Science Friday - Cephalopod Week Wrap-Up, USDA Climate Change, Sinking Louisiana. June 28, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

The eight-day squid-and-kin appreciation extravaganza of Cephalopod Week is nearly over, but there’s still plenty to learn and love about these tentacled “aliens” of the deep. After a rare video sighting of a giant squid—the first in North American waters—last week, NOAA zoologist Mike Vecchione talks about his role identifying the squid from a mere 25 seconds of video, and why ocean exploration is the best way to learn about the behavior and ecology of deep-sea cephalopods. Then, Marine Biological Laboratory scientist Carrie Albertin gives Ira a tour of the complex genomes of octopuses, and how understanding cephalopod genetics could lead to greater insights into human health. Finally, SciFri digital producer Lauren Young wraps up Cephalopod Week for 2019. The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) receives over a billion dollars a year to study issues affecting American agriculture and the food supply. Climate change is one of those issues, and in years past, the ARS has publicized its work on how farmers can reduce their carbon footprint with no-till agriculture; how climate change alters the relationship of pests and crops; or how more abundant CO2 affects the growth of grasslands, potatoes, timber, wheat, and more. But in the last several years, that steady stream of climate-related agricultural science news has dried up. One of the only recent press releases from the ARS dealing with climate change is a good news story for the beef industry, about how beef’s greenhouse gas emissions may not be that bad after all. The agency’s move away from publicizing a wide range of work on climate science is part of a troubling trend, according to a new investigation by Politico.  The wetland marshes just outside the city of New Orleans act as natural buffers from storm surges during hurricanes. But like much of southern Louisiana, that land is disappearing. It’s partly due to subsistence and sea level rise—but also due to the thousands of miles of channels that oil companies have carved through the fragile marshes to get out to their rigs. Those channels have eroded and turned the buffering wetlands to open water. Now, New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell is suing a handful of oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, for money to rebuild the marshes they helped destroy.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for listening. I wanted to give a quick thank you to everyone who donated in celebration of Cephalopod Week and helped build our online sea of support. We can't do this stuff, particularly not these fun things like Cephalopod Week, without your help. So thank you. And if you missed out, just a reminder that you can make a donation at any time to support SciFri by visiting our website. We're a nonprofit, and we rely on donations from our fans and listeners.

So go to ScienceFriety.com slash give to donate. Once again, that's ScienceFriday.com slash give. And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A little bit later in the hour, we'll talk about signs that science may be under fire at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, including a look at why the USDA is keeping quiet about its own climate change research. But first, in the Democratic presidential debate, there were quite a few mentions about climate change. Each candidate seemed to have at least some thoughts about addressing climate change. But last week, the Trump administration rolled back the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era proposal to address climate change, by setting limits on emissions on power plants. Now, the Trump EPA has replaced that

with a new plan called the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. Here to fill us in on that story, is Umar, Afan, staff writer for Vox. Welcome back to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. So what are the key differences between these two plans? Well, the Obama-era plan focused on a huge suite of techniques that you could use to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that included installing things like CO2 scrubbers or even trading carbon credits with other states or in the region to help lower greenhouse gas emissions. The Trump plan focuses on one technique, and that's what they call heat rate improvement, which is basically a fancy way of saying they want to improve the fuel efficiency of coal-fired power plants.

Not do away with them, but improve their fuel efficiency. Right. And that creates sort of a paradoxical situation because, you know, like if you have a car that gets better, gas mileage, you might drive it more. Well, some researchers looked at the affordable clean energy rule, and they found that it would actually lead to more greenhouse gas emissions because as you improve the, you know, efficiency of these power plants, you make it more cost effective to run them. In some instances, it would increase the output of some plants by 28%, if not more. Seems to be a little bit of circular logic here because that plan was put out by the EPA, which this current administration says the agency doesn't have the authority to do.

Well, the EPA is required by law, by Supreme Court decision, actually, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The question is what it can mandate or what it can tell the states to do. Now, the Trump administration has argued that the whole suite of techniques that the Obama administration imposed on states, that was beyond what the EPA is legally allowed to do. When the Obama plan came out, 27 states' suit to block the rule and the Supreme Court stepped in to issue a temporary stay to allow the lawsuits to go ahead, the Trump administration is now saying their new rule actually comports with the law better. Your next story looks at cap and trade bills being passed on the state level.

Now, New York is the latest state to pass an ambitious bill. Tell us about that. Right. It's actually the first state to do so by law. It passed through the legislature and was signed by the governor. This is probably one of the most ambitious statewide carbon and climate change targets in the country. It aims to have the whole state, the entire economy, to be carbon neutral by 2050. So that's not just power plants.

