Ologies with Alie Ward - Toxinology (JELLYFISH VENOM) with Anna Klompen

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Jellyfish stings: what are they and why do they hurt? And who studies them? Toxinologist Anna Klompen, that’s who. Speaking from her lab in Kansas, surrounded by jellies, the self-described professional jellyfish nerd invites us into her scientific Polyp Parlor to chat about barbs, neurotoxins, quick sting fixes, panty hose, the deadliest jellies, the harmless ones, pee, her favorite moments in science and the species that have her heart forever. Also: how and why to “find a way.” Anna Klompen’s jellyfish venom website gelatinoussting.com Follow her at Twitter.com/gelatinoussting or Instagram.com/gelatinoussting A donation went to SkypeAScientist.org Look at this Jelly Cam! https://www.vanaqua.org/visit/live-cams-jelly-cam Sponsor links: kiwico.com/ologies For more links: alieward.com/ologies/toxinology Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and uh...bikinis? Hi. Yes. Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's that ceramic frog on your porch who always makes you think it's a real frog, even though you put the ceramic frog there. Alliward. Just saying hi. What's up? Another episode of Allergies. So this is a partner episode to last week's belly full of jellyfish medusology. Thank you to everyone on Patreon for submitting your great questions for this episode.

You can join for as little as a buck a month. Thank you to everyone who writes and reviews. It actually really matters and keeps the podcast up on the charts for other people to find. And also, I read all your reviews, like this week's from Rogue Avocado, who says, I love hearing how passionate each Allergist is. It really makes you think about what gets your own heart fluttering in life. Sweet. That's why I love making this podcast so much.

Okay, so thank you for the reviews. Now, let's go to Kansas for toxinology, shall we? So toxinology, it's a word which means poison. Toxin means poison. It comes from old French and Latin words for poisoned arrow, which came from an older word meaning a yew tree from which the bows were made. So toxins, toxic, poisons, it's got some tree roots. And it means now in toxinology, the study of biological toxins produced by venomous animals

or plants or microorganisms like bacteria or, for example, jellyfish, which if you listen to last week's medusology, you now know are cnidarians. Cnidarians is a silent C word. And those are related to sea anemones and corals. But for more on a jellyfish gossip and primer and a rockin' good time, just listen to this past week's medusology episode with Dr. Rebecca Helm about the basics of jellyfish. She is amazing. You can also listen to last year's Nidariology episode with Shail Metsuda about coral.

And then this Allergist got her bachelor's in biology and chemistry and is a grad student at the University of Kansas, getting a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology, studying jellyfish thenomics in the Cartwright lab. And her social media handle just shows a jiggly burning commitment. It's at gelatinous sting. She loves this job. And when I initially let folks on Patreon know that I was doing a jellyfish episode, I asked if I should put bothologists in one interview and everyone emphatically said two episodes,

we need them. We need them in succession. So your wish is my commands. So we hopped on the horn early in the morning and we chatted all about stingers and tentacles and clear jellies and less clear jellies, which ones deliver the most pow for the punch and what it's like to swim through a sea of stingers, what to do if you're stung, how small are the barbs? Her favorite jellies, her most memorable moments as a scientist to date.

So enjoy the Mendoosa musings of self-described professional jellyfish nerd, venom scientist and toxinologist, Anna Klampen. And just so that we don't miss anything, thank you so much for doing this. And you are a toxinologist, which is not a toxicologist, right? Yeah, I would say, I would call myself a budding evolutionary biologist, but yes, I'm a jellyfish toxinologist, I guess, at least trying to be, but I was certainly always a jellyfish fan. I've wanted to study jellyfish for a long time and I got really interested in their

venoms too, probably, honestly, around in high school, but really in depth when I went to my undergrad and the questions I'm interested in are how venoms change and how they're related to different kind of ecological contexts in jellyfish. In parting the question, are there jellyfish in Kansas? There, so there's probably freshwater jellyfish somewhere, so a lot of people on the Patreon I saw were really interested in these freshwater jellyfish. Bukitabepo. It's called Crestedacusta, and we actually have them here in the lab, they're an invasive

freshwater jellyfish and they're probably all over the United States in freshwater quarry. So we probably have those, I know they're in Missouri, pretty close to us too, otherwise no, there are no jellyfish anymore, probably when Kansas was underwater, I'm sure there was plenty, but not as much anymore. Our lab probably has the most jellyfish diversity here in the state. Do jellyfish leave fossils or are they too squish squish? No, there are some jellyfish fossils, it's very rare, actually my advisor was part of a lead paper on jellyfish fossils.

We might, it's somewhere in here, probably there's a jellyfish fossil, so it's very rare, but there is, in Wisconsin actually, there is a whole plane where an entire bloom of jellyfish was fossilized. Okay, so Anna's current PhD advisor, Dr. Cartwright, helped describe a five million year old jellyfish fossil founded Utah, which used to be a fricked ocean, so I looked at a picture of this jellyfish fossil and it was like the spitting image of a nine year old's drawing of a jellyfish if it were also a cave painting, but also hauntingly beautiful.

Now, as long as we're going way back in time, what was your first experience with a jelly? During, I believe, freshman orientation is, I would say driven was the word for it, and I emailed a bunch of labs during freshman orientation saying, hey, I want to be in a lab right now, and I believe the phrase I used for the lab I ended up when is, I want to study Nigerian venoms with implications in human health. Pretty verbatim, yeah, I was, yeah, that's a pretty good, like, look into my life. Yeah, keep the nail on the head there. So, Anna started out in undergrad working with marine flatworms in Chesapeake Bay that

are devouring mussels and oysters. What a nuisance, but no one saw these marine flatworms eat in their early life. No one witnessed it until Anna observed them with guts full of bivalve mush in the lab. She even published her first paper along with her advisor as an undergrad. And then I got a NOAA fellowship to go work with at the Smithsonian with Dr. Alan Collins, who I knew about in high school because I googled jellyfish biologists. I'm sure at some point and I said, hey, I want to work with you. I want to do venom.

Now I have this fellowship. Can I come work there? And he was like, absolutely. So I did my first stint in jellyfish venom there. And, uh, yeah, that's how it kind of began. He's the one that told me about the lab here, which I'm very grateful for. When where did where did your interest in science start? You were so driven, what was it about jellyfish and marine life and toxinology

that kind of grabbed you with its stinginess? Yeah, what a story. So both my parents are biologists. My dad, he studies my syntax. So I was kind of in their Museum of Biological Diversity since probably age two throughout my time there. I really loved being there and looking at collections, microscopes. My mom has a master's in small mammal behavior.

