Ologies with Alie Ward - Scorpiology (SCORPIONS) with Lauren Esposito

Episode Date: April 9, 2019

Scorpions: the victims of undue shade. If you've ever wanted to impress a date with weird facts THIS IS THE EPISODE FOR YOU. A handful of people on planet Earth have a PhD in scorpions and Dr. Lauren Esposito is one of them. She spills the beans on how venom works, what's up with the blacklight glow effect, how dangerous they *really* are, what all the movies get wrong, the best names for scorpions, where she's traveled to look under rocks, where a scorpion's butt is, if scorpions dance or make out (SPOILER: YES), what good mothers they are, how big they used to be millions of years ago and how -- technically speaking -- they are not poisonous. Also: how much does a gallon of venom cost? Oh, and why she started the visibility campaign 500 Queer Scientists. Get this one in your ears right away. Follow Dr. Esposito at twitter.com/arachnologynerd or instagram.com/caribales and check out500QueerScientists.comSponsor links: Calm.com/Ologies, KiwiCo.com/Ologies, LinkedIn.com/OlogiesThis week's donation went to: www.Islandsseas.orgMore links at alieward.com/ologies/scorpiologyBecome 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 a lady in front of you in the checkout with 26 items. Who doesn't realize she's in the express lane? It is fully oblivious to your glares. Alleyward. Back with another episode of oligies. So congrats for not skipping this one. You did it. If it's in autoplay and you're like, you do play the scorpion one, it's too late bitch.

It's playing. You're in this now. Don't press stop. Don't. This one is amazing. I promise that there are facts in this episode. You will drop in conversation and it will make you one fucking forgettable. Okay, first really quick, thank you patrons for making this show possible via patreon.com

slash oligies. For as little as a dollar a month, you can submit questions to oligists and buckle the hell up because I'm about to record like 10 episodes in the next few weeks and there are so many questions you can submit. So hop on board. Thank you to everyone in oligies merch available at alleyward.com and for tagging oligies merch. So I can repost it on Mondays. So thanks to everyone who makes sure that they are subscribed and leaves a rating and

a review. You know, I read them. I pick a fresh one each week. This one, Erica Patipoff says, I've always loved science and learning about the crazy world we live in, but I bought into the idea that scientists were all super brainy people in lab coats who preferred sterile labs to dealing with normal people. Where did I get that idea from? Not only do I love all the oligy subjects, but each oligist is so gosh darn down to earth

and knowledgeable and excited and someone I would love to nerd out with over a beer. This podcast fills the role of the scholastic book fair from Minority Elementary School Days. Erica Patipoff, thank you for reminding me of the soft cover paradise that was the scholastic book fair. Okay, Scorpiology. Hell to the yes. This is a real ology.

It's a subset of arachnology, arachnids. And Scorpion comes from the Greek for, are you ready for this? For Scorpion. Okay, that is not something that made me say, oh my God. All right, so this oligist I met under very, very weird circumstances two years ago in a dusty field in the middle of nowhere at a festival for burning man types. Well, we were both speaking on a panel about science. We were a little wide eyed and just kind of sussing things out.

I dug her immediately. I've wanted her on for so long. Scheduling was difficult, but she was in LA for a 500 queer scientist conference and to accept the 2019 Walt Westman Award for her support that she provides LGBTQ people in STEM. This is where we're going to throw in some air horns. I think we need some air horns for that. Now I went to her hotel just giddily and I asked her one million questions.

We covered myths about scorpions, what big pinchers mean, it's movie magic. How lethal are these critters? Where is their butt? Do they make out with each other? Stories about scorpions glow in the dark, magic, getting stung and also why hiding under a rock is beneficial for some insects, but can be very difficult for people emotionally. So bust out your black light. Keep your ears on alert for STEM advocate, science communicator, researcher, expedition

leader and curator at the California Academy of Sciences, Scorpiologist Dr. Lauren Esposito. Okay, so you are, I looked this up, you're an arachnologist, but I saw that there is a subset that is Scorpiology. There is Scorpiology, so I'm technically speaking a Scorpiologist, but I've been trying to brought in my horizons and be an arachnologist and study more other kinds of arachnids aside from scorpions. So I'm a budding arachnologist and an accomplished Scorpiologist. Your business card should say accomplished Scorpiologist.

Now I met you a couple of years ago in the desert at a festival, a symbiosis festival. I was like shell shocked I think when I met you, I was like, I don't know what's going on. There's so many people and I'm pretty sure they're all high on drugs. I know. There were so few pants and shirts worn. I remember in the middle, was it in the middle of our panel or was it, I gave it like another little talk so I can't remember which one it was, but like a fully naked guy just walking

to the tent and he was so high and he just walked up to the front of the stage and was just standing there like mesmerized, like fully naked. It was one of the, one of the stranger places I think we've communicated science. Yeah, but it's good, right? Like it's like take, like you got it, you got to get it in there whenever you can. Yeah, if you've got a captive audience, talk to them about scorpions. I remember meeting you and you told me you were a Scorpion expert and I was like, how many Scorpion experts are there?

And you're like, not many. And I have bragged about you so many times. We're like, I met a Scorpion expert. There's like 10 in the world. How many people study Scorpions with the depth that you do? There's definitely not many of us. And I would say like people that have like a PhD in Scorpions, a dozen at most. Oh my God.

Are you ever in the same room? Rarely. Yeah. Scorpion biologists I think are like kind of like Scorpions. Like they're like, not really particularly keen on meeting each other, like slightly combative, but incredibly intelligent and persistent. I mean, present company included, I guess. What drew you to Scorpions?

Oh, that's such a complicated question, like nothing really. It was kind of like serendipity. I grew up in the desert Southwest, so I saw Scorpions certainly as a kid, but I wasn't particularly like intrigued or wanting to dedicate my life to the study of these animals. And then I, but I was like super into nature and I loved like turning over all the pavers in my mom's garden and looking for cockroaches and earwigs and stuff, which she didn't love, but also especially didn't love when I brought him inside alive. And my mom's a biologist and eventually she taught me how to make a killing jar so that

instead of bringing her live cockroaches, I would bring her euthanized cockroaches. Oh, what is a killing jar? Is it just like a cotton ball with ethanol? No, it's a cotton ball with fingernail polish remover and like an old peanut butter jar. Oh, my God, it sounds a killing jar. Sounds so much more like grotesque and morbid. Yeah, like, yeah. Like here, take this killing jar and go out into the garden.

No, but it's and it's euthanasia. It's like a humane way of quickly euthanizing insects. And so my mom taught me how to make one of these. And and I would like collect insects from the garden and make an insect collection and old egg cartons. Cool. And but then I grew up and like forgot that I liked that stuff because I was a teenager and was mostly into like, I don't know, doing what teenagers do. Cause of trouble, cause of caucus.