It's cars. It's residential heating. It's factories and so on. But the key factor is that this is net zero, not absolute zero. So it means you can still emit CO2, but you have to compensate for it in another way. And the mechanism to do that is, of course, cap and trade. New York is part of a regional greenhouse gas initiative, which lets it trade carbon credits with other states. So if they are producing extra credits or if they need extra credits, they can buy some from other states

and work their way down in a more flexible way. So let's move over to the other coast. Oregon is another story. This is a really interesting one where lawmakers went missing. They went out of the state to avoid a vote. State police had to get involved. That's right. Similar to New York, the state legislature was weighing another cap-and-trade bill.

The Democrats in the last election won supermajorities in both the Oregon House and the Oregon Senate. So they campaigned on this issue and they were about to pass it in the Senate, but Republicans fled the state last week to deny a quorum so they couldn't hold a vote. The governor, Kate Brown, ordered state police to go look for the wayward Republicans. and they were trying to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies and other states to bring them back. But just this morning, and in fact on my way to the studio, one of the Republicans returned to the Oregon Capitol this morning and says that an announcement is coming. Oh, you mean they'll be coming back, assuming that's what that means. Well, yeah, so it could be that.

The legislative session's deadline was June 30th, and so the assumption was they were trying to run out the clock, but maybe they struck a backroom deal and maybe they have a compromise here that could you know, bring Republicans back to the table and may get this bill passed. We don't know yet. As they say in our business, stay tuned. And just give us a little brief idea of what the reductions this bill would call for. Right. Well, like the New York bill, it would eventually zero out the entire greenhouse gas footprint of the state of Oregon, and it would do so with a cap and trade scheme. Oregon would be in the Western climate initiative, which is a separate carbon

market on the West Coast with California and a couple parts of Canada. But, you know, it would work in a lot of the same ways as the New York bill. It's just that Oregon is a much smaller state, a much smaller economy, and has a large rural population. And so that's part of where you're getting the pushback. Let's move on to something quite interesting and quite surprising, I think, to a lot of people. And that was that NASA announces a new mission this week called Dragonfly. That's going to go to Saturn's Moon, the Giant Titan. My Titan? Well, Titan's got rivers.

It's got lakes. It's got mountains. And most importantly for NASA, it might have life. And so this is a mission that's going to go there to kind of look for some of the precursors for life and maybe a living organism if there is one. But what's special about this is that this mission is going to send essentially a nuclear-powered eight-rotor helicopter to explore the planet. This is similar to the camera drones. You may have seen those quadcopters and whatnot. Titan's atmosphere is four times as dense as earth.

Earths and it has less gravity. So an aerial vehicle would actually do quite well in that atmosphere. And so they want to send this device there to explore the planet and detect signs of life. Oh, you know, I guess dragonfly is a good name because the craft is basically, as you say, a drone and go flit around from place to place. Right. And the mission is scheduled to launch in 2026 and should arrive there around 2034. And it's a good place to search for stuff because it has a very diverse landscape? It has a diverse landscape. Previous missions have detected, you know, organic compounds, compounds like methane, and so those could be some of the raw ingredients you need to assemble some of the materials for life. And in a lot of different ways, it's

kind of like Earth, and in a lot of important ways it's different. It looks kind of like Earth before life evolved, some scientists say. And so that's why it's an interesting snapshot. Just a closing note today, that Paris hit 112 degrees Fahrenheit in Southern France. France, 115. Wow. It's hot. It's hot in Europe. Yeah, there's a huge heat wave going on.

And in Spain, the heat has helped trigger some wildfires. And in Europe, I mean, it's especially concerning because the building stock there is a lot older, and much of Europe doesn't use air conditioning. And so public health officials have opened public cooling centers to help people, you know, find some relief. All right, Amera, thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thanks for having me. Stay cool. Lamerifan, is staff writer for Viya.

based in Washington. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of really national significance. The wetland marshes just outside the city of New Orleans act as natural buffers from storm surge. But like much of southern Louisiana, that land is disappearing due to subsistence, sea level rise, and the oil and gas industry. But now the mayor of New Orleans is suing a handful of energy companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, suing for money to rebuild the marshes they help destroy. Here to tell us more about that

is Tegan Wendland, lead coastal reporter with WNO in New Orleans. Welcome back to Science Friday, Tegan. What's up, Ira? How are you? Fine. So what has the oil and gas industry done to the marshland around New Orleans. So Louisiana's entire coast is sinking and washing away. I want to just catch you on the subsistence mention. It's actually subsidence, the sort of natural sinking of the land here. Sorry. And that's all right. And one of the reasons is these canals. These days, there's a lot more drilling out in the Gulf of Mexico, but there used to be a lot of rigs closer inland. And to get to those oil rigs over the past hundred years or so, companies dug these channels through our marshes. and then saltwater got into those over the years and eroded them,

