Ologies with Alie Ward - Scorpiology (SCORPIONS) with Lauren Esposito: Encore Presentation

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

This specific episode was cited in The New Yorker this week, so we’re giving it an encore refresh with bonus material and a 2020 update from Dr. Esposito herself! 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 out 500QueerScientists.com Mention in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/podcasts/lolita-podcast-12-28-20 This week's donation went to: www.Islandsseas.org Sponsor links: www.alieward.com/ologies-sponsors More links at alieward.com/ologies/scorpiology2 Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Just a quick note up top. So this Scorpiology interview originally aired about a year and a half ago, but thanks to a very kind and generous write up aboutologies in this week's New Yorker magazine. What? I wanted to give it an encore because the article's author Rachel Syme said that this was the episode that got her hooked. So if you're here because of the New Yorker, hi, hello. If you have already heard this episode, I promise it's worth a re-listen because it

really is chock-a-block full of weird facts and Dr. Esposito made a return appearance and gives us some updates about her life as well as has a message for all of these listeners. So okay, here we go. 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 and is fully oblivious to your glares? Alleyward. Back with another episode of Allergies. So congrats for not skipping this one.

You did it. It's in autoplay and you're like, no, don't 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 un-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. Also 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 from Museum Eve who said, if you want to learn how to love hagfish and be comfortable with death and see the beauty in moss and spiders and everything else, listen to this

podcast. It will change your life. Thanks, Museum Eve. Okay, Scorpiology. Hell to the yes. This is a real ology. It's a subset of arachnology, arachnids. And Scorpion comes from the Greek.

Are you ready for this? For Scorpion. Okay, that is not something that made me say, oh my God. All right, so this ologist 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? Parables 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 broaden my horizons and be an arachnologist and study more other kinds of arachnids aside from scorpions. So I'm a budding arachnologist, let's say, and an accomplished Scorpiologist. Your business card should say accomplished Scorpiologist. Now I met you a couple years ago in the desert at a festival, a symbiosis festival.

Yeah, 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 walked into 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 to, 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, I'm 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? Well, 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. What is a killing jar? Is it just like a cotton ball with ethanol?

Cotton. 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 like here, take this killing jar daughter 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. 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 talkies. 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 Prendini, 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 and these freaking scorpions. So sick. And she was like, toy. I think that was a convo 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. That's not at all. I mean, there's a museum full of 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. No, 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, man, 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 to 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 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 a 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 concentration has 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. And 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 Alps or like the the upper reaches of the Andes, like in Argentina, there's scorpions.

The 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, seeing the world hobo, right? Yeah, 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 farm hand

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 conduct 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 like 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 and in the back. Yeah. What? It's like a mullet, right? So so scorpions like all arachnids have have two primary body parts. They have a prosoma, which is like the head. And they have a epistosoma, 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 epistosoma 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 chelicery, which are their mouth parts. And they have these chewing mouth parts that they use basically to like rip up. Meats, it is raw meat before they get it 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, stabby 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 secretory 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 ear hole 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 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. 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 sting or a wasp 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 had 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 throb 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 I 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 is 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're 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. Oh, 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 moaned hay. It's also found in cassia cinnamon, in fake vanilla and in perfumes. Oh, and it makes venomous arthropods glow like ravers. Also, P.S. I never did drugs in college. I was a 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 bright like neon toxic sludge green under an 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'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 a UV pattern to say, hey, wait, this 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 floresces. Oh, my God. So side note, this is due to their glowing hyaline layer in their exoskeleton. 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 spend 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 check 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 four hundred 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 were 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 there are always that 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 scorpion?

Emperor 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 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 like over harvested for 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 do the 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 onto 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 calisceral 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 and the 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 clear 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 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 embryo 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 viviparis or what is it called? Yes, viviparis. Oh, viviparis. It's viviparis.

Clearly a word I read more than I say. There's 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 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 with 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 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 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, what they eat, what eats them.

We don't know any of that information except 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 arthropod. 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. Well, 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, you know. 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 a 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 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. 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 sponsor 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 the allergist 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. Islands seas.org. That's islandspluralsees.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 to 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 male, 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. Oh, 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. 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 denature it. So if you ate a scorpion, unless it's 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. 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 struck the kids. Is there 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. Get out.

Quick. Get away. Oh, 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.O.N.s 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 they're 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, that would be like 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 butt? Do they pee? Now we know.

They do. They excrete like 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, yeah, 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. 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 Grilla seals. There's a lot of consonants in that. And I don't know if I said it right. Dory Grilla seals. 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 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 in 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 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 brain child. 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 the 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, a matureish 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

is 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 scientists in their field that was LGBT. Wow. 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 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. Oh, 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, but 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. Oh, my God.

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. Yeah, much gender fluidity. Yes. 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, right? Just you come by OG's bring your own Jenny's.

