Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #33: SCORPIONS with Lauren Esposito

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Scorpions: the victims of undue shade. 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 (SPOILER: YES), what good mothers they are, and how big they used to be millions of years ago. Get this one in your ears right away.Learn more about Dr. Lauren Esposito on Wikipedia and follow her on TwitterA donation went to Islands & SeasFull-length (*not* G-rated) Scorpiology episode + tons of science linksMore kid-friendly Smologies episodes!Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray Morris, Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions, and Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaMade possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer, Emily White, & Erin TalbertSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Oh, hi, it's a lady in front of you and then check out with 26 items who doesn't realize she's in the express lane in his fully oblivious to your glares alleyward. So hi, this is an episode of Smaller Gs, which we've made classroom safe so you can listen with your little ones. So the full episodes are obviously a little more spicier, more in detail, but Smaller Gs are safe to listen to around anyone, so I hope you enjoy this. If you're looking for the full length version, it's linked in the show notes. Okay, Scorpion.

Yes, this is a realology. It's a subset of a rachnology, a rachnant. In 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, we covered myths about Scorpions, what big pincher's mean, movie magic, how lethal are these critters glow in the dark magic and also where is their butt. 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 Espicito. 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. No, at what point when you were studying them did you say, holy nirca rowdy. 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. Whoah, boy, how do you get ready for this? Okay, 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. And they were these like underwater marine predators

that were like ruling the oceans at the time. And eventually some people have hypothesized that because we found these ancient trackways alongside rivers of scorpions, so their little footprints embedded in rock, well, it was mud that turned into rock over time. And they've hypothesized that they were actually became amphibious and were coming up on the land

to eat spawning fish like grizzlies, right? Grizzlies like come in the river and eat the spawning fish. They were doing the same thing, but they were like Oh. Like grizzlies, right? Grizzlies come in the river and eat the spawning fish. They were doing the same thing, but they were the size of grizzlies and they were scorpions. It comes to scorpions, the bigger the better. Oh my god. I literally am having a vertical. I can't just imagine a scorpion the size of a kitty pool, just like an alligator. Basically, like an alligator.

They were called yearriptorids, 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 450 million years ago. So they've been on Earth forever, right? So we can ask all kinds of questions about what happened

on Earth in the last 450 million years by trying to understand the evolutionary history of scorpions. And so how do you think they got a little bit lower and a little bit lower? 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 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 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, explaining 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 turning in a hammer for a fiat, but slowly as a result of evolution. Okay. So part from the

last 450 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 there's not major freezes for long parts of the year. Okay, so like imagine a place. Scorpions, and you're on the way. There's probably scorpions there. They're not in Antarctica.

They're also not in the Arctic because it's cold. 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 upper reaches of the Andes, like in Argentina, they're scorpions. My real area of speciality is the Neotropic, so I'll go to the Caribbean,

to Central America, South America. But I've been to places like islands off the coast of Equatorial Africa, South America, but I've been to places like islands off the coast of Equatorial Africa, Southeast Asia. I don't know, I've been like all over the world looking for those little buggers. 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 in the back. Yeah, what's, it's like a mullet, right?

So scorpions, like all the raconets 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 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 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 calisserie, 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 down their gulet. And so 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 to in the middle and then a set of three to six in each corner of the front of their head. And so there are a range 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 conversation on a long car ride. Navigating by stars is called Astro Minotaxis. Astro Minotaxis there. You know that now. And then they have claws that they use mostly for grabbing onto prey. Like in some scorpions they just use the claws 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 impure 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

from manipulating prey items and mostly use the tail and really powerful super toxic venom for disabling their prey and escaping predators. Clothes in the front tail on the tail and really powerful super toxic venom for disabling their prey. And escaping predators. Clause in the front, tail in 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. God. And inside of the bulb is a layer 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 use to inject into their prey. Okay, 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 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 way 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.

Okay, 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 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's 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? 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 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% 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, okay. Let me step back and say there's two major groups of scorpions. There's a group called the boothage scorpions. 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 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 cow killers.

Again, 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. But scientific names are jumped up by the scientists that first recognized that species as being

a new species. Do you 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 our knowledge. 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. So scorpions, all scorpions fluoresce, it's a trait universal to scorpions. What fluorescence means basically is that there's a pigment in the exoskeleton of scorpions that's embedded in there. It's called Chormorin. So side note Chormorin is often found in plants, and according to this Wikipedia prose, it has quote, a sweet odor resembling the scent of newly-mone hay.