and that's contributed to, by some accounts, up to 90% of the land loss that we've experienced here so far. So how are these channels being used? Most of them now have been abandoned by the companies, but there are, of course, a lot of fishermen who use them to zoom around on their boats to get out to their favorite fishing spots, but for the most part they're abandoned. So what effect on the local environment do these channels have? Well, like I said, they're eroding because of saltwater intrusion, and so they're sort of contributing to the erosion of our marshes. And the marshes, particularly around the city, mostly south of the city, act as natural buffers against storm surge.

The more land there is between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, the safer the city is when a big storm heads our way. So as those marshes have eroded, there's less protecting us. There's, of course, also a big levee and floodwall system protecting the city, too. but it's not invincible. And the marshes kind of act to protect the levees to an extent as well. So the mayor of New Orleans is suing the oil industry. Has this worked before? Remember the BP oil spill?

Sure. So it's not clear how this will all pan out. There are a handful of other parishes who have also filed suits. We have parishes here instead of counties. And they started filing these suits a couple of years ago, so they're still winding their way through the courts. The state has also gotten involved at this point, So that kind of strengthens these cases.

But even if Orleans Parish does win, it likely wouldn't result in a ton of money. And it surely wouldn't be enough to rebuild the many miles of marshes that have disappeared here. So is this just something to make a statement then if they realize they're not going to probably get all that money they need? Well, I'm not sure the mayor would say that. You know, she told me that she's looking for money to restore the marshes anyway that she can. The oil and gas industry is certainly not very happy about it. And industry rep told me that they never expect Houston, for example, to do something like this. And they say that fewer companies are going to want to drill here in the future.

I guess that's up to us to decide whether that's a bad thing. But the truth is most of the development is offshore these days anyway. It's not near-shore. So I think paying for the lawyers is probably going to be the biggest challenge for the city. And they're moving forward with it. That's right. It's winding its way through the courts just like the same. seven, well, there's seven total parishes who have filed suits like this. We're one of seven,

and we're just sort of waiting to see what happens next. It could set an interesting precedent. Yeah, we'll follow it, Tegan. We'll have you back when something else happens, okay? There's always something happening down here. I know. It's great down there. Tegan London is a lead coastal reporter with WWNO in New Orleans. Thanks for joining us and have a good weekend. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we're going to look at the Department of Agriculture's reluctance to publicize its own science about climate change, its efforts to keep other researchers quiet, too, and to ship scientists out of Washington into Kansas. We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service

receives over a billion dollars a year to study issues affecting American agriculture and the food supply. And one of those issues, as you might imagine, is climate change. We went through the archives of press releases from the Agricultural Research Service, or ARS. And in years past, 2011, 12, 1314, we found lots of news about how farmers can reduce their carbon footprint with. No-till agriculture, how climate change alters the relationship of pests and crops, or how more abundant CO2 affects the growth of grasslands, potatoes, timber, wheat, the list goes on. But in the last few years, that steady stream of climate-related agricultural science news has dried up. One of the only recent press releases from the ARS dealing with climate change is a good news story for the beef industry about how maybe beef's greenhouse gas emissions aren't really that bad after all.

And this move away from publicizing a wide range of work on climate science is part of a troubling trend, according to a new investigation by Politico. Helena Botmiller-Evich is a reporter on that story. She's a senior food and agriculture reporter at Politico in Washington. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Walk us through your investigation. What is happening at the USDA with climate change research?

It's really interesting because I've covered food and ag for nearly a decade and I've covered USDA throughout this administration. And up until recently, I hadn't heard a ton of concern about climate science coming out of USDA. It hasn't been, you know, an all-out warfare like EPA or Interior or these, you know, these agencies that we've read about where there's a lot of conflict over climate science. So we haven't heard a lot. So when I started to hear some whispers about the department shifting away from climate science, that piqued my interest. I started looking into all of the communications that come out of USDA, not just press releases out of the department,

but also the Agricultural Research Service, which you mentioned, which is the in-house science arm within USDA. And what I found is, you know, you did a great job summarizing it. The climate science that USDA is still churning out is just simply not being talked about. It is not being promoted. It really is a climate news drought, and that is driving less and less coverage of government science about climate change in agriculture. Let's focus in on a specific instance of a paper about rice nutrition.