Yeah, like like rebel rousing and getting on people's lawns, turning up the music too loud. Yeah, toilet, papering, you know, those kinds of things and and then like halfway through college, I, I took an entomology class and was like, oh my God, I love this. And then I applied for a summer internship at the American Museum of Natural History, not knowing it was going to be an internship studying scorpions, which it was. And and I got it and I showed up and they like dumped me in the lap of a new curator at the American Museum, Lorenzo Prindini, who would later become my PhD advisor.

So she and this new curator spent the summer figuring out a research system and then for newbie Lauren, the New York City subway system, probably. And then when the internship was over, she realized she loved science, but she didn't want to go to medical school like she thought she'd rather be outdoors and studying nature. So she thought graduate school. So she contacted her curator from the internship and he said, yo, come back, get your PhD working with me in these freaking scorps.

So sick. And she was like, toy. I think that was the confo like moved to New York and do a PhD. Like, absolutely. I'll do that. Are there even scorpions in New York? No, there's no scorpions in New York. I didn't think so. There's none at all. I mean, there's a museum full of probably the world's greatest

collection of scorpions, but there's certainly no living scorpions. But the good news is you can hop on a plane from New York and get just about anywhere in the world relatively quickly. And I did it was scorpions or die, which I feel like scorpions does. They do have a high stakes reputation pretty much like that. I think scorpions like kind of like even more so than spiders. Everybody's like, oh, they're they're definitely going to kill you. Oh, sure.

Any encounter will be lethal for you, for sure. Yeah. If you see a scorpion from six feet away, you will drop dead later that day, even if you have no contact. It's going to jump across the room and go flying. Like, like wings are going to come out of its body and it will try to kill you no matter what. They are ruthless, secretive and highly organized. They are not. We will address this later.

Now, at what point when you were studying them, did you say, holy shit, these are cool? You know, it was really it started when I was doing that undergraduate internship. And I realized, like, men, scorpions are amazing for so many reasons. Who boy, how to get ready for this? Oh, hot damn. OK, here we go. Here we go. One, they were the first terrestrial arthropod predators. So before anything else was on land, scorpions came on land.

These little beasts, they weren't little. Then they were like the ancestors of scorpions were like a meter. They were huge. Three feet. Yeah, three feet. Maybe even bigger, maybe five in some cases. That's crazy. And they were these like underwater marine predators that were like ruling the oceans at the time.

And and eventually some people have hypothesized that because we found these ancient trackways alongside rivers of scorpions. So they're little footprints embedded in rock. Well, it was mud that turned into rock over time. And and they've hypothesized that they were actually became amphibious and were coming up on the land to eat spawning fish. Oh, like grizzlies, right? You know, grizzlies like come in the river and eat the spawning fish.

They were doing the same thing, but they were like the size of grizzlies and they were scorpions. Comes the scorpions, the bigger, the better. Oh, my God, I literally am having like a vertigo. Like I can't just imagining a scorpion the size of like a kiddie pool. Just just like like like a crazy like an alligator. Basically like an alligator. They were these they were called eurypterids, the ancestors of scorpions.

And eventually the gills that they had to breathe underwater were internalized and that allowed them to live on land. And so the scorpions of today basically look identical to the scorpions of four hundred and fifty million years ago. So they've been on earth forever, right? So we can ask all kinds of crazy questions about what happened on earth in the last four hundred and fifty million years by trying to understand the evolutionary history of scorpions.

And so how do you think they got littler and littler? Well, there's like the main driving factor behind why insects and arachnids are not as big as they used to be, as big as the fossils we find, is the oxygen percentage in the air, in the atmosphere. Because scorpions and spiders and insects all basically passively respire so they don't breathe, they don't have lungs where they're breathing in and out. And they don't have closed circulatory systems. They just kind of have blood that like gets pumped around by a heart

just open up in their body. And and so the rate at which oxygen can get to all their tissues that they need for walking around and moving and eating and doing all the things is limited by how much concentration of oxygen there is in the air. And over time, the oxygen concentrations gone down. So Lauren explained that when life started coming on land and there were more and more air breathing critters, the carbon dioxide output increased and the oxygen levels went down.

So when you have a less fuel, you downsize. So think of training in a hammer for a fiat, but slowly as a result of evolution and all of your relatives dying off before you. OK, so apart from the last four hundred and fifty million years of history, where can we find scorpions? And so where do scorpions live? Clearly not in New York City. Oh, my gosh, they live basically everywhere,

that that there's not major freezes for long parts of the year. OK, so like like imagine a place. Scorpions in your underwear. There's probably scorpions there. They're not in Antarctica because there's really nothing. I mean, aside from like penguins and things in the ocean. There's not much in Antarctica bacteria. They're also not in the Arctic because it's cold and it's like snow on the ground

all year round, but they are in places like the Alps. So you wouldn't expect them to be in the Alps or like the the upper reaches of the Andes like in Argentina. There's scorpions. My real area of speciality is the Neotropic. So I go to the Caribbean, Central America, South America. But I've been to places like islands off the coast of of Equatorial Africa, Southeast Asia.

I don't know. I've been like all over the world looking for those little buggers. At the point when I decided to do a PhD, I think that that was part of the intrigue for me was that there was this potential to travel the world doing science and incorporating two things that I love, which is traveling and science. But, you know, what's kind of funny is like recently, I remembered this thing that happened to me when I was a kid and it was in the sixth grade.

And I had a homeroom teacher who gave us this assignment. And the assignment was to write an essay about what you want to do when you grow up, like pretty straightforward, right? Like I feel like that happens all the time in school. But I was so upset about it because I didn't know what I wanted to be. And like, I remember even like crying at home over this assignment because it was like so frustrating for me that I had to write what, like, know at this age of, I don't know, how old are you in sixth grade, 10, 11?

What I should want to what I should do when I grew up. I know lots of things I didn't want to do, but I didn't know what I did want to do. And eventually I settled on, I wasn't sure, but I knew I either wanted to be a rocket scientist or a hobo. And I mean, hobo in the sense of like, like train, traveling, the world hobo, right? Just freewheeling. OK, quick aside to learn you on some hobo facts.

Cool. Cool. OK. So the word hobo is of unknown origin, but it may be from homeward bound, like hobo or homeless boy hobo, or from hobo, meaning like a farmhand who would travel riding the rails looking for jobs. Can I just tell you a little bit more about it? OK, great. So they had specialized lingo, such as, for example, to flip meant to board a moving train.

And a mulligan is a type of community stew created by several hobos, combining whatever food they had into one big pot. Also, a jungle was a hobo camp and to catch the westbound meant to die. Is that not poetry? Catching the westbound. Also, they made a code of conduct for hobos at the National Hobo Convention in 1889. And the code of conduct is legit, starting with one, decide your own life.

Don't let another person run or rule you. Two, when in town, always respect the local law and officials. Try to be a gentleman at all times, sexist, but a good rule. Three, don't take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos. Four, always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. They also had codes of contact to stay clean, to report anyone who harmed children.