So she actually studied parasites in chipmunks. So she was always taking me to the zoo, taking me outside, doing all this stuff. But in my, my childhood angst, I would say, I said, I am not going to study the same thing as my parents. I'm going to move away from terrestrial stuff. I got, I loved marine biology. I was just fascinated by the idea that we didn't know very much about marine science. And the one piece of advice I took from my, my dad was find a field

that's very small if you want to discover really new things. So I was like, perfect deep ocean. So I started looking really into deep ocean stuff, probably like in middle school, actually, I think I did presentations on deep sea biology for stuff. So, so nerdy. And so great. And I, when I was looking at that stuff, I was really into bioluminescence. Bioluminescence kind of led me to a little bit of chemistry.

The chemistry kind of led me to venom. Bioluminescence also kind of led me to jellies. And then it just, the more I learned, actually, the more I learned, we didn't know. Like we didn't know, but very basic natural history facts about jellyfish things and what their venom looks like, how they're using their venom, things like that. And yet they're so powerful. Some, some jellyfish can be really dangerous, but we didn't just didn't know enough. And not a lot of people were working on it.

So that's kind of where I hooked on. And yeah, it's really just kind of held on. Have you? OK, so are you talking to me from the lab right now? Yeah, I am. This is kind of my, the lab has always been my comfort zone. So normally we feed our jellies three times a week. I'm sure they would love more. But yeah, I'm here feeding all the different ones.

Mostly brine shrimp and some mussel. Eventually, some of the jellyfish we have, we may feed pieces of other jellyfish. So they like to eat other jellies. So that's probably going to get a few of those at some point. Do you have to pick a jelly from one tank to be like, sorry, dude, it's not your lucky day. I feel like I do that. That's one of the things that is really.

Kind of sad in a way with working with jellyfish. They're so good at making jellyfish that, yeah, you end up like having to just like put them in the freezer or feed them to other jellies. And yeah, that's always been kind of one of the harder things for me. And have you ever gotten stung by one? Oh, probably every day I get stung a little bit because I stick my hands right in the tanks to move like some of our jellyfish polyps and things.

But most jellies are too small to really hurt you. Our skin is pretty thick compared to most jellyfish. In terms of bad stings, I've gotten, I just got stung by a lion's mane jelly when I was taking a class in Washington state. So yeah, they're pretty big. Small but a tentacle on my wrist probably hurt for about two hours. That wasn't fun. I've been stung by sea nettles and I've been stung by upside down jellyfish.

Whims. Those are awesome. That was also something I worked on recently. So upside down jellyfish look pretty much like a normal jellyfish, except they sit with their bell, the round part of the top sitting on the ground and their tentacles and their oral arms facing up. And that's how they spend. So they actually have a symbiotic algae. P.S. for a good base on corals.

Once again, Shale Matsuda's Nandereology episode from last summer. So good. Shale was talking about corals have this symbiotis with different algae. So these jellyfish have that too. And some jellyfish have this symbiotis and the upside down jellyfish gets a good bit of its food and energy from the symbionts sitting in the sun. It also eats other like plankton and small things that come around as well. But the amazing part of the upside down jellyfish is they not only can sting you

a bit and their sting isn't really that bad, but they will actually sneeze this mucus up into the water and that will sting you. Oh, God. So it's this. Yeah, mucus poison is a nightmare. It's it's awesome. So they gather in these huge groups and so like people will snorkel over them. They're beautiful jellyfish, all these different colors.

And then you'll just like start feeling this tingling. And if you're not wearing a mask or if you have cuts or anything, they can I'm sure it can feel pretty bad. I just had my hand in tanks. And so they were just spewing mucus everywhere. And so it caused a little tingle for me. We actually just a team of us just were we were asking the question, like, why does this mucus sting?

No one had actually gone and formally looked at the mucus to see why it stung things. And we actually discovered that they make these stinging cell balls that we call kathiosome. So they're tightly packed, little mobile balls of stinging cells. And they release hundreds of them into the mucus. We did experiments where we put them in with brine shrimp. And those things destroy brine shrimp. Very, very quickly, they seem to be very powerful.

And that's probably what's getting you from those. Oh, my God. Side note, if you heard the rhinology episode all about noses and nostrils, you know that mucus is my least favorite substance and therefore word. And I bleep it in some episodes, but that also got really annoying. So I stopped bleeping it. But I have not stopped silently cringing throughout my whole body. So let's get away from mucus and get down to basics. Basic question, why do jellyfish, which are otherwise pretty simple creatures?

Why do they have this amazing venom? They probably have it because they are very morphologically pretty simple. They have like the two basic layers to them. They don't have any organs, anything like that. So this chemical weaponry that they've evolved is what has kind of probably allowed them to survive for the hundreds of millions of years. They've they've been around and they've the structures that they make. So they're called nidocytes.

So those are the these little organelles within these larger structures called nidocytes. So these are the cells that hold on to these. And inside there's a capsule that's the nematocyst that has this hollow little tube and has all this venom and other secreted stuff. And when it touches either chemical or mechanical signals, it fires this tubule at the estimates are it's certainly less than a millionth of a second. One report with seven hundred nanoseconds. They're firing these things about five million Gs of force.

It's just punching into predators or prey. And then it's delivering this mixture of toxins that we call venom, plus probably a bunch of other stuff that's working synergistically with that venom to make it work. And it's definitely worked for them. She didn't say five million, right? Or she said it, but she didn't mean it, right? And did you say, did I mishear you? Did you say five million Gs of four?

How many how many? Yeah, yeah, no, five million Gs of force. Yeah, this is what that's reported. Yeah. So it's it's an intense amount of past. So it's because it's there's so much automatic pressure, so there's so much pressure being built when these stinging cells are being formed and then the release of that much pressure in such kind of a small container.

Yeah, it makes a huge amount of force. So that, yeah, five million Gs is what I I keep reading about. Oh, my God, I feel like the Department of Defense is like, how could we possibly co-op? Make better missiles. That's insane. Yeah, no, they are. There are some efforts to actually turn stinging cells into medicine. So you take the venom out, you put a medicine in,

and it's essentially like a hypodermic needle, but it's not a large needle. It's a bunch of little tiny needles. You know, I remember when I did an episode on sea turtles, I don't know if we addressed it, but how do some animals just munch these things like popcorn and not feel its effects? For sea turtles and for fish that eat these like the sunfish, they just have really thick skin where they're coming into contact with these. So I believe for sea turtles, it's that they just their throat,

they're terrifying, like spiny throat are just both really thick. And jellyfish are still very, very delicate. And so they're just ripping them apart. And then all those probably leftover stinging cells just can't penetrate through there. A lot of things too. So like penguins, penguins was just featured and a lot of other kind of fish and birds also will not chomp on the top of jellyfish, which some of them have stinging cells there.