It appears the ARS was ready to put out a press release and then change their minds. Walk us through what happened there. It really is one of the more bizarre things I've ever covered. There was a team of researchers led by USDA that included researchers at the University of Tokyo and the Chinese Academy of Science and the University of Washington, even researchers in Australia, they had collaborated for more than two years to measure what happens to rice in an elevated CO2 atmosphere at levels that we are predicted to see within this century. And what they found confirmed a lot of recent research that has found that protein drops, iron drops, zinc drops in rice. But they also found for the first time that some vitamins drop in rice under these conditions.

So this was a new finding. Everyone involved in the research seemed to understand that it was going to get some attention that when they published a study in a peer-review journal, it was going to definitely spark some conversation and some press coverage. And when it came time to put the press packet out, the University of Washington and USDA were coordinating. They had each written a press release. They had shared the press releases with each other.

And then at the last minute, USDA not only decided to not put out its press release, it called the University of Washington and said, you know, essentially we don't think you should do a press release either. The last minute they raised concerns about the data. So just a bizarre incident, the University of Washington took the concern seriously, reviewed the paper, reviewed the evidence, determined the science was sound, and they still promoted the paper. really shows the far-reaching effects of having a government basically cast out on peer-refew science.

We reached out to the USDA before our interview, and a spokesperson replied, Leadership has not discouraged the ARS or any USDA agency from using terms such as climate change, climate or carbon sequestration, or from highlighting work on these topics. Research continues on these subjects, and we promote the research once researchers are ready to announce the findings. after going through the appropriate reviews and clearances. Their words. This is interesting. You and your colleagues are political

have been reporting on another bit of news about the USDA. They're planning to relocate two agencies, the Economic Research Service, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, more than 500 employees to Kansas City. Yeah, this has been making waves, really, for several months now. There's a lot of economists within the Economic Research Service who feel that this is, this move is essentially retaliation for some reports that have come out over the last year that run counter to the administration's agenda on various policies like climate change and the food stamp program and related issues. And there's been moving very quickly on this, yep.

Yeah, let me bring on someone who's involved. Kevin Hunt is one of the USDA employees who was asking. to move to Kansas, along with hundreds of other science staff members. He's a scientist and geographer at the Economic Research Service in Washington, and he's acting president of Local 3403, the ERS Union. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, this is Kevin. Acting vice president, I want to clarify, but yes.

Acting vice president. You were asked to relocate. How many people have been asked along with you to relocate? There's about 200 employees that received reassignment letters the exact same day that they announced that it would be Kansas City. We received those emails all the way to 11 p.m. at night, and now we have to make a decision if we're willing to move in 30 days, basically July 15th. And what will make it determine whether you move or not? Well, most of us have personal situations, of course. Some of my employees are, disabled, some have disabled children, some are about to give birth.

We have to basically drop everything and move or lose our jobs. Why do you think they're asking you to move? They say that it's to get closer to stakeholders. However, they're thinking about a very limited amount of stakeholders. The USDA budget is about 75% for food supplement. So, you know, every American is a customer of the USDA. Do you think this is an attempt to stifle science by the USDA? Well, you know, the consequences will be that because most of us can't make that kind of move in this short of a time span without any incentive.

You know, this is a pay cut for most of us because of the locality pay difference. There's no bonus or any sort of, you know, incentive to go. So for me personally, yes. I work on honeybee issues, pollination issues. I have a paper that's in the review process right now, and we were kind of looking at who are the co-authors, and there may not be anybody left by the time this would be published because that can be a six-month process.

Helena, do you find anything unusual about this move? One of the things that's interesting about the move is just how quickly they're going about it. The time frame has been really accelerated, and I think that, has fed a lot of this concern among some within ERS in particular that it's meant to sort of weaken or shrink the research arm, basically. So the question of motives, clearly there is no memo that says, you know, this is the stated goal of the move, but there are a lot of officials involved at these agencies who feel that is the intent. Can we be clear about them. I would like to add, too, that during the presidential budget that was proposed for fiscal year 19,

they wanted to cut staff by 50 percent. And the union did an estimate on how many employees were going to go, and we could lose between 70 and 90 percent of those employees that are, reassigned and then there's a few employees that are being left in Washington, D.C., and so that would equate to about 50 to 60 percent in a staff reduction. So it's the numbers speak for themselves. They only have 200 available cubes in this temporary space with 550 employees that do the math there. So they're waiting for people to resign instead of going.

Yes. Okay. That's best. Well, watch it. Thank you very much, both of you for taking, be with it, talk, with us. Helena Botmiller, Evich, Senior Food and Agriculture Reporter at Politico in Washington, Kevin Hunt, scientist and geographer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Acting Vice President of Local 3403, the ERS Union. Thank you for taking time to be with us today.

