gonna say no you never know

you guys don't ever have to do field work with the Illuminati to see if there's shape-shifting lizard aliens feel like I got one oh I wish that would be cool what is the best thing about lizards or your job the best thing for me is just being able to like handle these animals without causing them like a whole lot of stress and then I'm like oh I can see you I can learn more about you I also have like the opportunity to take undergrad students out with me through the doors program conservation scholars program and so um I get to teach them about lizards and they get to do their own like mini projects and like it's a lot of fun being able to just go out with them and you know learn together and explore together that's pretty fun any advice for people who want to be

serologists um I would say to you know get out there and find a mentor I think that's what's really been good for me I've been lucky enough to have two really great mentors so George for undergrad and um Michael Bogan for grad school have both been like phenomenal and once you have an interest just finding those people who would really support you like I feel like that's key like once you have those people who will have your back then you're you're set of course you're gonna like run into hardships but they'll help you you know get over those obstacles yeah that's great I've heard that before that a lot of people um who are really successful really recommend finding a mentor and a lot of people are too afraid to ask but yeah they don't realize that

mentors do want to help like uh you know I'm sure that you'll you're a mentor to other people already and you will probably continue to be yeah and I mean also like I get being too afraid to ask because like I'm definitely one of those people where it's like I have to prepare myself for like talking to new people and meeting new people and like because like I have like you know that social anxiety I'm just like oh what if I'm weird I'm walking weird right now my my tongue isn't working quite right there's spit there's spit coming down my face oh my goodness the spit like and so it's like like there's definitely like a whole lot of practice there and then you also have to like get over that fear of people telling you know because like you know if you ask enough people somebody's gonna say

yes and hopefully it's one of the people who you actually want and then you know you'll take good opportunities as they come you don't have to take all opportunities because you know not all opportunities are good opportunities or like the right ones for you but definitely just like not being afraid to go after what you want and then just being like okay this is what I want these are the things I have to do to get there this person told me no but this person over here might say yes and sometimes when people tell you no it's not because they don't like you or because they don't believe in you they might not have time and so then it's just like okay this person said no hey I know you said no but can you have some other resource like can I have some other resources

from you like do you know somebody who you can put me in contact with or you know who should I go talk to next or like what direction should I go in and like a lot of times people will be like okay well yeah I said no but here are these other things I got you for that and sometimes people would just mean and you just have to write that off like but that's good life advice for any job all of that is like such solid life advice you could use if you are a clothing designer or you know if you any aspiration you have that is such solid advice that is so good to hear if you just have that kind of resilience which I think science fosters a lot of resilience because there's a lot of resilience and data and experiments and now what about parting piece of advice how do you find

that lizard if you are playing find that lizard any strategies or is it just attentiveness so like real life for the game the game the game turn your brightness all the way up and then have like a strategy like like for me like when I'm like hmm I need to find a picture for this game today and I don't know where this lizard is in it and if it is in my phone there's a 50% chance that there's a lizard here so I turn my brightness all the way up and then I start at one quarter and I go down and then I go over a little bit and then I go back up and then I go over a little bit go back down and I'm just like scanning the picture and so like I find it and then sometimes I'm just like well maybe next time I love that sometimes you have to find the lizard yes I definitely do

that's how I know that there's like always a lizard in the photo because I spend a long sometimes I spend a long time looking for these photos to make sure that there's actually one in there you're like I'm not only the master of this I'm also a player yes um and where can people find you so they can find me on twitter and instagram at afro underscore herper so a f r o underscore h e r p e r um and yeah per usual there will be links in the show notes and also up on my website at alleyward.com slash oligies slash serology and also get the frick ready for find that lizard on wednesdays and I just find out that erin has a patreon set up at patreon.com slash find that lizard in case you'd like to support these efforts you're gonna have a lot of new players yeah so

exciting I hope you guys like it thank you for having me it's been great it was so much fun I was so nervous and like no reason to be nervous we're the best you're my favorite serologist literally yeah so ask smart serologists stupid questions and salute the lizards salute the lizards again more links are up at alleyward.com slash serology and we are at oligies on instagram and on twitter come say hi there I'm at alleyward with one l on both oligies merch is available at oligiesmerch.com thank you bonnie dutch and shannon feltis who host the brand new comedy podcast you are that for helping with merch you can post your photos and tag them oligies merch so we can repost you on instagram on merch mondays and thank you erin talbert and hannah lipo who admin the

oligies podcast facebook group full of nice people and thanks to whoever started the oligies podcast subreddit to chat about episodes thanks to jared sleeper of the mental health podcast make a bad brain for editing assistance and also big thanks to the mustachioed chameleon of the podcasting world host of the parkast and see Jurassic right steven ray morris for editing this all together each week could not do it without you nick thorburn wrote and performed the theme music and if you listen to the end of the episode each week you know i tell you a secret i learned the hard way that if you get something shipped to you in like a big box you open that outside because sometimes there's a thirsty warehouse cockroach waiting in the box and i don't want to talk about it ever

ever ever ever ever goodbye hackadermin college homiology cryptozoology litology and technology meteorology nephrology seriology the lizards are a buck each the parrot is five hundred dollars that's a hell of a good parrot although i could get 500 lizards for the same price girls like swarms of lizards right