They have little packets of stinging cells on the top, but normally they don't. And so they'll just chomp on the top part, which is maybe the tastiest part. I don't know. It's like a muffin top. And then they just yeah, yeah, they're like later. OK, real quick, speaking of chomping on mesoclea. Last week, I mentioned some jellyfish recipes and noted that if you have an immediate aversion to eating jellyfish, just know that chicken nuggets

in reality are way grosser, hands down, tentacles down. And I thought I kind of made my point there. But I wanted to follow up this week by mentioning that in a lot of countries around the world, a lot of Asian countries in particular, jellyfish is a delicacy. So good. And one listener named Mady sent me this message telling me that they grew up eating jellyfish and in Hong Kong, it's a delicious appetizer. It's often served in small portions for everyone to share.

And they say, quote, like a healthy alternative to a bloomin' onion appetizer shared for the table. And they also said that in their experience, Chinese Americans are often made to feel ashamed of the foods that they eat and that their ancestors have consumed for millennia. And I think that's a great point. And so always, if a food seems just compared to the things you already eat and chances are you just haven't acquired a taste for it yet out of a lack of exposure.

So do not knock something until you have tried it. Also, do not Google nuggets. Just don't do it. Also, there are some really great videos of people preparing jellyfish straight out of the sea. And you can see how fast these chefs are at stripping the tentacles and getting right down to the good, proteiny, mesoglio part. And speaking of venom, of course, Anna says that one of her research goals

is to see how venom changes over the various life stages of a jellyfish from the planula to the polyp to the strobilating polyp to the ephira, which is an immature jellyfish to the jellyfish, which is that bell shaped medusa form. And Anna says that there's some good evidence that some box jellyfish change their venoms going from younger to older jellyfish as they change their diet from plankton to eating fish. She also says that male box jellyfish use their stinging cells to attach jizz packets to ladies, kind of like a glue made out of poisoned barbs.

It's cute. Now, OK, for the sake of science, what are some other ways to obtain this stuff? How are you capturing the venom? Are you keeping it like in test tubes or anything? Is that difficult? Yeah. So here's the problem with studying jellyfish venoms. For the most part, it is the matter of size.

So for a big Australian box jellyfish or some sea nettles or a man of war, which is also pretty large, what people have done is essentially cut the tentacles off and then either put them in some sort of separating solution or just otherwise tried to isolate stinging cells from everything else. And then you get the stinging cells to fire and you take kind of the contents of what the liquid that you've gotten the stinging cells to fire into, be it water or something else.

That's great if you have large animals and access to a lot of animals, but that's even with these larger ones, that's not all that's restricted to certain seasons and your yield of venom is still really never going to be that high. So what I do, because my jellyfish that I work on or maybe a millimeter in size, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more, I use very tiny. I use genomics and transcriptomics. So I use genes essentially to tell me what their venoms may look like. And then some of my work is also using molecular tools to see if I can find

where those genes are being expressed and if I can figure out what the ecological role of that particular venom might be based on those two. And if I could, if I could synthesize it, which some people also do, they will take the gene of that toxin and then put it into E. coli or something else, try and synthesize that toxin themselves and then test it. So those are kind of the methods being used right now. What are the toxins made of? And are they different from species to species?

Or are they like pretty basic chemically? No, they're definitely different from species to species, probably. There's some similarities in terms of function. So most of the venom in jellyfish are proteins and peptides. And there's a few basic categories. So jellyfish normally have some sort of pouring or poor forming toxins. So something that interacts with the cell membrane and either just punches a hole in it and kind of leaks all the contents out specifically or non

specifically as in like it will target specific cells or it might just punch holes in a bunch of random cells. There's neurotoxin. So those are kind of, I think that that was previously talked about and for the scorpion episode too. So there's neurotoxins that interact with different channels in your body. So sodium and potassium channels, and they'll either make them weak, everything out, or they'll block them.

So those are more common in sea anemones and coral, but there might be some in all jellyfish. And then there's just some other enzymes, so things that are breaking down like very bonds and fats and other proteins that might also be kind of all working together to make pretty bad things happen for most things that get done by these. Now, Anna says that it is very, very, very unlikely that anyone listening to this will die by jellyfish.

Few can do more than just cause some discomfort, but there is something called Irokanji syndrome and it's caused by box jellies named Irokanji jellies who were named for a local Australian Aboriginal tribe. So these small, itty bitty box jellies are about the size of an earbud. And their stings feel manageable initially. And then in Anna's words, it erupts into a series of symptoms, including intense pain, 11 out of 10 on the pain scale, she says, constant vomiting, sweating, anxiety to the point of becoming a sense of impending doom

and potentially severe hypertension. If you're like, hmm, good thing I'm not from Downanda, they're also in Florida and Hawaii. So if one of these little powerhouses gives you a love tap, please get some medical attention ASAP. Now, speaking of hospitals, what medical attention can we give the Venom itself? And what about has the Venom been used like historically or maybe in the future to cure any ailments?

Or is anyone looking to see if, I don't know, jellyfish Venom can knock out a coronavirus or something like that? There have been efforts mostly with sea anemones because of those neurotoxins. Those are used in drug discovery effort, the probably most famous. So I think it's in phase two clinical trials. There is a sea anemone toxin called SHK. It's a modified toxin that it works on potassium channels. I'm pretty sure.

And it's being used for things like autoimmune diseases. So like lupus, so that one is in, I think it's in phase two. There might be a few more. So I think there's in total 10 drugs on the market that are derived from Venom. Most of them are from snake. There's some from scorpions. There's one from a cone snail. None that I know of from, from totally from jellyfish.

And then what about like the actual Venom? I know that just like a drop of rattlesnake Venom is a billion dollars or something, but does anyone trying to like synthesize Venoms or capture them and uses anti-Venoms or anything like that? Oh, my goodness. Yes, I'm pretty sure. So in two places that I know that are actively working on either anti-Venoms or ways to really prevent pretty bad jellyfish things are in Australia. There is an anti-Venom for the Australian box jellyfish, which is widely renowned.

It's the most venomous animal on the planet. Yeah. So that there's an anti-Venom available, but depending on how bad you're stung, it's not going to be fast enough. Oh, my God. And I'm not sure. I think it's been used before to do some good success. And the other one is in University of Hawaii. There's a researcher there, a biochemist, Dr.

Angel Yanagihara, who is very, very active on trying to prevent box jellyfish stings, not just the Australian box jellyfish, but this group of box jellyfish that cause problems kind of all over the world. And she also works on developing treatment, not necessarily anti-Venom, but various different kinds of treatment. Can you die from a box jellyfish sting? Oh, yeah. Really? Oh, yeah. So the Australian box jellyfish, it's called chironx focari.