Bobtailed squid on the brain, mimic octopus on your mind. If you feel like you're knee-deep and nautiluses, then chances are you've been playing along with Cephalopod Week for the last eight days like our listener, Gwendy. Octopus, octopus, just like a jelly. Octopus, octopus. It's big fat belly. Yes, we've been celebrating our suckered friends here at SciFi with live events, haiku, and lots and lots of Ceph Science.

In fact, just as we are kicking off the cephalobration last week, the New York Times reported on a stunning finding, a new video of a giant squid for the first time in North American waters, and only the third ever video taken of the elusive creature. Here to talk about the squid sighting is Dr. Mike Vecione, a zoologist for Noah's Systematics Lab at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He helped the research team identify the Giants. Welcome to Science Friday.

Good afternoon, Ira. Good afternoon, to you. So what's this story with this squid siding? How did these researchers find it? Well, first of all, the credit goes to all the people out on the ship and one of them was Edie Witter. She has developed a tool to use in the deep sea that she refers to as a Medusa.

And it's a kind of low-light camera that's in a housing that's very quiet. It uses red light instead of white light and uses a lure that looks like a jellyfish that's lighting up with bioluminescence. So this is a new kind of technology that she invented. And it's the same thing that she used in Japan

when she got the first ever video of a giant squid. Wow, so she developed a new kind of lore with lots of lights on it. If sighting these animals on video is so rare, how do we know anything about them? Well, we've known about them for a long time because for one thing, we used to kill a lot of sperm whales, and sperm whales eat giant squids. and so when they were being butchered, the stomachs were opened up, and we found giant squids in the stomachs of sperm whales.

They also, sometimes we find them floating dead at the surface, and sometimes they wash ashore onto beaches. And now, as we've fished out the commercial fisheries closer to shore, and commercial fisheries have moved out into deeper and deeper water, they've caught more and more giant squids as well. So we're learning about them from the dead specimens that are caught by commercial boats and also the ones that are washed up on the shore. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I'm Ira Plato talking with Dr. Michael Vecchio, a zoologist at the Smithsonian. So how excited are people, are scientists like you, about seeing, a very rare sighting of live giants quit? Well, I'm excited about it because, like I said, all the information we had previous to these videos was from dead specimens.

So we knew about their anatomy and some idea of where they lived and stuff like that. But we have no idea how they make a living down where they actually are found. Do you find the Giants quit? It certainly has the public's attention because of the movies and the underseen stories about. them. Is it your favorite or do you have a different favorite? Well, my favorite is any weird squid from the deep sea. I do a lot of deep sea biology, and we know so little about the deep sea, which is the largest living space on our planet, that we find strange things very regularly. And every time we come across something new, it's exciting.

What is your favorite find in the ocean so far? Well, usually it's the most recent one that I've come across. So just as an example, I think it was last year that Noah was exploring with an ROV remotely operated vehicle or a robot submarine. And they came across the squid that when we saw it on the screen, nobody even knew what kind of animal it was, much less what species of squid it was. It wound up being called a twisted squid. So that was the most recent one. But a couple of other examples include the Casper Octopus, which made a big splash in the news a few years ago. And the Big Ten squid or Long Arm Squid, which was discovered in the last decade.

Well, tell me if you had a, you know, could fulfill a dream, what would be the perfect video clip that you would like to see? I'm not sure I can answer that that we keep finding things that are totally unexpected and every time we find unexpected things it just blows me away so I'm not sure I can tell you what the perfect one would be because we haven't seen it yet so wait a minute so do you think there is another squid out there

waiting to be discovered that we haven't seen yet I absolutely know it. And in fact, using the same device that Edy developed when she was first working on it, and she set it out for one of its first deployments, as soon as she turned it on, she got videos of a big squid. It was two meters long. And I couldn't figure out what it was. And I sent it around to my friends who work on this kind of thing, and none of us could

figure out what it was. And I would love to get more video of that and maybe something, a specimen or more information that would let us figure out what kind of squid that was. You sound like you have discovered the Sasquatch of squid here. None of them have very big feet. But we don't usually think that there are, you know, there are these undiscovered things. But, yeah, it seems like there are. And that's what makes this exciting and wonderful. isn't it? Yeah, in the deep sea, there are a lot of undiscovered things.