We should all be as decent as hobos. Also, they had these symbols that they would leave to guide other hobos. This led me to a web page for the National Cryptologic Museum in Maryland, which, yes, I now have to do a cryptology episode so bad. OK, so in closing, hobos, clean, kindly, respectful folks who traveled for work and saw the land. And so, for Lauren, is either that or be a rocket scientist. And I feel like, actually, I'm like, hit that intersection, you know?

Like, I'm doing science. I'm like, using technological tools like genetics and genomics. And at the same time, traveling the world. So I am exactly in the middle of rocket scientists and hobos. Oh, my God. I nailed it. And now, tell me a little bit about the basic structure of a scorpion. Like, what are we dealing with? Because I feel like they got crab in the front.

They got snake face in the back with the venom. Like, they got the business end in the back. Yeah. What? It's like a mullet, right? So scorpions, like all arachnids, have have two primary body parts. They have a prosoma, which is like the head. And they have a pistasoma, which is like the body. So like picture a spider, there's two main chunks. But scorpions have this extra little business and which is the tail.

And their prosoma and a pistasoma are sort of fused. So so there's not like a real delineation between the head and the body. And then up in the front, they have two pairs of appendages. They have chelisserie, which are their mouth parts. And they have these chewing mouth parts that they use basically to like rip up. Meat, it is raw meat before they get it in down their gullet. And then they have claws that they use mostly for for grabbing on to prey. Like in some scorpions, they just use the claws to to grab their prey.

They don't ever actually need to sting them because they have these big chunky claws like picture those those big black emperor scorpions that you see in the movies all the time. They have these huge claws up front and they almost never use their tail and their venom is not very toxic. But other scorpions have these really slender thin claws and they really just use those for manipulating prey items and mostly use the tail and really powerful super toxic venom for disabling their prey

and escaping predators. Stubby, stubby claws in the front tail on the back. And at the very end of the tail is the stinger. And the stinger is a looks kind of like a bulb, like a light bulb. And at the end of that is a hypodermic needle. And inside of the bulb is a layer of of secretories, cells, so cells that secrete toxins. And it's surrounded by muscle that allows them to squeeze those toxins out of the cells and into the hypodermic needle

that they used to inject into their prey. OK, so their venom bulb is kind of like one of those little squirty things you would jam into your earhole to flush out funky chunks. Only it's a nerve toxin made by DNA that they probably had for something else, but evolved it to become venom. So what is in this exactly? But the really crazy thing is that their venom is not just one thing. It's actually a complex cocktail of all sorts of different components.

And they have things like antimicrobials in there, enzymes that break open tissue and help them digest. And then they also have these complex neuropeptides. And neuropeptides are basically things that when they interact with your nervous system, tell your nerves to either send a signal when there's not supposed to be sending a signal or they inhibit the transmission of signals between cells. Neuropeptides, by the by, are chains of amino acids that form these protein like molecules that your nervous system uses to communicate.

And the neuropeptides bind to receptors and activate a bunch of events inside a neuron. The neuropeptides in venom can jack that system by cutting off the neurons from talking to each other or sending signals when they shouldn't be talking. So venom is like when someone grabs your phone and starts DMing people, it shouldn't or withholding a text from your boss. OK, what if you're like a cricket and you don't have a boss or a phone? What does that do if you're prey? Yeah, so if you're prey, what it might do is disable you, keep you from moving,

send you into a seizure, really just dis incapacitate you very quickly so that you can be eaten and make baby scorpions with the energy that you get from your prey. But if you're a predator, what it does is it sends pain signals to your brain, telling your brain that you're on fire. Oh, my God, we're having a fire sale. Oh, my God. When you're really not. And that pause, that signal interruption caused by the scorpion venom

allows the scorpion a moment to escape from the prey while the predator is reacting to this signal that it's forcing its body to send to itself. What types of scorpions have venom that is powerful enough to say incapacitate like a dog or a human? Like how much do they get a bad rep? Yeah, well, they get a pretty bad rep, I would say overall. There's like so far we've discovered about 2,500 species of scorpions, give or take. And about 25 of those are something that are a concern for a healthy human.

So and there's, you know, maybe a dozen or two more that are a concern for people that have a compromised immune system or are elderly or very young. So the majority of scorpions, that means like less than 10 percent of all scorpions are something that are really dangerous that we need to be worried about. But that being said, all scorpions do have a stinger and they can jab it into your body and they can inject things that are in their venom. But oftentimes those things are more mild than a bee stinger or wasps sting. Oh, OK. What happens if you do get stung by a scorpion?

Well, has that ever happened to you? It's happened one time for a long time. I got to say no. OK. I'm a professional and I take precautions. Suit of armor. And but like a year ago now. Yeah, actually, almost exactly one year ago, I was at this event and I was passing scorpions around that I had found in the forest to little children for them to hold as one does.

And it like I was passing a scorpion from one child to another and it got grumpy. Like, I think it had had too many grubby kid hands on it and it stung me. And I was like almost confused when it was stinging me. I was like, what are you doing? Because I'd I'd handled these kind of scorpions like many, many times. It's a scorpion called the Pacific Redwood Scorpion or Pacific Forest Scorpion. We have them all throughout the Bay Area and northward.

And I was like, what is what is it? What are you doing? What's happening here? This is not normal. And then it hurt. You know, my finger kind of throbbed for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And it felt like if I had jammed a thumbtack in my finger, you know, like if you jam a thumbtack in your finger, your finger throbs, but then it went away and nothing.

There was no long term consequences. Let me step back and say there's two major groups of scorpions. There's a group called the boothid scorpions. It's it's one of the oldest lineages of scorpions. And it's also has the greatest number of species compared to all the other lineages. And those ones all make neurotoxins that affect mammals. So they have they make neurotoxins that can interact with our nervous system. Again, these are the boothids and it looked everywhere

to find out where the name boothid comes from. And I think it's from the Greek for ox or cow, because their stings were thought to be real calculus. Again, boothids. And so all of those have a more painful sting or the ones that are potentially lethal to humans belong to that group, the boothids. And then all the other scorpions are non boothids. All the other groups of scorpions and all those guys

typically don't make neurotoxins that affect mammal nervous systems. But considering the reputation of scorpions, they do carry some dramatic names like the black spitting thick tailed scorpion or the man killer or death stalker. These kind of sound like 1970s carnival rides. So bitchin PS. When I googled scorpions with cool names, I pulled up an article entitled No joke from a baby blog.

Ten fierce baby names for your Scorpio. Given I am a Scorpio, I had to read it. And among the suggestions for your autumn infant, who will undoubtedly cause drama are the names Crispin, Evening, Steel and Nix. Not unlike Scorpion venom itself, this article caused some involuntary sweating and gagging. But scientific names are

jumped up by the scientists that first recognize that species as being a new species. Have you gotten to name any? I have, yeah. What? We discover new scorpions all the time. There's like maybe 50 or so added a year to my knowledge. How do you decide how to name them? Well, different people have different approaches

and a name is really considered like something in honor of. So if you use a person or a thing, you're naming it in honor of that person or that thing. And oftentimes people take the approach where they're like naming it something that describes its physical attributes. So the name has like Latin words for slender or pale or yellow or whatever. Other people use names that like come from indigenous languages where they're found, which is one of the things that methods I like to use

because I feel like it's it's honoring the place where the scorpion is from and integrating the indigenous knowledge. That's great. Ask me how many species I've discovered. How many? None. Oh, we could fix that if you want. Can I come to the desert and just turn over some rocks? We like, do we know this guy yet? My favorite place is the tropical jungle.