Hopefully I'm saying that right. So this jellyfish can have tentacles that are a few meters long. If you get two meters of tentacle on you, you have about two minutes. And then you go into cardiac arrest and you're you're not coming out of it. Goodbye. Goodbye. Oh, my God. And how far out from the shore are they? Can you be like paddle boarding and then just to take a fall and off the shore? What's the deal?

Yeah, no, you could. So the lab that works on these actually goes and collects these by hand sometimes. It's not in that. Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of bad ass, to be honest. But the water that they're in that I've seen them collecting and they're standing in it. Oh, my God. They hand collecting them. Are they wearing like a suit of armor?

So you can. Yeah, you can wear protective gear on there. So jellyfish. So these can swim pretty quickly, actually. But the way that you would collect them is probably how you collect almost any jellyfish if you're doing it by hand for whatever reason. Is if you're kind of following the direction of the jellyfish is going or that the waves are going, it's going to pull those tentacles kind of in that way. And so you just try and kind of cradle the jellyfish and then lift it up and try it.

Yeah, head of that lab, Dr. Jamie Seymour. So he's a very well known venomologist of many different venomous animals. But he's been stung a few times. You get permanent scarring pretty easily. Oh, my God. And I believe it's not many people die, certainly from jellyfish. Probably more than we think, but not like as many as snakes, for sure.

But there are there are people that have died in Australia from from these. There's people in the United States that reportedly have died not from box jellyfish, but from the Portuguese man of war. You can die from a jellyfish sting. It's not many, again, not many jellyfish can really hurt you. So Anna says that the folks who tend to have more adverse reactions are those who might be immunocompromised, asthmatic or allergic to the tentacles themselves. Also, side note, I'm going to need to have Dr. Jamie Seymour,

venomologist on in the future, right? There's so many venoms. And what's the difference between a venomologist and a toxinologist? Toxinologists, so venomologists, I think, is anyone who's studying the venom or venomous animals very generally. Toxinologists is the study of toxins very specifically. So you could be studying toxins in poisonous animals. You could be studying toxins just produced by either other animals or plants.

Venomologists is just for venomous animals. So is venomology kind of a subset of toxinology? I think so. OK. Oh, that's interesting. Like, more oligists, obviously, the better, because it just means like, oh, that's another episode. Yeah, no, I was fully endorsed as a venomology. As is said, because they're some amazing

venomologists that have done some really cool work. Jellyfish is just there's just a few people. I asked Anna if all the jellyfish people know each other and she said there are whole Nigerian conferences like Night of Fest, which is in California and got canceled this year, which is a bummer because I was going to crash it by hiding behind a plant in the hotel lobby. It's half really intense, amazing science. And the other half is basically a dance party.

So I highly recommend crashing Night of Fest. There's going to be some awesome people there. That's amazing. And what happened if you get stung by a jellyfish? I was in Hawaii, someone in our group got stung by a jellyfish. I was like, what's going to happen? Who's going to pee on him? What do we do? What happens?

Please don't pee on them. Nobody should pee. Yeah, that's a very common flimflam, I guess. Yes. Say for that. So let me start from. So when you're stung by a jellyfish, what's happening is that you've either touched the tentacles or something and hundreds to maybe thousands of stinging

cells have now kind of punctured and are sticking to you and injecting venom into your through your skin. I am in no position to give medical advice. I want to say that right away, but I can definitely tell you things you should not do. So you definitely should not pee on it. And in the same same vein, you should not put fresh water on it. So I actually use fresh water to discharge stinging cells in the lab. So so if you and your urine is basically fresh water, at the same time,

actually peeing on someone, the pressure from peeing on them will make them fire. No, it's like throwing kerosene on a fire. Only it's pee and it's venom filled cells firing into a skin inferno. Now, if you have ever had the insult of pee being added to the entry of a sting, I am so sorry for the emotions that this is bringing up in you. So other than see a therapist later, what should you do? So the one of the best things that you can do is to try and get if there's any pieces of tentacle, which is very possible, you want to get that off.

And you want to try and get as many of the stinging cells off as possible. And the one of the better ways to do that, if you have tweezers, you can try and pick them off with tweezers. Tweezers aren't always available. So going back into the ocean, wherever you were and got stung and using salt water. So salt water will not activate the stinging cell to fire anymore. And you very gently, as much as you can, try and use salt water to wash away the tentacle and any of the stinging cells in that area.

Gentle. Oh, smart. OK, so go back to the scene of the crime. Yeah, but be careful. You're not like there's not more jellyfish or whatnot. So Anna says that Dr. Angel Yanagahara of the University of Manoa does amazing work in Venoms as well. And she got into the field after sustaining a near fatal sting during a morning ocean swim decades ago.

But her 2017 study showed that seawater could worsen the stings if the pressure of the rinse is too hard like it would be with a robust stream of pee. Then the next best thing. So it now kind of varies. A lot of places recommend vinegar. So vinegar will actually prevent more if there are stinging cells left will prevent them from firing, so it kind of deactivates them. But there's some controversy that for some species, it might make them fire more.

Oh, but for box jellyfish, I should say box jellyfish in places where you know there's box jellyfish vinegar definitely helps. OK, like a good citizen before you go out into the ocean, check if it's jellyfish season and what jellyfish will be there. Oh, you can do that. Is there jellyfish forecast? Yeah, my family will go to South Carolina fairly often. So they do have reports on when jellyfish season is, which is normally the warmer

months, but it varies again between species. And they will have the most up to date for that area kind of precaution. So do some googling. What else? Is there anything you can do to prevent being stung by a jellyfish? Yeah, so I believe Diane Nyad, when she did her long record breaking swim, she wore pantyhose or something. So in some cases, something just like pantyhose or anything like that, but mildly protective is enough if you use gloves that often you're not going to

get if you're like picking up a jellyfish again. For some reason, gloves, I wouldn't recommend it, but gloves will keep you for the most part from getting stung either. So the researcher I was talking about, Hawaii, Dr. Yanagi Hara, has developed something called sting no more and that's designed essentially to stop the sting pain. The other kind of consequences of being stung afterwards. That's something that in places where that's a concern, I believe, like in

lifeguard kits in various places, that is available and it's commercially available. So get yourself some of that. And if you're like, dang, I guess I need a full body nylon bodysuit. You could always go that direction. Now, I want you to know I went down a real rabbit hole looking into marathon swimmer Diana Nyad's Jelly Troubles and her incredibly inspiring feet of swimming between Cuba and Florida. I didn't know much about this, but midway through what was to be a 50 hour swim,

she encountered box jellies and this is a clip from her 2013 TED Talk describing the experience, which you should definitely go and watch in its entirety. It's so compelling. Two hours in, wham, never in my life. I knew there were Portuguese men of war, all kinds of moon jellies, all kinds of things, but the box jellyfish from the southern oceans is not supposed to be in these waters and I was on fire, excruciating, excruciating pain. I don't know if you can still see the red line here and up the arm.