All right. Thank you very much, Dr. Vecayem for taking to have to be with us today. Mike Veclion, zoologist for Noah's Systematic Lab at Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He helped the research that identified the giant squid. We're going to take a break, and we're going to deep dive back into cephalopod genetics, why some researchers want to help cephalopods become the next lab refact. for human disease. That's really an interesting development. We'll talk about it. As we wrap up Cephalopod Week, our number 844-8255, if you'd like to tell us, 844-8255. We'll be right back after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We came, we saw, we seft, and now we're putting Cepidopod Week 2019 to bed. And you know, one thing we love to see every year is how, much you love cephalopods. Here's a voicemail from eight-year-old Chase telling us about his

favorite cephalopod. My favorite cephalopod is the vampire squid scientifically named Vampire toothis and infernalis. The reasons I like it is because it has a very cool name and it's different from all the other, most other cephalopods by having wed arms or slash tentacles. and thorns on their arms, and they shoot viscous fluid instead of ink, and they have some bioluminescent parts on their head. That was great. My next guest is also a big fan. She's looking at the genomes of these alien-like creatures.

She started with the California two-spotted octopus in 2015, and is continuing to look for patterns in the genes of cephalopods that might explain both their ways. weirdness and their success in surviving their ocean habitats. Dr. Carrie Albertine, a cephalopod researcher at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much, Ira. Happy to be here. Nice to have you. Starting with that first octopus genome back in 2015, what are we finding out about cephalopods from their DNA? Well, we've uncovered all sorts of things that we didn't expect to find. So a genome contains all of the information you need

to make an animal. And before, we'd been looking for genes that we knew to look for, genes that are available in other animal genomes. And by sequencing the genome of an octopus, we could find out not only what genes they had that were in common with flies and mice and us, but also what genes they have that are completely unique to them. And so that's uncovering whole realms of new biology that we didn't even know to look for before we sequenced it. You know, we know how smart they are, especially the octopuses. Is there anything in their genes that explains their intelligence or the really complex nervous system?

Yeah, you know, we went in kind of expecting to find a whole bunch of different kinds of genes in there. And one of the really surprising things we found when we looked in the genome of octopus by maculoidase is they had a family of genes. These are called protok adherens. And these are genes that help cell stick together. And they're only found, up until then, they'd only been found in animals like us with a backbone. And they are important in wiring big, complicated nervous systems like our nervous systems.

And so we were really surprised to find them in the octopus genome because they're not available in the normal model organisms that people study like fruit flies or nematodes that don't have backbones. And so this was a complete and utter surprise. So they make the octopus a good area for research then to learn about that? Absolutely, absolutely. What else, come on, fill us in on what else exciting discoveries you've made about it? Well, you know, so one of the things that we found were that cephalopods have these really, really large genomes. They're about the same size as our genome, and so this is a lot bigger than the genomes of fruit flies or nematodes. So our genome is about 3.2 billion base pairs, and the octopus genome is about 2.7.

billion. And that's kind of a hard number to understand. So to kind of put it in perspective, that's about a thousand times the number of letters that are in war and peace, all contained in each and every cell in these animals. And so they have these big complicated genomes, but many of the genes that they have in there are shared across different animals. So they're surprisingly similar to us. In addition, like I mentioned earlier, they have whole suites of genes that are unique to cephalopods. Some of these genes create the iridescence you see in their skin. And in the last couple of years, we've had some more cephalopod genomes come out, including the genome of the Hawaiian bobtail squid. And we see that squids sometimes have

different sets of genes and even octopuses. So in some squids, they have a family of genes, for example, that are on the ring teeth, the sucker ring teeth, just on the tentacles. So octopuses don't have tentacles. They have eight arms. Squid have eight arms plus two tentacles. And these tentacles have specialized ring teeth, and they have this kind of plastic-y kind of feeling to them. And they're made by a completely novel protein family.

Wow. And what about them being smart? Do they have a lot of nervous system genes in them? Absolutely. They have kind of similar numbers to the numbers that we have in terms of neuronal genes that are important in axon function um and so yeah they they are just kind of surprisingly normal from an animal standpoint and yet they have all of these fantastic um other worldly abilities and i understand that cephalopods can edit their own RNA tell me about that please

yeah this is another thing that's been coming out over the last few years um a lot of this work has been done by Josh Rosenthal here at the Marine Biological Laboratory and his collaborator, Ellie Eisenberg. And they're finding that cephalopods are able to edit their MRNA. So when you turn a gene on, it makes an MRNA copy. And this MRNA copy is then translated into a protein, and that's how the gene actually goes and functions. And it turns out that cephalopods are able to go in and change the sequence of their mRNA, potentially changing the sequence of the protein, creating a whole bunch of different proteins

from just a single gene. And a lot of animals can edit their RNA. We edit our RNA, but cephalopods are doing it orders of magnitude more than other animals. And so this is really exciting. This is opening up a whole set of questions that are available only in this species. Why are they doing this? How are they doing this? And so we're getting to some really cool areas of biology in these animals.