So you could come to the tropical jungle and do that. Oh, my God, it's just sign up. Just large luggage, put me in it. Oh, my God. Now, when you're discovering scorpions, I understand that there are black lights involved. There are, yeah. So tell me everything about why they fluoresce under black lights.

Every time I see it, I feel like I'm looking at like a Bob Marley poster and I'm on drugs in college. Like what's happening? It might be. That is so trippy. So scorpion, all scorpions fluoresce. It's like a trait universal to scorpions. What fluorescence means, basically, is that that there's a pigment

in the exoskeleton of scorpions that's embedded in there. It's called cormorant. So side note, cormorant is often found in plants. And according to this Wikipedia prose, it has, quote, a sweet odor resembling the scent of newly mown hay. It's also found in cassia cinnamon, in fake vanilla and in perfumes. Oh, and it makes venomous arthropods glow like ravers. Also, PS, I never did drugs in college.

I was straight edge goth with like five jobs and a bunch of science lab homework. But my roommates owned a six foot bong. So I observed a lot of black light staring anyway, cormorant. What it does is it takes in light waves just from light, ambient light, and it excites those white those light waves and and then projects them back at a higher wavelength. So that's what causes the fluorescence. It's not like like a reflection or it's actually like an excitation of light beams.

And and so they all fluoresce this this bright like neon toxic sludge green under a ultraviolet light. And we don't really know why they have this feature. There's there's a few possibilities. One, it's just a byproduct of how their exoskeleton forms, like the the process in which they form their exoskeleton creates a fluorescence. Or alternatively, it has like a function that that's helpful for them. And there's a few possibilities.

One that's been proposed is that it's a whole body light detection system. Oh, my God, so it allows them to detect when there's light, which I think could very well be, but also they have eyes. So typically they can see if there's light outside or not. So it could be another function as well. The other functions that have been thought up are that it's a way to tell other animals that they're dangerous, like bees are black and and and yellow. And that black and yellow is like a sign that they're dangerous.

Scorpions are active at night and at night colors don't show up very well. And things that are active at night can't see very well in color. So so many things that are that are doing things at night have have evolved greater UV capabilities. And so flowers that bloom at night have a UV pattern that attracts pollinators. So scorpions that are active at night might want to UV pattern to say, hey, wait, I'm dangerous and you should stay away from me like a warning color. Or they're actually trying to mimic something else like a flower

and attract things so that they can eat them. Oh, my God. So those are all the possibilities. Do you think that their ancient ancestors that were ginormous could fluoresce? Well, there is some geologists mentioned that there's some really well preserved fossils that preserved cuticle and the cuticle fluoresces. Oh, my God. So side note, this is due to their glowing hyaline layer in their axis skeleton. Also, did you know that horseshoe crabs also glow under UV light

and so do proteins in human saliva, sweat, urine, semen, just in case you like checking hotel rooms for secretions. How many black light flashlights do you have? You know what, I feel like I just like go through them like like candy. Like I can't even keep track of them 90 percent of the time. But I do have two that are really nice ones that I like spent a lot of money buying from a company that like crafts them. And those ones are my babies.

I know where they are at all times. If someone wanted to go out and look for critters at night, do you think getting a black light and just yeah, things out? Yeah, I mean, like in some places, they saw my home depot. You can go on a scorpion hunt. And the thing is the trick is to go out at night because one, you can't really see anything with the black light during the day, because it's not a very bright wavelength of light.

So it gets washed out by daylight and two scorpions are nocturnal. So they're active at night, not not during the day. And in case you're looking for a black light, bug hunt or a guess that splatter game in your hotel, you can get a UV flashlight for around ten bucks. But then I was curious as to how much a really good one costs. And I searched on Amazon the highest to lowest price. There was one on there.

It's 400 watt ultraviolet LED emitter. It's six grand. And then they jumped down to a couple hundreds. Also, at this point, we talked a little bit about the zodiac sign for scorpios. We're like, and it's like, OK, if you're born a certain time of the year, there's a connect the dots with some stars. It really could have been anything. Sure, does the constellation look a little bit like a scorpion?

Maybe it also looks kind of like a Bissell steam cleaner. So who knows, instead of a scorpio, I could have just been like a carpet cleaner. Now, what about scorpions in movies or pop culture? Is there any movie that really does a good job with scorpions or one that really gets your goat? And do you know what? Like, I feel like they're always the problem I have with movies and scorpions is that they're always very inaccurate.

OK, like why in every single movie does it have to be the emperor's scorpion? Emperor's scorpions are from tropical Africa. They most definitely do not live in deserts. There's definitely no black scorpions living in a like white, sandy desert. It doesn't exist. They want to blend in with their environment. They're not trying to stand out like black on white background. So why?

Why? I just don't understand it. Like, can they consult with a biologist and figure out what the appropriate colored species is for the place that they're shooting? Are the emperor's scorpions easier to handle? Yeah, I mean, they're really common in the pet trade. And actually, for that reason, they're the only scorpion that's considered to be threatened or endangered because they've been over harvested for the pet trade because of all those movies, you know.

So some researchers think that scorpion venom may have cancer fighting properties or could be used to develop like anti-inflammatory drugs. And it's reported that a gallon of scorpion venom is worth. Are you ready? Thirty nine million dollars, thirty nine million dollars. And a year or two ago, there was this get rich quick scheme that started to spread in the Middle East, countries like Iran. It was just promising a fortune to anyone who could poach or raise

and milk scorpions of their venom. But it's turned out to be a total bust. So labs are not interested in amateur venom milkers. So what are they going to do with all these scorpions now? I guess just release them, they're saying, or perhaps sell them as food. Scorpions can be like eating tiny land lobsters. But before you fasten a postage stamp sized, tiny plastic bib, Dr. Esposito says that most scorpions don't even reach sexual maturity

until the age of five or six. So she gets a little sad thinking about crunching and munching them. Like they can live to be twenty five. Yeah, I feel like lay off the scorpions. Yeah, like lay off of them. Yeah. And the other crazy thing about scorpions that I always that I'm that I was struck by when I first learned about them is that they the moms give birth to live babies. That was my next question.

I've seen a picture of scorpions that are just to have a backpack full of baby scorpions. Yeah. What is happening there? Yeah. So they so they get so while their courtship starts by the what we call a padu, they actually dance. They do like a ballroom dance. They're actually quite refined animals. So the males approach the females and grab onto their hand. They face her and grab under her hands and then they do this like dance

like back and forth where he like leads her back and forth. And then he does this thing called callous oral massage, which means he's like kind of touching her her mouth parts with his mouth parts. It's basically like scorpion kissing and sometimes in some species, the male will sting the female in a particular place on their body. And we don't know what they're doing. They're probably injecting some sort of pheromone or some kind of slight very mild sedative to keep from getting eaten because usually they're smaller.