Evidently, a piece this big of tentacle has a hundred thousand little barbs on it. And each barb is not just stinging your skin. It's sending a venom, the most venomous animal that lives in the ocean is the box jellyfish and every one of those barbs is sending that venom into the central nervous system. So first I feel like boiling hot oil. I've been dipped in and I'm yelling out fire, fire, fire, fire, help me. Somebody help me. And the next thing is paralysis.

I feel it in the back and then I feel it in the chest up here and I can't breathe. And now I'm not swimming with a nice long stroke. I'm sort of crabbing it this way. Then come convulsions. Young man on our boat is an EMT. He dives in to try to help me. He's stung. They drag him out on the boat and he's evidently, I didn't see any of this,

but lying on the boat and giving himself epinephrine shots. So Diane and I had attempted this swim four times and finally had to wear a full body stinger suit is what they're called. They're made of nylon and elastane. She also had to wear a hood and a mouth guard so that no part of her body was exposed after that. And so after hiring a team of scientists, including toxinologists, she finally completed the swim in 2013 at the age of 64.

And in the water, she said, she kept repeating to herself, find a way, find a way, find a way. Also, how bananas is it that her last name is Niad? And in Greek and Roman mythology, a Niad is a water nymph deity. And it comes from the Greek word for to swim. Anyway, I watched footage of her scrambling out of the water onto the sand of Key West, swollen and dazed and wronged by supporters chanting her name. And I cried my face off.

I have never been so happy to watch cell phone video of someone stumbling and delirious on a Florida beach. What does it feel like when you get stung? Fiery burning pain normally for the bad one. So the lion's mane, that was for sure sea nettles, which a lot of people, I'm sure, have been stung by for sure. I hear for a man of wars and for box jellyfish, it's this really intense burning pain initially, and that's probably coming a bit from the venom actually

attacking your skin. So there's a lot of times, Dermonocratic components of the venom, which is what will leave that scarring. It's also probably just the response of your your body to these toxins coming in, which might either be making holes in various cells or those neurotoxins are making things fire, saying it's pain. So that's the kind of immediate thing. And that's normally the thing that that certainly scares people and makes them

then kind of freak out for the most part. It's just that really intense pain. But normally it'll go away in an hour, maybe two. There's not. Often going to be many long term effects. Now, that being said, if you're if you're stung by something and you start having trouble breathing or you start otherwise like feeling more like anxious than normal, you start sweating, those those are signs that maybe you're having a allergic reaction.

Oh, or if you have any sort of anything that's kind of out of normal from just that pain, that's when you want to kind of think about going to the hospital to get treated for those. So that that can happen if you're particularly prone. That sort of thing. God, I'm imagining allergic on top of just getting venom injected into it. Five million. Yeah, just like, yeah.

Yeah, that's actually the discovery of anaphylaxis. The Nobel Prize for that was based on studies from Jellyfish Venom, which I think is pretty funny. That's amazing. It's true. The 1913 Nobel Prize went to Monsieur Charles R. Rache for his toxinological efforts. Magnifique.

Jellyfish in movies. Jellyfish and TV. Oh, really strike you. Yeah. So yeah, so I've been trying to figure out the name of this. So it's Seven Pounds with Will Smith. I love that she wrote this all down. I love how much she loves jelly venom.

So he talks about box jellyfish in there. And at the end, he goes into a bathtub of ice and then releases some box jellyfish that somehow he's been caring for and are very happy to the bathtub of ice. And it stings him and he dies. But somehow his organs are he's using it to preserve his organs. Oh, God. So so multiple issues here. What was being depicted was certainly the Australian box jellyfish.

I just watched a clip of this that were apparently he had seen at Monterey Bay Aquarium, they have a fantastic jellyfish facility there. And they're able to grow many kinds of jellyfish that other people can't grow. I do not think they have ever had the Australian box jellyfish there in tanks. Certainly not in the numbers that they had in there. Those animals are also tropical. They like warm water. If you put them into an ice bath, which was probably also fresh water,

they would disintegrate or they would die almost immediately, probably curl into a little sad ball. Somehow he was also keeping them in a tank that so jellyfish need very specific tanks that are round and have no corners or else that will rip them to shreds. How will a corner rip them to shreds? So when they get in the corner or in like filters, they just kind of get caught or stuck and then they will rip themselves apart. Oh, no.

It's it's yeah, I because I've tried to construct some other kinds of tanks. It's happened probably more times than I as a jellyfish biologist. I care to share, but yeah, they often rip themselves. So that's why jellyfish researchers often only keep polyps. It's you don't normally keep jellyfish because they're really hard to take care of once they're actually jellyfish. You keep them as polyps. Oh, I didn't realize that.

OK, hence Dr. Rebecca Helms, polyp parlor from the Medusology episode. What about Patreon questions? Can I ask you a million of them? Yes, go for it. But before we get to your questions, a few words about sponsors of the show who make it possible for us to throw some cash and a charity of the algers choosing each week. And this week, Anna would like it to go to skypeiscientist.org,

which is a nonprofit educational organization that enables scientists to videoconference with students in classrooms. And they are great. They're run by Squid Expert, Dr. Sarah McEnulty, who you heard in mythology. They also run Science Trivia over Zoom on Thursdays. They have so many videos with experts up. So that went to skypeiscientist.org at Anna's behest.

And that was made possible by a few sponsors of oligies. All right, your venomous questions. OK, Natalie Perkins wants to know, can they feel pain? Can they sting each other and all caps? Can they sting themselves? They might be stinging themselves, but it doesn't seem to affect them. So we have jellyfish in the jellyfish that we have here that eat other jellyfish. Hit each other all the time and nothing seems to happen.

But there are several jellyfish that eat exclusively other jellyfish or eat mostly other jellyfish, and that is also unclear if they are stinging them and actually like injecting some venom that is doing something to either sedate or paralyze or otherwise like inhibit that jellyfish. But the stinging cells have little hooks on them. And probably more what's happening is they're stinging them, cooking on to the jellyfish and then reeling them in. So there's a beautiful jellyfish called an egg yolk jellyfish that you can watch.

Do this. I've gotten to see those in person and they are amazing. And they just reel in moon jellyfish like no one's business. Well, I think I saw that on your Twitter. Oh, I love that egg yolk jellyfish so much. So this tweet was a link to a BBC documentary in which Sir David Envro narrates what appears to be a sunny side up breakfast using silly string to catch some floating parasols. And by the by, Anna says that there are roughly 25 different types of stinging

cells, which are called nitocytes. And these nitocytes have various sizes and shapes. They've got barbs, they've got spines. And the nitocyte cells themselves can be really, really tiny, like as small as a red blood cell or one fifth of the thickness of a sheet of paper, teeny tiny. So that means each tentacle can have hundreds to thousands of these very small barbed little babies. Davy R wants to know, do those barbs dissolve?