Cool is the right word. Let's go to the phones. Let's go to Bill. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate it. Go ahead. Okay, my question was, in a recent Scientific American, there was an article about cuttlefish,

having the same type of sleep pattern or a similar sleep pattern to mammals and humans, including perhaps rapid eye movement and maybe dreaming. And given, according to this article, that we diverged as a species as a genus almost 500 million years ago, might that be something in both genomes that is still tied together. Ocephalopods dream, do you think? I mean, you know, there's some really exciting research being done on their behavior. This is kind of outside of the realm of my experience, but I've definitely seen them kind of flickering around while they're sleeping.

But let me move over to a question you might be able to answer. I was just going to say the kind of exciting thing is that the complicated nervous systems that we have in animals like us that have backbones and then encephalopods are thought to be the result of completely separate evolutionary trajectories. So, you know, this might be an indication of what you need to have when you have a big brain. One question, one for you. One thing that research is, and you touched on this before, and I want to delve into this little bit, more is using cephalopods like lab rats for research that might help us. Why is that such a good idea? Well, in part, as I've been saying, they have this really cool biology, and we can't study,

you know, the rapid camouflage changes in a mouse because they don't do it. And so, you know, traditionally, 50, 100 years ago, people were studying animals based on their special traits. You know, they have a unique thing that they can do. and so people will go study them. But in the last 30 or so years, we've had this revolution in the ability to have what are called model organisms or lab rats, where you can go in and you can keep them in the lab and you can create mutants. You can study their biology at a molecular level.

And this has only been available in a very few number of animals. So like I mentioned, fruit flies or nematodes or mice. And in the last couple of decades, last decade or so, we've had this opening up. of sequencing technology so we can sequence genomes, and then also the ability to go in and edit genes, and so this would be, for example, CRISPR. And so now that we can sequence genomes and we can edit the genomes, we can go in and ask at a molecular level what's going on in the biology of these really cool animals. Well, we wish you great luck in doing this, and we're very, well, it's cephalopod week. It's wrapping up. You've wrapped it up very well for us. We have

certainly a lot of stuff to look forward to to next year's Cephalopod Week. Thank you very much, Dr. Albertine. Thanks so much. You're welcome. She has a great job. Dr. Carrie Albertine is Cephalopod researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And now, as we close the book on Cephalopod

Week 2019, time to bring back the ringleader of it all, the chair of our Cephalopod party, the Sage of Suckers, Lauren Young SciFRI Digital Producer. It's been a whole week. Yeah. Yeah, that title tickled my heart a little bit. That's really great.

Yeah, we've been getting down and squitty with it for eight straight days. We've been watching lots of videos and reading articles, going to events, learning so much about these amazing invertebrates. It's been a lot of fun. All right. So tell me what was your favorite Ceph Discovery this week. Yeah, I've actually been really amazed by how long cephalopods have been on Earth. So one of them that I've learned this week is about the ancient ammonite.

So it's unfortunately an extinct cephalopod, related to today's squid and octopus. But you actually might already know what it looks like. It's that super common spiral fossil that sort of looks like a snail shell. That's a shell of an ammonite. And you can find those fossils all around the world. And during the age of the dinosaurs, these are the cephal pods that kind of ruled the seas for about 300 million years, actually.

So they were abundant and they had tons of shapes. Their shells had tons of shapes. Some were as large as car tires, IRA. Car tires. Yeah, they were huge. That's a big shell. Yeah, it's a pretty big shell that they had to carry. So what's interesting is that those shells that they left behind,

researchers can find out a lot about what ancient ecosystems and the ocean were like. So Kathleen Britterbush and Nick Hebden at the University of Utah, they take those shells, they 3D scan them, and they run simulations of how the ammonite used to swim. So then they can kind of zoom out on the larger picture using that data to figure out what oceans were like back in the day of the dinosaurs. Wow. How can these fossils tell us about the ocean today?

Yeah, so it's really interesting. Kathleen said something to me. She said that we're moving into a cephalopod world. And that there's a... I like that. Yeah, right? That would be a really cool world to live in. And so scientists, there was a study a couple years back where scientists noticed there was a boom in cephalopod populations and has been growing since the 1950s in the ocean. So it just so happens that Kathleen is studying a past ocean that's filled with cephalopod. So including the ammonites. So she can use that information that she's collecting on the ammone. to kind of piece that together. And you can learn more about her work and play around with some of the 3D scans that she does on our website at Science Friday.com slash Cuddlefish. And this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking about wrapping up our cephalopod week. Okay, so how do we know how the ammonites went extinct?