Oh, my God. And if if he does the dance well, because she likes his moves, she likes his ballroom dancing, then he'll deposit this this gelatinous stalk on the ground. It's like a thing made out of like a jelly sort of material. And at the top of it, he puts a little sperm packet and then he leads her over it and she she'll pick it up with her genital opening. Oh, my God.

And then she stores the sperm in this specialized structure in her body and decides when she wants to inseminate herself and also with whose sperm. Does she have different pockets like Mrs. Jules, like this is whatever? It's unclear how they like differentiate once they've been inseminated, if they have like a way to separate the packets or if the packets sort of stay, that part is unclear. It's her business. But at the point when she does decide to inseminate herself,

she has this complex over uterus system. It looks almost in many species, it looks almost kind of like a figure eight. And there's little spaces within that over uterus where the embryos start to develop. And once they reach parturition age, she gives birth gestation period. You ask seven to nine months similar to a human or up to 14 months for emperor scorpions, just think they have eight ankles that could swell up walking around pregnant. What troopers?

Some female scorpions are just pregnant most of the time, just most of their life. Kind of like my Catholic grandma, who had 11 children. And little baby scorpions come out of her birth canal. Oh, my God, is that Vivaparis or what is it called? Yeah, it's viviparis. Oh, viviparis. It's viviparis, yeah. Clearly a word I read more than I say.

Viviparis and oviviparis, which is where you internalize eggs. And when the eggs hatch, you give birth, but these are fully viviparis. So they're actually like connect, like same as humans, kind of. They're the embryos are connected to the mom via membrane. So we're receiving nutrition directly from her. And then they come out and they're kind of in like a amniotic sack sort of. And it's clear. And once they give birth, the babies break the sack and climb up onto her arms.

And while she's giving birth, she does this thing called a birth basket where she arches her back up because the opening is like on their stomach. She arches her back up and makes her her arms like into like a circle, like kind of touches her hands together and makes like a little circle. And so they'll crawl up her hands onto her back and then they'll stay up there for depends on the species, but they'll stay up there until they've molted for the first time. So they've shed their exoskeleton and and gotten a little bigger. And and in that first period, they're kind of almost like a little larval still,

like they don't look like a normal scorpion. But as soon as they have that first molt, they look just like a little tiny miniature scorpion. Did I just watch several macro videos of baby scorpions being squeezed out of a scorpion vagina while sipping my morning coffee? I sure did. It looked like if you were to squeeze unpeeled shrimp through a drinking straw, just one after the other, like coming through a water slide, just bloop, bloop.

So then they just climb up on the back when they live there, like people on deck of a yacht until they molt. So they just hop off and they're like, toodaloo. Yeah, like they they'll kind of start coming off her back and then getting back on for a little bit. At some point, she's like hasn't eaten in months and months and she's like hungry and she'll just eat those little suckers if they don't leave her alone. Oh, my God.

But and but in some species, they do kind of live this semi cooperatively, like they're still living together in the same area for a long period of time. So the moms actually like will live in a burrow with the babies. I don't know, like months, years, maybe, and they'll just live around each other and they tolerate each other really well. And then she gives birth from anywhere from two to I think the upper limit that anybody's ever recorded is like one fifth 40, like high one forties.

Wow. Maybe let's say one fifty, call it even. One hundred and fifty babies. That would be like a lot and they all pile up on her back. Oh, my God. And like a big, giant pile. What a party. Yeah. And now, what about? Have you ever seen one in the wild that's covered in tenobibus?

Yeah. So like to find scorpions, I go out during the day and flip over rocks and logs and things that they like to hide under. And oftentimes I'll flip over a rock or a log and they'll be a mom with babies under there in the right season. Like spring. Is it always kind of a special treat to see one? Yeah. And you know, like I collect scorpions and euthanize them in order to study them. And I always leave the moms. Yeah.

I don't want to I don't want to take those moms and all those little babies. There's no need for that. Is it hard to collect and euthanize them for research? Or do you feel like you're like the more we learn about them, the more we can kind of conserve them as a species? Yeah, I mean, certainly that's for me, the rationalization is that we for most scorpions, we don't know like basic natural history information, like how long they live, how many babies they have, how they mate,

how what they eat, what eats them. We don't know any of that information except for for like half a dozen species. OK, so we have the lowdown on only six out of around 2,500 species. So future scorpiologists, the world is your oyster, which is actually a mollusk. So I guess the world is your earth, Rappaud. So the more information we know, the better we can protect them. And the truth is, they're actually really environmentally sensitive. So most scorpion species, as soon as an environment gets disturbed by humans,

can't survive there anymore. Oh, wow. Here goes the neighbor. And so they're they're good indicators of the relative health of an ecosystem. But yeah, I think I'll say that I didn't get into the business of studying scorpions because I love killing them. Unfortunately, they're not that cooperative sitting under a microscope alive. Yeah. And the only way to identify species and study things like venom or reproduction is to look at them under a microscope.

I think that's all entomologists have to. It's not like. It's definitely a struggle. Yeah, you can't exactly look at them through binoculars and just observe them for 10 hours, like wolves or something. Yeah. And unfortunately, with most invertebrates, we're nowhere close to where we are with with vertebrates in terms of of knowing how many species are out there and what they're doing. Right. Maybe once we get there, we can switch to the binocular.

Yeah. The binocular model. We need like a like a really some really strong binoculars. Very strong. Now, what is some flim flam about scorpions that you would like to debunk? What are some myths that you're like, let's get the record straight people? Well, OK, here's a few. Here's a few things you need to know about scorpions. OK. One, they can't jump. Oh, OK.

It's just a thing. They don't they don't jump. They can't walk. They can they can walk on some vertical surfaces if they're like grainy, like like a rock that has little micro areas to step on. But otherwise, like something that's slick like windows, they could never walk on a window. OK. So they're going to have a hard time getting to you if you see it from like like three feet away, like you don't have to run away.

It's not going to be able to grab you. So with the exception of Arizona, some parts of southern Nevada and some parts of western New Mexico, Lauren says. In the US, there are no scorpions that you have to be concerned about. Oh, OK. Like worst case scenario, it feels like a wasp. Even those ones in Arizona, like they if if you're a healthy adult, you don't have to worry, it's not going to kill you. It will just hurt for a little bit. OK.