Do your skin just push it out? That I'm not totally sure. I'm assuming that they probably fall out before. So they're those stinging cells, the actual structural stuff is collagen and chitin. And I don't know that those tend to not react well in your body. So I think they probably part of it gets pushed out and then maybe a little bit

of the internal parts dissolve too. But I think I'm guessing they get pushed out, but I don't know. It's a question. Yeah. By the by, patrons, if you submitted a question for this episode and it didn't get answered, huge surprise. Anna amazingly went back to that call for questions post on Patreon and answered every single one of them personally, like 300 questions.

I have no words. I need to send her a fruit basket. So in regard to dissolving barbs, she followed up to say, eventually the cells will degrade, but likely your skin tries to push most of that debris out and she believes some people might actually have allergic reactions to the really complex proteins that make up stinging cells and not just the venom itself. So her guess is that they could remain long enough to irritate your skin. And the best is to try to wash the area very gently with salt water or vinegar

and then eventually hot water to remove all of the stinging cells and the tentacle bits. Oh, OK. So what else helps? Rachel Dashiell wants to know, is it true that rubbing limes on jellyfish stings can help? I'm going to go. Then no, no. I've also heard meat tenderizer.

Don't do that either. OK. Probably bad. And also, you can get a skin burn by getting lime or acid, like citrus acid on your skin in the sun. I know that that apparently happens a lot when people are like drinking margaritas. If you spot a reed on your skin, you get a really, really bad sunburn. I forget the name for it.

I will include it in a side. But yeah, so maybe don't do that. PS, I looked it up and it's called Phytophotodermatitis, which is not only a very large word, but also hellenarnar. So if you know anyone who's just been like slinging drinks on a beach, tell them to wash their mitts because they can give you blisters. And it looks like you stuck your hand in scalding, wesson oil. Also, scientists say that vinegar is a fine potion to apply to the sting,

but don't really waste your time with lemon juice. It's too bad you can't just bottle up and keep the venom. Or can you? First time question, ask her. Rihanna Nishembrey says, what is up with mollusks that eat jellyfish and then recycle their stingers? Yeah, so yeah, a lot of nudibranchs do this thing. It's called kleptonidae and they eat jellyfish.

So the blue sea dragon nudibranch eats actually man of war tentacles. In just the stinging cells, but keeps them intact and then uses those stinging cells on their predators. Oh, gosh, I'll have what she's having. That's amazing. That's so like, oh, yeah, like that's I'm revering your glue. That's awesome. That's so cool. Oh, my God, I like to say that this for people that say like, oh,

jellyfish, they're just they're simple. They're kind of they don't even have a brain. They're kind of done like they're so good at making these little chemical weapons, other animals are stealing them. They're just too good. So yeah, that happens a lot as they get there. Oh, my God. That was a really beautiful nudibranchs too, right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're like, I think I've seen pictures of them in there. I got to do a whole nudibranch episode now because they're so pretty. Jason and Nick wants to know why do they love Florida so much? Do you have any idea? So many jellyfish in Florida. Yeah, jellyfish. I don't know the exact numbers, but I would guess that jelly is just like really

like warm water, at least ones that we can see. So like ones that I work on, which are hydra zones and hydroids, you can find those kind of everywhere. They're just smaller. So the big ones probably just really like warmer water if they have like symbiotic algae or they're just trying to get larger food items is probably part of it too. So because there's more biodiversity in those warmer areas,

that means more fish and more plankton for whatever they're eating so they can get bigger, that's probably part of it. Anna also noted, though, that there are giant jellies in the chilly depths of the sea. And even the lion's mane, which is huge, is in the icy northern Pacific waters. So she says it's likely that in tropical areas like Florida, there is more marine biodiversity and jellies may have adapted to the food available there, but the jellyfish are truly everywhere.

She says the equator, to the Antarctic, to the deep sea, they come in all flavors and sizes. Oh, and speaking of regions, Michelle Nier has a great question on the east coast. I've heard that the ones with colors inside sting while the clear can't, is that true? And is there a reason why? Wow, that person has just simplified the difference between the jellyfish

I study and other jellyfish. So there's multiple groupings of jellyfish. So there's skyphozoan, which are true jellyfish. These are like the upside down jellyfish, moon jellyfish, sea nettle. There's box jellyfish that are related to those. So those are the there's about 50 of them, cube shaped. Some have eyes, usually pretty bad venom. True jellyfish, there's like 200 box jellyfish, about 50.

I study hydrazoan, which there's a little over 3,000 species in there, and they're Medusa. Their jellyfish stage is often very clear. And the for true jellyfish and box jellyfish, they're translucent. Some of them are clear, but they're often, I just call them chunkier. They often have some sort of color. They, yeah, they're just much more bulbous.

And you got more of a heft to them, whereas a hydra Medusa might only live for a week or two, maybe less and are often very clear. I don't know that it's a good general rule that clear jellyfish can't sting you and colorful ones can, but probably most hydra Medusa are too small and otherwise probably too weak to really sting people. Now, that being said, the Portuguese mannivore is a hydrazoan. So there are exceptions, of course.

That's probably what they're looking at, the difference between a hydra Medusa and a true jellyfish. Nice. So sky phyzoans tend to be more colorful ones. And hydrazoans are the watery, clear ones. Very, very, very big generalization, of course, because every jellyfish and their venom is personal. Aaron Ryan has a personal story says one time one time I got stung

and the sting looked like a red lightning bolt pattern all over my thigh. What's up with that? That's that's probably both inflammation. So your body just reacting negatively to that venom and potentially, depending on the jellyfish, there was some skin attacking components as well. That maybe could leave some scarring. That's probably the same as when you're stung by a wasp or a bee or anything. If you get those really big red welts like I do,

because you're particularly allergic, that's probably the same thing is happening with the jellyfish thing. And is it just like the pattern of the tentacle? Like if someone slapped you across a face and you had a handprint? Yeah, yeah. Oh, my god. They made an intricate design of the tentacle on your arm. That would be really intense.

But yeah, being that pattern, I suppose, yeah. Well, now I have to find out if anyone's ever gotten a tattoo in that pattern. Oh, I'm just taking it straight to the shop. Oh, it already hurts. Tap me up and probably be a little bit of my hero. That would be. Yeah, I'm going to look it up. Don't think I'm not.