Yeah, so they were unfortunately wiped out alongside with the dinosaurs. So during that big mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. But something Kathleen mentioned that she really wants to know is, why certain cephalopods had snuck through that mass extinction. So we know, like, the chamber nautilus species of the chamber nautilus were around during that time. Somehow they made it through, but the ammonites didn't. So that's one of the big research questions they want to look into. I know we've learned all sorts of great set facts at SciFri this week, but our listeners have been contributing also, right?

Yeah, they've been playing along. So we asked everyone for their favorite cephalopod in the sea, and you all definitely delivered. So earlier you heard Chase gave a really great. case for the vampire squid. I was also really amazed by David, who his best cephalopod nomination was the morning cuddlyfish. My favorite cephalopod has to be the morning cuttlefish or the two-faced cuddlfish.

And the reason they're so awesome is because during mating season, while the big males are fighting with each other, the smaller males can't compete with the large males, so they will disguise themselves as females, swim past the fighting males, and then sit next to the females. So when the females look at them, they see that they're male,

But when the males look back, they'll see that this disguised cuttlefish looks still like a female. So you could listen to more people geeking out over their favorite cephalopods at ScienceFriday.com slash cuttlefish. There are so many fun ones on there, so you got to listen. And speaking of fun, we were having a lot of fun on social media, right? Yes, so much fun. A lot of you joined in and in really creative ways this year. So someone on Twitter had been sharing a bunch of their origami cephal pods throughout the week. We also had kids send us their cephalopod drawing.

some, you heard earlier, someone reciting a poem, Octopus, Octopus, which was really great. Our friend Sarah McAnlety Squid Sage and biologist, who we've loved very much and has been on the show, she celebrated Stefflepod Week out in Hawaii era. I'm so jealous. And she was out catching Bobtail Squid on a trip with Atlas Obscira. So they shared a bunch of videos and photos, which you can see some of these examples on our site, too, on ScienceRaddy. Well, you know, our listeners don't want to stop. We actually have some calls coming in.

Let's go to Jim in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hi, Jim. Hey. When I was in fourth grade, we had to do a report, and I was into fossils and that kind of stuff. So my report was on the evolution of cephalopods, which totally freaked out my fourth grade teacher. But my favorite cephalopods in ammonite. Yes. I'm converting everyone onto the team Ammonite.

It's great. I know some other staff members might be a little upset. What made you, you know, why was Aminite your favorite one? I was just, I'm amazed by the legacy, I think, that they left behind. They just, again, like, opened up this big window for paleontologists to kind of look back in time and understand things like mass extinctions and ocean ecosystems of the past. So I find that fascinating. Jim, when you did your report, you found it.

Very exciting. Yeah, those in particular, the Amnites. Well, I also like the Argonauts, right? The paper not Alyssa? Yes, that's my other favorite one, too. Right, we're in great agreement. So is the Sepulaparty completely done, or are we done for the year? Cleaning up to streamers, sweeping up the confetti.

Right. We're parting up to the very, very last minute for Seppelpod Week this year. So if you're in the Philadelphia area, come on out of your shells, everybody, because we have one last Ceplepod movie night of the week. That's tonight. There are just a few tickets left, so make sure you get them at ScienceFriiday.com slash Cuddlefish. It's all right there. Give us that?

Yeah. ScienceFriety.com slash Cuddlefish. You got any favorite sepropod facts? Yeah. Last minute. Yeah, last minute. If I could fill the very last second for the cephalopod fund. So something else I learned too.

We did a Reddit AMA with a few cephalopod researchers. And Luis Alcock, who is actually an evolutionary cephalopod researcher, she mentioned that cephalod ink can be preserved for 160 million years in fossils. So researchers found a cephalod fossil still with ink in it. And it turns out that ink is still kind of... of common to modern cuttlefish. Wow, that's a great way to end it. Thank you, Lauren.

Thank you. Lauren Young, a sci-fri-digital producer, and our Incredible Cephalopod Party Planner. And if you have a Cephalo-FOMO, you can check out everything from this year's Ceph Week on our website at ScienceFriety.com slash Cuddlefish. Charles Berkwest is our director, a senior producer, Christopher in Talaata,

and our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. Our intern is Camille Peterson. We had technical and engineering help from Rich Kim, Sarah, Fishman, and Kevin Wolfe. Of course, we're active all week on Science Friday and on our website, Twitter, Instagram, all the social media. And if you still want to geek out about Cephalopod FOMO, you can check out our website, ScienceFriiday.com slash Cuddlefish. Have a great holiday weekend. We won't see it until after the big holiday, the fourth, so we'll see you after that Fourth of July celebration.

I'm Ira Flato in New York.