You might feel like a little more like an electric shock than a wasp sting. But if you're a child, you want to be safe and not be playing with scorpions in Arizona, just drool a thumb. So that's that's a thing. You have cool tattoos. Do you have any scorpion tattoos? I do not. You don't have to get a scorpion tattoo because like, I don't know. Like, I don't want to go with a cartoon one because I feel like it would bug me

and like a real biologically accurate one. Like, what if something came out wrong? I know, you know, like or what if like the drawing was wrong to start with and I didn't notice it and then like I would have I look at it for the rest of my life. Right. Also, like I do sometimes hate them because like research is really hard. And I have those days where I'm like, I hate you. I don't want to look at you like I look at you all day

and then I'd have to go home and look at it like taking a shower and look at that scorpion. I don't want to see those things. I have so many questions from listeners. Can I ask you? Yeah, it's kind of like a lightning round. Oh, boy. OK, so before we get to your Patreon questions, a few words from the folks who sponsored the show. And one thing about having ads is I get to approve everyone I endorse. And also it makes donations to a cause of theologist choosing possible.

So this week, it's so dope to donate to Islands and Seas. This is a nonprofit that Lauren founded with Eric Steiner. And Islands and Seas is building these small field stations that serve as research facilities for scientists in the area. They also serve as centers for science and environmental education for nearby schools. These stations are carbon minimal. They reuse gray water. They harness green energy also and they offer outreach programs for schools.

They have internships for teenagers interested in science, field guide training. Ah, so good. IslandsSeas.org. That's IslandsPluralSeas.org. So thank you, Lauren and Eric, for starting that. What total badass is with huge hearts, great brains. So donation is going to Islands and Seas. Now, a few words about sponsors making that donation and the production

of this very show possible. OK, back to your questions. OK, so it's kind of like a lightning round. OK, Sonia Karpolevich wants to know, should they be kept as pets? And if yes, do they make good pets? I see. I'm going to say yes, they should. Should there's no reason they shouldn't be kept as pets, but like all things that are kept in captivity, I think it's really important

to have captive bred ones because then that keeps people out of the natural ecosystems from over harvesting, over collecting for the pet trade. So there are some like quite a few species that are really common in the pet trade and are bred in captivity. So if you want a scorpion as a pet, don't go get it out of your backyard. Leave it there. It's doing something important in the ecosystem and rather by one that's been captive bred by by a breeder.

OK, so it's the opposite of dogs. Opposite of dogs, you know, don't rescue one out of the wild. OK, they don't need rescuing there. They're just fine on their own. Got it. I was like, how much do scorpions cost? And I found myself on a website selling medium emperor scorpions for forty nine ninety nine and they have a live arrive guarantee, which I guess when you think of it, it's really an elite selection of people

who when mail the box of scorpions would be disappointed to find that they are not alive scorpions. And Alyssa Katahiss wants to know why is it in the scorpions nature to sting the frog in quotes? Have you heard that? Is there a fable? Yeah, there's a fable, right, where the scorpion is on the frogs back and they're swimming across the scorpion. Commences a frog to give it right across the river and says, like, oh, no, I'll never sting you because if I sting you, we're both going to die.

And then stings it in the middle of the river. And the frog says, why? And it says, because I'm a scorpion, it's in my nature. I mean, I don't know. I guess it's like the point of the fables that people are who they are and don't change sort of. That's the philosophical answer. Let's look at this practically, though.

But a scorpion sitting on a frog's back would never sting the frog because they have all their eyes on the top of their head and they wouldn't even know what they were doing. Their eyes are on the top of their head. Yeah, like facing up towards the sky. How many eyes do they have? It depends, but usually they almost all have three sets of eyes, two in the middle and and then a set of three to six in each corner

of the front of their head. And so they're arranged like in a triangle. And some people have hypothesized that they use the triangular array of eyes to look up into the night sky and navigate by the stars. Oh, my stars. Now, for those who enjoy a good crossword puzzle word or are choked for a conversation on a long car ride with your in-laws, navigating by stars is called astromenotaxis.

Astromenotaxis, there, you know that now. Nelson Chan has a question that I think you are going to enjoy answering. OK, I'm ready. Are all scorpions poisonous? And I know that there is a poison venom discussion to be had. There is. So no scorpions are poisonous because poison is something that's secreted. And then when something else eats that thing, it makes them ill.

All scorpions are venomous, which is something that's secreted and then injected into the destined host like another animal. So there's a delivery apparatus for the venom. So all scorpions are venomous. Not all scorpions are venomous to humans because they don't necessarily have that mammal neurotoxin, but they're all venomous to something. If you ate scorpion venom, would it be poisonous?

No, it's a protein and your stomach acid would do nature it. So if you ate a scorpion, unless it stung you on the way down. Yeah, you're good to go. You're good to go. And then it would still be venomous because it wouldn't be digested. So poison versus venom. But I would like not recommend eating a thumbtack. So like in that sense, maybe not eat the stinger just because it's like sharp.

And I don't know what's going to do in your stomach. Yeah, it seems like not a good like not a good look for anyone. Yeah. And also let them live. Let them live. Can I live? Jordan Jarrett wants to know what your opinion is on the scorpion and honey. I shrunk the kids. They say I love animals, but scorpions are the one animal that just creeps me out. Did you ever see Honey I Shrunk the Kids?

Is there a scorpion in that? Yeah. And well, here's what I'll say about that scorpion. Scorpions are opportunistic predators. So they'll they'll basically eat anything that they can get their hands on. They don't forage during the day. And I want to say like when that happens, it's daytime. So that's inaccurate. It was also an inaccurate species for where it was.

But for sure, scorpions will eat anything they can get their hands on. And that includes like if they could get find like a tiny gecko that they're bigger than they'll eat it. If another scorpion comes along, they'll eat it. If it's a cricket, they'll eat it. If it's a moth, they'll eat it. But they have really low metabolism. So so that is another thing that makes them good pets. They have like one of the lowest metabolism. So if you forget to feed them for like, say a year, they'll be OK.

If you forget a week, they're going to survive. Oh, my God, I didn't know that. They're like camels kind of. J. Owens has a question. If you remove their tails, is it true they die from constipation? And what is their mechanism? If that's true? So maybe I will say that there is some truth to that in that

their anus is actually at the end of their tail right before their stinger. Really? So their like rectum goes all the way through their entire tail. And then like their they have just like a single kind of cloaca thing that has that excretes everything. And they don't have like separate pee and poo situation. And that so it all comes out from right before the stinger. So maybe they could dive constipation

because it would be like ruptured and broken. Yeah, I think they'd probably just dive blood loss, to be honest. That was actually Emily Hawking's question about the waste management system. Where is the but do they pee? Now we know they do. They excrete like uric, uric acid same as other things and other waste products comes out of their butt.

There's this one researcher, Camillo Matoni in Argentina, who has observed that some scorpions will voluntarily break off their tails to escape. And yes, in that case, in the absence of an anus, poo will just build up like emails you don't want to check. But sometimes they can break off another tail segment to get rid of the poo and then continue to live just long enough to mate again. Like, hey, hi, hi. I don't have a stinger.

I do have this stumpy column of impacted poo happening. I got scared once and broke off part of my body. But I would love a chance to just get to know you better. Maybe have several dozen babies. Wade Lee. Hi, Wade. Wade. Hi, Wade.