OK, if you think that this will be the only jellyfish tattoo discourse in this episode, oh, contrary, just keep listening, my friends. Miranda Panda needs help. Miranda Panda says jellyfish are wackadoodle creatures, and I'm so scared of them because I was stung two different times as a kid. How can I overcome this fear as someone who's been stung literally daily? Have you been stung yet today? Um, I mean, I put my hands in there, so I'm sure I'm sure they tried.

I had to poke my moon jellies little too, but they're not too bad. What should Miranda Panda do? So again, knowing whenever you go to a beach or somewhere and looking at when is jellyfish season? Have there been reports of major blooms to bloom these large groups of jellyfish? You can look those up and knowing what kind of jellyfish they're probably going to be. Now, I think if I remember just from me being on the beaches, when the waves are really heavy and there's a lot of tide, jellyfish might not go as close to the

shore, but then again, they might get washed close to shore. So seeing kind of what the patterns are where you are to that might help. But also just knowing that most jellyfish are really, really, they're not trying to hurt you one, but they're not going to do any lasting damage unless they're a box jellyfish and even then you need to get stung pretty intensely. So I also was very scared when I first got stung by a jellyfish. I didn't go in the ocean for a long, long time. I will say jellyfish are not your worst concern.

If you're going into the water, it's unlikely they're going to do anything really lasting to you, but I also recognize, yeah, it hurts and you can't see them. And there's not really much you can do in terms of getting away from them. But I would just say do your research, know kind of what you're getting into when you're going into it and then just try and let it go and just try and enjoy being out there because it's really unlikely that you're going to get going to get smashed too hard with them, maybe invest in some full body pantyhose or some. Yeah, you could always get some protective

wet suit, protective equipment and then then you're good to go. The booties. Yeah, I say do it. Maria Joravila wants to know first time. Ask her how many stings does it take from her red lines made jellyfish to kill you? An idea. Um, lion's manes are pretty bad. The lion's manes are one of the largest animals on the planet,

let alone they are the largest jellyfish. So how large are the lion's main jellies again? OK, they are much larger than a lion's main, for sure. Up to several meters across with these trailing, Muppet like wispy tentacles up to 30 meters long, which America is 120 feet. 120 feet, which is like four to five macy's parade floats tall or the length of approximately 23 alley warts head to toe. That's a lot of tentacular action.

So often, like with with stings, amounts really matters. So I guess if you got like a full wall of full body coverage. Maybe that would be enough. But I don't think I don't think anyone's ever died from a lion's main sting. So I don't know. OK, this next ghostly question was asked by patrons. Cheryl Kalatorowicz, Aliyah Jolie Brown, Rachel Henderson and Shannon Ball. How can they sting you after they're dead or if the tentacles aren't even attached?

What's going on? Yeah, so they're synthesizing stinging cells kind of all the time, all throughout their life, and the stinging cells are more or less independent. So once they've created the stinging cells and move them to where they're going to be, either the tentacles or other structures, once they've died, those are still pretty much intact. And so if the even if the animal and cells is not making any more, they've already made a bunch.

And so when you go and you touch a dead jellyfish or a piece comes off. So that often when there's big blooms of man of wars, often what is happening too is their actual long tentacles are breaking off in the water. And so even if you're keeping away from the large sail of the man of war, a tentacle might just come and wrap around your ankle and it'll still sting you. So I often tell people probably even if you see a dead jellyfish on the beach,

unless you know what it is, which it's still really hard to know what it is, do not touch it. And even if you know what it is, sometimes their tentacles like flip around to the top of the bell of a jellyfish. So even if the if you touch the top of the bell, it could still sting you. I would give it like a day. So maybe maybe maybe just a few hours. It also kind of depends on how fast they degrade. So if the jellyfish dies in a tank here, it's gone in like 12 hours.

And probably a lot of it's stinging cells with it on the ground. I think it just depends on the temperature. What kind of say on if a bird comes and nibbles at it? I just wouldn't touch it. Don't do it. Don't do it. If you do, don't pee on yourself. No. And yes, if anything comes out of this, please do not pee on your friend or yourself. Stranger, please don't do that.

So when nature called. Don't answer that. Is there a jellyfish that you really want to work with or one that you're you're always kind of curious about, like other species that you don't work on? Yes, I think what I'm most hooked on right now is called the bell jelly or the red eye jelly. The scientific name is poly orcas penicillata. And I fell in love with a large hydrazoan

Meduci up to a hundred tentacles. It has these tiny red, very basic sensory organs all around the bell. Massive stinging cells and they hunts like crabs and shrimp. And we actually don't even know what their polyp looks like. There's never been a successful kind of collection of their polyps or getting them to spawn in tanks, despite many people who are experienced with this trying to do it. And I would love to just figure out what's going on in there. Oh, OK, these bell jellies.

Oh, they are cute as hell. Jellies, they are diaphanous with a little ring of red spots at the bottom of their bell, kind of like a darling little belt. An Anna spotted one while taking a marine biology class up in Washington state, and she made a lifelong commitment to the species. That was my first tattoo with the bell jelly. Oh, my gosh, how many tattoos do you have? I have two right now.

What is the other one also a jellyfish? Yes, it is. It's a little upside down jellyfish. That's amazing. What prompted you to get them? So the so honestly, this class that I got to go to changed my life in so many ways. I love just this is a pretty famous place for jellyfish biologists. This was called Friday Harbor Lab.

There's just this wealth of different kinds of jellyfish that kind of get moved up from the deep sea and otherwise it's just such a beautiful place with all these different marine inverts and this bell jellyfish at one point was actually the icon for Friday Harbor and it was there that Anna got a chance to work with famed jellyfish researcher, Dr. Claudia Mills. She would go out in a rowboat, I believe, every day and collect jellyfish. And she's described new species. She described the behavior.

She's done all this amazing work for jellyfish. And I got to meet her while I was there, which is amazing. And actually jellyfish with her off the dock, which is where she catches all these jellyfish jelly fishing a verb. Now we know. So when I was there collecting jellyfish with her, I looked out into the water and I saw this kind of little white round thing and I kind of looked at her and I looked back at it and then I started seeing the the tentacles.

I looked back and I was like, did you just find this and put this back in the water? And she's like, oh, no, no, I didn't see it. So I scooped it up and it was one of these bell jellyfish at the time. She was, I think, giving a tour with someone who had young kids. And so I got to show the kids this beautiful jellyfish, got to hear her talk about it. It was just such an awesome moment. And at the time, Anna's old undergrad advisor, Dr. John Allen, also happened to be visiting.

And then are you ready? She saw another bell jelly the same day. That's like walking into 7-Eleven and seeing Beyonce. And then later at Trader Joe's, there's Bill Murray. What a day. And again, I looked out, I saw a little round white thing. I'm like, could this be something? And then I saw the tentacles and I just I probably started screaming.