OK, is now a good time to hear from Lauren again? I vote yes. So she very kindly phoned in with some updates since this last aired a year and a half ago. Hey, all you allergies fans. This is Dr. Lauren Esposito checking in reporting for duty. I got some updates for you all.

Just things happen in the world of scorpions. Let's see what's happening. Well, I guess first, my graduate student, Aaron Goodman, published a paper last year documenting the first ever arboreal scorpions. So these are scorpions that live entirely up in the canopy in in Mexico and parts of Central America and they live in tropical rainforests.

And we think that probably the reason that they that they have taken to the treetops is to evade being eaten by other scorpions because scorpions are cannibals, which is super gnarly. They'll eat each other. And if you're like a tiny little skinny scorpion and you're trying to get away from like big beefy scorpions down on the ground, it makes a lot of sense to make your way up

into the treetops and hang out there forever. But not just her lab is busy. How are the nonprofits? In the world of 500 queer scientists, things are moving along. We are no longer 500. Now we have over 1300 contributors that are able to share their story of being LGBTQ AI plus people working

in or studying in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And that is incredible and inspiring and makes me feel happy every day. We also just launched our newsletter this December and our newsletter is sharing some of these stories more in depth, letting our contributors really like talk about themselves and all the amazing things that they're doing. We last month featured some content makers,

so some folks making like really LGBTQ specific podcasts, starting their own little or like very specific organizations that are focused on, like, for example, polar researchers that are that are queer, which is amazing that there's enough polar researchers that are queer to make like your own group. That's so awesome. I will link this newsletter on my website and look out for a podcast all about queer chemists

called, Appropriately, My Fave, Queer Chemist and an interview with an NYU associate professor, John Freeman, whose paper, Measuring and Resolving LGBTQ Disparities and STEM, raises some critical issues of queer scientists leaving their professions because the environment isn't the most friendly place for them. So this is an area of research that Dr. Esposito says is very data deficient, which matters because we really want those perspectives

because those perspectives are so important for advancing our scientific knowledge. In my islands and seas world, that's the nonprofit that I started a few years ago with my best bud, Eric Steiner. We are just about to finish our inaugural field station in Baja, California, Sur. It's a totally off the grid field station to support researchers but also to support the local community

in their scientific learning endeavors. So we're really trying to connect the local community with researchers that come down to study this place to make more impact on conserving it. Our field station is 100% off the grid, all solar. We have satellite internet, which is amazing because we can actually go down there and like send emails, which was something unheard of just a couple of years ago.

All of our water comes from a local spring and we are about ready to start hosting groups of scientists and students and we're hoping people just mob us with requests to come and study the Viscaino Desert, which is one of the most amazing deserts in the world. So I guess that's it for me. I have been overwhelmed with the amount of love that came out of the airing of my first oligies episode. And so I just want to say thank you for loving Scorpions

but also a huge thanks to Ali for thinking that Scorpions are interesting enough to make an ology episode about them. I'm such a fan of Dr. Esposito. Thank you, Lauren, for letting me ask so many questions, including the last two. 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? Scorpiologist, 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 rate is about four percent. So as an early career scientist, like breaking into that, because, you know, like almost certainly that four percent 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 four percent 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?

Or does I do? Yeah, I do. I submit probably three or so a year. And, you know, those 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 is 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. Is I think an incredible museum because it's equally committed to science outreach, which is something I love doing and like really high quality science research. So for me, those two aspects of of my 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 a queer scientist. 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 like it's been days.

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. Oh, 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. OK, 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 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 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 Karabales, 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 allergies slash scorpiology. You can follow allergies on Twitter or Instagram at allergies. I'm on both at alleyward with 1L and there's tons of links again. For each episode up at alleyward.com slash allergies. And you can become a patron, if you like, patreon.com slash allergies. You can get merch at allergiesmerch.com or through my website. Thank you to Bonnie Dutch and also Shannon Feltes for helping manage that. Thank you to Aaron Talbert for admitting the really wonderful

allergies 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 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. Ali, you're tripping like it's 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 the one of the first thing 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. OK, just a quick update on your step brother, Herbert. So for months on shoots, I had this tiny tooth and I use this plastic material. I got in a like $30 kit.

It's called temp tooth. And it becomes valuable in hot water. And then every time, every time before a business meeting or a shoot, I would have to mold a temporary tooth around Herbert and then just a fix this fake tooth with denture glue. And I did this for maybe five months until I finally went back to the dentist. And I was like, can you just put the body back on? Anyway, I'm still doing Invisalign to get my teeth a little straighter

because with COVID, I have not seen my orthodontist in nine months. So that's how Herbert's doing. I was supposed to be done a year and a half ago with Invisalign. But hey, chin up. Masks on. OK, stay safe out there. Do not lick anything. Bye bye. You