Hey, Wade. Wants to know, is it true smaller scorpions are more venomous in general? Smiley face emoji. They, it depends on where you are. So it's not a simple yes or no answer. Um, in some places, smaller scorpions are belong to that one group, Boothity. So they are more venomous.

But I would say in general, a better frame of reference is if they have thin hands and either a really long or really fat tail, they're probably more venomous. And if they have big, fat hands and their hands are much broader than the width of their tail, then they're less venomous. So it's not like the overall body size, but the proportion of hands to tail. Situation. So, counterintuitively, big pinchers, less scary. And you know what they say about men with small hands?

You can't trust them. Dory, Gorilla Seals. There's a lot of consonants in that. And I don't know if I said it right. Dory, Gorilla Seals, I think. I trust you. Not scorpion related, but could you tell us about the 500 queer scientists initiative? Why did you start it?

Why do you think it's important? Future plans and Carolyn Swift has the same question and said as a queer scientist. I'd also love the answer to this. Huge thank you to both Dr. E and you and Dory for asking. Well, I am queer and I'm an arachnologist. And I think for most of my professional career and student life, I kept those two aspects of my identity really separate. And when I started my position, I realized that I was the only queer faculty member

at my institution. Really? Yeah. And I'm in San Francisco. I was going to say, you're in San Francisco. Right? San Francisco is like the gay mecca. So I'm the only queer faculty member.

And to my knowledge, I'm the only queer faculty member in the history of the institution. What? Because first of all, we're a small institution. So it's not like a university that has hundreds and hundreds of professors. We have 15 faculty. But still. So but still, it's San Francisco, right?

Yeah. And so I started thinking, like, if I feel this way, I feel like those aspects of my personality are separate. I'm in a really queer friendly place. I'm the only queer faculty member. I feel kind of isolated in that sense. There must be people out there in parts of the world where being LGBT is not a protected class for jobs.

Like you would be fired if people found out at work that you were gay. Or if you're just in a place where, like, culturally, it feels unwelcome to be out and open. Surely if I feel this way in San Francisco, there must be people in other places. And so I decided that I would start a visibility campaign. And it's called 500 Queer Scientists. And we're, we have a website. We also have social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram.

And we take user contributed stories of scientists and science students at all levels from undergraduate all the way through. Deans of universities have contributed their story. And it's really just people sharing their stories of what they do in STEM and and their identity as a LGBTQ AI person and how those things fit together. And and it's been, I think, great for the community to be able to identify each other because often it's like one of those attributes that's that's hidden. It's quiet, but it's a really strong part of your personal identity.

And and so it's hard to identify others that you can just commiserate with or have as role models or as colleagues that you feel comfortable sharing that part of your identity with. And so I think it's been a great way for the community to find each other and connect with one another. How long ago did you start it? We launched last June and we had collected 50 bios of people by email, like emailing all my friends and asking them to email all their friends.

And two weeks later, we had 500. Oh, my God. And now we're eight months in eight. Yeah, eight months in and we have eight hundred and fifty. Wow. And we've had like over a million interactions on social media in those eight months. And you started it? Yeah, I started it with the help of others.

But but certainly it was my little brainchild. And and I'm really happy with what it's become. So you can find 500 queer scientists at 500 queer scientists on Instagram or go to 500queerscientists.com and you can read first person stories such as Charlotte, who says, I am a lesbian and a chemistry student. I made the decision to return to education after spending a long time selling phones for a living. For me, studying chemistry is the most wonderful thing I have ever had

the opportunity to do. It started when my wife and I returned from our honeymoon in New Zealand. All we could think about is how do we go back there? We considered the usual ideas of learning a trade or something similar. Then one day I woke up and hit me. I nudged Bex and said, I want to go back to school. She asked why I told her I wanted to study chemistry. She replied, well, for so I can teach it.

She simply replied, well, then go do it and rolled over and went back to sleep. So here I am. Amy Cherish, student at the University of Manchester, chasing after an interest in radiochemistry and a dream to teach at the academic level. Or Alexi, who writes, I'm bi and a wildlife educator, animal trainer and artist. I floated through college studying biology and social psychology, not knowing what I wanted to do. In an interview where I uttered the phrase elephant diaper,

the managers of the local zoo's Education Department saw something in me that I didn't know was there as someone who was impacted by David Attenborough. I never expected I could be doing the same for kids of color and all kids in general on the ground. But here I am, educator, trainer, scientist and mentor to several queer teens of color. So if there's something missing from your day and that something is crying with pride for total strangers and or making some new friends, do check out 500 queer scientists.

And if you are a queer scientist and you're looking for a place to find some community, maybe share your story, look no further, fam. So follow the folks on there, fill your feed with really great scientists, fill your heart with joy and admiration. How has it changed your life having started it? I think for me, the the biggest change has just been realizing other people that were not necessarily in my field, although I have met a few people now in the field of arachnology that are queer.

But in the greater field of entomology, which is the study of insects, doesn't really include arachnology, but they allow us to participate. It's close enough. So I've certainly met lots of entomologists, but I think also I've just realized like how meaningful it is for people to realize that there's others out there because I've heard over and over from so many people at this point that prior to this campaign, they'd never met any other scientist in their field that was LGBT.

So I wasn't alone, certainly. And I think that's that's the reassuring part of it is like, you're not alone. There's others. They're out there. They're just maybe not as visible as we'd like them to be. Anything that you would suggest for people to kind of keep an eye on or anything that people could do to up the inclusion, anything that people could do to be allies, like any advice for people who are like, oh, I'm not quite quite sure what I could do to help.

Yeah. So I think some some simple ways is just acknowledging people in the workplace or in or in your like student community and and asking like point blank if there's ever anything that they can do or if there's if you are witnessing something that's that's would make them feel uncomfortable or you perceive that they're uncomfortable to speak out so that they don't have to speak out. I think that that's huge. And you know, also that I would say for me,

that's been one of the really great things about having run this campaign by talking about it this much, this aspect of my my identity this much around my colleagues who are straight and heterosexual, non-transgender, gender conforming, whatever. They they've become much bigger allies for me, like huge advocates and have expressed their desire for advocacy in a way that like prior to this, they never would have done. And so I think for for all the people that are LGBT out there,

like taking the step of putting yourself out there and like expressing your needs to your colleagues and telling them point blank how they can help is scary. It's like terrifying. But when you do it, like they're really appreciative of that because they don't necessarily know how to help you and how to be an ally. So just asking, which is I think it's always like hard to ask for help no matter the context. Right. But if you if you can find the courage to do so, it makes a huge difference.

Ah, you're changing so many lives. It's amazing. Oh, I don't know about that. It's not me. It's the community. Yeah. Those eight hundred and fifty stories, only one of them is mine. But I'm happy to be the spokesperson for the community whenever I have whenever I can, because I am in a place of privilege where I can talk openly about my identity in my workplace and not have any fear of retaliation or retribution and have this full support of my institution.