And so I quickly tried to use my hands and I got it into the plastic bag. And then I got to show my undergrad advisor's kids this beautiful jellyfish. It's just such an awesome moment in science where just all these things kind of came together and it was just such a beautiful animal that has weird bits of natural history we still don't know much about. I just loved everything about it. And so I that definitely was going to be my first tattoo because I just wanted to look at it whenever I'm in a in a the grad student slump or angry at data,

not doing what I want. I can remember that there was this awesome thing out there. What hurts more a jellyfish stinger tattoo? Honestly, the lion's mane sting on my wrist was pretty bad. OK, OK. I think that was on my birthday, too. Was it really? Yeah. Oh, I got you this. Oh, my God.

And OK, so apart from stings, what or maybe it is the stings. What's the most about your job? Oh, I mean, there's all the just like writing grants, working through difficult data and that jellyfish because they not many people know about them. A lot of stuff is hard to do because sometimes you're the first person doing it. That all can get to you at times. But I have to say making saltwater for me is just awful.

I I don't know what it is because it's not hard. But I get tense because if you make it wrong and you accidentally give it to your jellyfish and they're just going to die in front of you and then you have to do it all the time and it takes. Yeah, I'm not a fan. Is if you were on a coastal lab, would you just go scoop up saltwater or do you need the saltwater to be very specifically like certain salinity and without a lot of different critters in it?

There's a very so my lab mate is actually originally from France and the lab he worked in there, they use saltwater that was just lightly filtered, I think, directly from the Mediterranean. And I know they do them the Chesapeake Bay too, though that needs a lot more filtering, but for some of these, you do need very specific salinity, the salt concentrations, and sometimes you just want it to be very clean. I think I would still have to make saltwater even if I was near near the coast. And such as it's still such a petty thing, but no, it's not on my nerves.

No, it's not. It's not. And what sucks is you can't go home and like relax in an Epson salt bath that just wasn't just rubbing salt in the wound. I know I'm such a I don't know why I've done this. So I have jellyfish at home too. And so I have to make saltwater there. So it's not even how many jellyfish do you have at home? So I have a few polyps.

So I probably have oh, maybe 30 or 40 polyps. So it's really easy to keep polyps. You just keep them in pyrex dishes. So like ten, fifteen dollar pyrex dishes, you get a target. That's what we keep our jellyfish in some of the polyps. And then I have a right now I have a small fish tank, which I'm using to raise a few maybe 60 jellyfish.

So by my calculations, that is 90 pets and a polyp parlor. This is a dream. It's the dream. And now what about your favorite thing about what you do or about jellyfish? I was really trying very hard to think of this. Yeah. Because there is so much there's there's two big parts of it, I would say. So one of them is that I am just so lucky, I think, to have. Gone into a lab with an advisor and a lab mate and a department that are just

amazingly supportive and knowledgeable. And even here in Kansas, like they're just doing amazing marine biology and just biology in general, I'm very lucky that I have that. And also to like the jellyfish community and the venom community have both been extremely supportive of what I'm doing and what other students are doing. And I really feel very lucky because I know that's not always the case for many people in science. But the other part of it is I just I love that I can go out almost anywhere,

whether I'm talking to Girl Scouts or other other people around Skype, scientists classes or whatnot and tell them, hey, what do you know about jellyfish? Like, oh, they sting you like cool. You know, that's probably about all we know. We know that they sting things, but we don't know what it is. We don't really know how that venom is working. We don't always know what they're eating or what's eating it. It's just like such fundamental kind of natural history questions on such cool

animals that we just don't know and I get to help find that out. I think that's so cool. I love finding new things. That's so cool that you are like a natural history detective and you might be the first person in the world to understand how something works. Do you remember how she discovered that baby flatworms actually fed, which led to her first paper as an undergrad? OK, so she lives for those moments in science.

And then we put one of the flatworm larvae up on the scope and we saw food in its gut and I think I fell to the floor and just like started weeping. I was so I was like, no one has seen this before. Oh, my God, that's just. That's awesome. Yeah, you get all these mysteries and all these discoveries. That's so great. Oh, I love it.

I just love that you're also talking to me from your lab that you're surrounded by jellies right now. I am. This is really is the comfort. Oh, God, thank you so much for doing this. Yes, of course. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about it. Yeah, you did it. Do you feel like you just got done with an exam?

Oh, in a way, I really. So I had my oral exam in the fall and I got married in the fall. And really, the feeling right before this is right on par. Oh, really? I'm very nervous. Oh, my God, that's amazing. Just the fact that there are thousands and thousands of people that are going to know not to pee on each other.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a win. So ask smart people stupid, stingy questions because their skulls are just bowls of cocktail party facts and they love to share. So follow Anna Klompin on Twitter and Instagram. She is at both at Gelatinus Sting, two S's. Her science website is gelatinusting.com and her personal website is anaclompin.com.

We are at oligies at Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Alli Ward with just one L on both and links to all of this stuff and more are in the show notes as well as up at alliward.com slash oligies slash tuxinology. And oligies merch is available at oligiesmerch.com. There are hats and t-shirts and totes and visors. So please feel free to put oligies on your person and find other oligites in the wild. And thank you, Shannon Fultz and Bunny Dutch for managing all that. They are sisters who host the comedy podcast, You Are That.

And thank you to Emily White and all the oligies transcribers for heading up transcript efforts. Those transcripts for most episodes are free and available at alliward.com slash oligies dash extras for anyone who's deaf, hard of hearing or just would like to see how these hilarious transcriptionists describe sound effects. And Caleb Patton also bleeps episodes so they're kid friendly. Those are up at the same link. And thank you, Noel Dillworth for helping manage scheduling and to Aaron Talbert

for admitting the oligies podcast Facebook group full of wonderful people to assistant editor and pro boyfriend, Jared Sleeper. And the bell to our tentacles, Stephen Ray Morris, lead editor who also hosts the Percast and see Jurassic Wright, Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And if you stick around in our tentacles until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. This week's secret is pretty fresh. It's only maybe 15 minutes old, but I just cooked my parents' dinner and the marinara jar I used came in this like tall skinny jar and I'm like unreasonably

excited to wash it out and put a koozie on it and use it as a to go cup. And I don't know why it's so thrilling because I have real reusable to go cups. But it's just like something about the thrill of immediate recycling. And like I could put the top on and throw it in a bag. I don't know. I see a lot of promise in this jar. I'm maybe I'll name the jar like Paul or something. And maybe I'll post an Instagram photo of us. I'll just I'll let you know how it's working out.

Maybe I'm going to break him. Maybe it won't work out. I just I think this marinara jar is a really good to go cup. OK, that's enough out of me. Bye. Do you want to say do you want to say? Oh, yes, I would like to say something that Alison cooks too much dinner.