It's also found in Cassia cinnamon, in fake vanilla, and in perfumes. Oh, and it makes venomous arthropods glow like ravers. Anyway, quameran. What it does is it takes in lightwaves, just from light, ambient light, and it excites those white, those lightwaves and, and then projects them back at a higher wavelength. So that's what causes the fluorescence. It's not like a reflection or it's actually like an excitation of light beams. And so they all fluoresce this bright neon toxic sludge

green under an ultraviolet light. And we don't really know why they have this feature. There's a few possibilities. One, it's just a byproduct of how their exoskeleton forms, like 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 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 many things that are doing things at night 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, 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 floresce? Well, there is some a geologist 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 highly in layer in their axis skeleton. Also, did you know that Horseshoe crabs also glow under UV light? 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 sell my home depot, you can go on a scorpion hunt. And the trick is to go out at night because one, you can't really see anything with a 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 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? I'm do you know what like I feel like they're always the problem I have with movies with scorpions or one that really gets your go? I'm, 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. Okay.

Like, why in every single movie does it have to be the, the, 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. Are there amber 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. Oh, like they can live to be 25. Yeah, I feel like lay off the scorpions.

Yeah, like lay it lay off of them. And the other crazy thing about scorpions that I was struck by when I first learned about them is that 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 while their courtship starts

by what we call a padde do, 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. Oh my God.

Gestation period, you ask? Seven to nine months, similar to a human, or up to 14 months for Emperor Scorpions. What troopers? And once they give birth, she does this thing called a birth basket where she arges her back up and makes her arms into like a circle, like kind of touches her hands together

and makes like a little circle. 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 molded for the first time. So they've shed their exoskeleton and gotten a little bigger. And in that first period, they're kind of almost look 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. So they just hop off and they're like, to do. Yeah, like they'll kind of start coming off her back and then getting back on for a little bit, but in some species, they do kind of live semi-cooperatively,

like they're still living together in the same area for a long period of time So the mom's actually like will live in a burrow with the babies. Oh 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 anywhere from two to I think the upper limit that anybody's ever recorded is like one 40 like high one 40s. Wow, maybe let's say one 50, call it even. 150 babies. That would be like a lot. And they all pile up on her back.

What a party. Yeah. And now, It's a Corpian party. 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, okay, here's a few things you need to know about scorpions. Okay. One, they can't jump. Oh, okay. It's just a thing. They don't jump. They can't walk. They can walk on some vertical services if they're like grainy, like a rock that has little

micro areas to step on. But otherwise, like something that's slick, like windows that could never walk on a window. Okay. So they're gonna 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 gonna 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, and the U.S. there are no scorpions that will you have to be concerned about. Oh, okay. Like worst case scenario, it feels like a wasp even those ones in Arizona. Like they, 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. Okay. You might feel like a little more like an electric shock than a wasp thing.

But if you're a child, you want to be safe and not be playing with scorpions in Arizona. Just rule a thumb So that's a that's a thing I have so many questions from listeners can I ask you? Yeah, okay 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 It makes donations to a cause of theologist choosing possible. So this week, it's 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. They have internships for teenagers interested in science, field guide training. Ah, so good. Islandssees.org. That's islandspluralsees.org. So thank you, Lauren and Eric, for starting that. Now a few words about sponsors making that donation and the production of this very show possible. Okay, back to your questions. Okay, so it's kind of like a lightning round. Okay, Sonia, Carpulovich wants to know, should they be kept as pets? And if yes, do they make good pets?

I see, I'm gonna say yes. They 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 bread ones Because then that keeps people out of the natural ecosystems from Overharvesting over collecting for the pet trade. So there are some like quite a few species that are really common in the pet trade and our bread in captivity So if you want a scorpion as a pet don't go get it out of. Leave it there. It's doing something important in the ecosystem and rather by one that's been captive bred by a breeder. Okay. Emily Hawking says a question about the waste management system.

Where is the butt? Do they pee? They do. They have just like a single kind of clotheca thing that has that excrease everything. They don't have like separate pee and poo situation. And that so it all comes out from right before the stinger. Oh, wadley wants to know is a true smaller scorpions are more venomous in general. Smiley face emoji. 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 boothady. 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.

Oh, so it's not like the overall body size, but the proportion of hands to tail situation. So counterintuitively, big pinchers, less scary. And now, the best thing about scorpions, the 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 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. 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 sciences. And it's nice to be somewhere where I can bring all of me. So the job.

Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Oh my god. So ask smart people questions because how else would we ever find out that scorpions are 450 million years old and were once the size of like a couch? What? What?

To learn more about Dr. Espositos and Debra, you can find her on Instagram at Carabalas. 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. Also linked is alleyward.com slash smologies, which has dozens more kids safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through and thank you Mercedes-Mateland of Madeland Audio and Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media for editing those as well as Zeke Rodriguez Thomas. And since we like to keep things small around here the rest of the credits are in the show notes.

And at the end of the episode I give you a piece of advice and this piece of advice sounds simple but it's huge and that is that you are enough as the person you are and you are wonderful as you are and anyone who is worth being your friend Already loves you the way that you are and you don't have to change to make anyone happy So just be yourself and the right people will come to your life Okay, that's my piece of advice for you took me a long time to learn it, but it's important. Alright, bye bye. No.