So so I'm happy to do that work for for the community when I can. Like there's not that much information about that out there about the experience for LGBT people in the workplace and STEM. But the few things that we do know is that about 40 percent of queer faculty member members in academia and in industry are not out. So there's a lot of people that are out there that are are not comfortable expressing that part of their identity because of fear of retribution, which is a valid fear because

surveys have shown that of faculty members that are out, 70 percent of them have been made to to feel excluded or harassed at work by their colleagues. So there's like a huge motivation not to be out, even though being out is great for the community. It's great for future students. It's great to be a role model. But there's so much there's so much there's so many reasons not to do it because if you're going to be uncomfortable at work, it's going to be terrible.

Yeah, you don't want to do that. And so I think it's hard to feel that you're in a space that's comfortable enough to be to be out and to be visible. So they can commiserate and hear other people's stories. And that's amazing. Oh, I'm so glad that you did that. You're doing so many good things and helping people and queer people. Who know, that's a thing.

I don't know of any queer scorpions, but. Oh, there's got to be some out there. Maybe there's lots of examples of weird things in nature. Yeah, they're just under a rock. There's so much more fluidity in nature. So much gender fluidity. And yet like as humans, we want to dichotomize that it's so crazy. I know this nails episode.

We talk a lot about, you know, just you come, B-Y-O-G's. Bring your own Jenny's. I'm laproditic. And now the last couple of questions I always ask her, what's the worst thing about your job or the most annoying thing about scorpions? What's the shittiest aspect about being a scorpionologist? A scorpionologist. You know, I think the hardest thing about working in science in this moment in time,

in this country especially, is like the funding. It's so tough. And I think in the field that I work in, which is sort of evolutionary biology, the successful funding rate to the main place that we apply for funding is the National Science Foundation government grants. The success rates about 4%. So as an early career scientist, like breaking into that, because, you know, like almost certainly that 4% is not evenly distributed across all genders and ethnicities.

And stages of career, it's certainly biased because the people that are more senior are more established to tend to be more white, more male and are better at getting grants. So to be an early career researcher, trying to break into a 4% funding rate is daunting and hard. And it makes it really hard to find enough money to do the thing that you want to do and feel is really important contribution to society. Do you have to write all your own grants? I do.

Yeah, I do. I submit probably three or so a year. And, you know, each of those takes months and months to craft. So it's time away from research, which is what I really love and want to really be doing. Yeah. Oof. And now, best thing about Scorpion, this best thing about your job, what do you love? You know, I love my job because I get to wear so many hats.

And I met an institution that feels, I met an institution that was such a good match for me, which is why I wanted to work there. The California Academy of Sciences is, I think, an incredible museum because it's equally committed to science outreach, which is something I love doing. And it's like really high quality science research. So for me, those two aspects of my work life, I always felt like I was going to have to give up one for the other. Like in a faculty job at a university, I was going to have to give up the outreach

because that's like extra credit. It's not, it's extracurricular. It's not something that's considered in your annual review or your job performance. Or doing science outreach, I was going to have to give up science because there's very few science outreach jobs where you can still engage as much as you need to in the science research itself. But I found a really great fit. And I think for me, that's like the great thing about going to work every day is

they love all the things I'm doing, including running a little nonprofit that's focused on conservation and doing a visibility campaign for queer scientists. And it's nice to be somewhere where I can bring all of me to the job. It's a beautiful place. Oh my God. If you've ever, if you want to work every day is also not so bad. Oh man, if you're in San Francisco, go, go, go. It's just, oh, I could spend days there.

I just like walked through the park to work in the morning. I see coyotes and there's like crows quacking and red tailed hawks flying, soaring through the air. It's like pretty amazing, special. Lately we have a turkey that lives in our business entrance. And she just like hangs out in the, in the like little walkway, like like fluffing up her feathers and like walks around. There's lots of different names for her, but everybody's got a different name.

What do you call her? I call her Bernadette. Okay. Bernadette. Somebody, I didn't make the name up. Somebody else did, but that's my favorite one. I feel like it's like, like Bernadette's like a real turkey kind of name. It's definitely a turkey.

But she's a pretty turkey too. Oh my God. I need to come back and visit. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Oh my God. This is great. Oh, I've been, I have been gently prodding you for too long.

Like, how do you get- We've been like ships in the night. We can never like manage to meet up, huh? Oh, I'm so excited. We did it. So ask smart people stupid questions, because how the hell else would we ever find out that scorpions are 450 million years old and we're once the size of like a couch? What?

What? To learn more about Dr. Esposito's endeavor, you can find her on Twitter at arachnologynerd. She's on Instagram at caribales, and I will put links in the show notes. Her education nonprofit again is islands and seas. It's islandsseas.org. You can go to 500queersi on Twitter. On Instagram, they are 500queerscientists, and it's 500queerscientists.com.

More links will all be up at alleyward.com slash ologies slash scorpiology. You can follow ologies on Twitter or Instagram at ologies. I'm on both at alleyward with 1L, and there's tons of links again for each episode up at alleyward.com slash ologies. And you can become a patron if you like. Patreon.com slash ologies. You can get merch at ologiesmerch.com or through my website. Thank you to Bonnie Dutch and also Shannon Feltes for helping manage that.

Thank you to Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo for admitting the really wonderful ologies Facebook group. Thank you to interns Harry Kim and Caleb Patton of the You're Never Too Old podcast, to assistant editor Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media. He also hosts the podcast My Good Bad Brain and a Combat Sports podcast called Fight Stuff. And thank you to Stephen Ray Morris of The Percast and C Jurassic Right for never being a frog stabber and editing this all together. Also Nick Thorburn of the Band Islands who wrote and performed the theme music.

And if you listen to the end of the episode, I always tell you a secret. This week, I want to tell you about Herbert. Herbert is my tiny tooth. I have this one tooth that I had to veneer on because it's just tiny. And so I was trying to get my teeth moved around. I've been doing Invisalign for like four or five months to get Herbert back into place. And they had to take the veneer off to like fix it. And I did not know how small he was.

It's been a while since I've seen him. And so now I just have this one little tooth. I'm in between the veneers and I got it taken off and I asked some close friends like, look at this. And they were like, I didn't. I wouldn't have even noticed it. Allie, you're tripping. Like I wouldn't have even seen it.

And then I went and saw my friend Dylan. By the way, happy birthday, Dylan. It's her birthday today. And one of the first things she said, what happened to your tooth? And I was like, is it noticeable? She's like, yes. I said, other friends were like, they wouldn't have even seen it. She's like, they're lying to you.

So I'm going to get it fixed. But meanwhile, if you were at the museum and you're like, Allie, what's up with your tooth? That's what's up with it. It's almost fixed. You'd never know, but I figured I might as well use the end of this episode to tell you about Herbert. Maybe Patreon.

Maybe I'll just post a little smiley video of me and Herbert up there. And Dylan, happy birthday. Thank you for always telling me the truth. I love you so much. Okay, we're right.