Science Friday - How Vampire Bats Evolved To Drink Blood, Ethics Checks On Brain Research, Cicada Exhibit. March 25, 2022, Part 2

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

How Vampire Bats Evolved To Drink Blood Vampire bats subsist solely on blood: In technical terms, they’re what’s called “obligate sanguivores.” And the three species of vampire bats are the only mammals to have ever evolved this particular diet. Living on blood is hard work. Blood is a low-calorie food with a lot of water volume, and very little of it is fat or carbohydrates. To survive this lifestyle, vampire bats have made numerous physical adaptations—stretchy stomachs, tricks to deal with high amounts of iron, even specialized social systems related to sharing food. But how, genetically, did they manage it? Guest host John Dankosky talks to Dr. Michael Hiller, co-author on new research published this week in Science Advances looking at some of the specific genes vampire bats lost in order to gain these unique abilities.   Difficult Brain Science Brings Difficult Ethical Questions In recent weeks, we’ve told you about efforts to explore and map the human brain through tissue donations, and the troubling tale of a bionic eye implant startup that left users without tech support. The two stories point to different aspects of the rapidly advancing field of neuroscience—and each comes with its own set of ethical questions. As humans advance in their ability to understand, interpret, and even modify the human brain, what ethical controls are in place to protect patients, guide research, and ensure equitable access to neural technologies? John Dankosky talks with neurotech ethicist and strategist Karen Rommelfanger, the founder of the Institute of Neuroethics Think and Do Tank, about some of the big ethical questions in neuroscience—and how the field might try to address the challenges of this emerging technology.   The Brief And Wondrous Lives Of The Cicada The Staten Island Museum in New York has been home to the eye-catching room full of insect art since 2021’s emergence of the Brood X cicadas. In bell jars and cabinet drawers and under glass display cases, colorful cicadas from species around the world participate in scenes of human-like activities—they read miniature books, arrange dried flowers, create textile art, converse with animal skulls, lounge on and in jelly jars, and more. It’s all part of artist Jennifer Angus’ exhibition “Magicicada,” an homage to our reliance on the insect world. Producer Christie Taylor talks to Angus and Staten Island Museum entomologist Colleen Evans about the wonder of insects. Plus, how art and science can complement each other and teach even the most bug-shy visitor to appreciate the natural world. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. Ira is away. Later this hour, we'll talk about the ethics of research on brains. But first, do you shudder at the thought of a blood-drinking vampire bat? Pretty creepy, right? Well, it turns out that a diet of blood isn't exactly the best way to eat. And so vampire bats have to consume more than their body's weight in blood every single night. In fact, vampire bats are the only mammals on earth where blood is the only thing the menu. So how do they evolve to rely on this nocturnal nourishment? My next guest went looking at their genes for clues and found some surprising changes. Dr. Michael Hiller is Professor of Comparative Genomics at the Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics. He's based in Frankfurt, Germany.

Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Hiller. Thanks for being here. I don't. So we've talked about vampire bats in the show before. In fact, they're one of our charismatic creatures that we've spoken of. But tell us how How does drinking blood require vampire bats to be different from other bats? So drinking blood is a very unique diet that among mammals evolved only once in this lineage that comprises these three living vampire bat species. And so blood is, as you already said, not a really good diet. It has a low caloric value. Most of it is fluid.

Of the nutrients, most of what these vampire bats get is protein. So it's really a challenge to live and survive with such a diet. Typically, you need sugars, for example, to nourish your brain and other organs. Faddy acids are very powerful or very energy-rich nutrients. And proteins are not so much. So a challenge is really that these vampire bears get these highly biased diet. So essentially, of the dry mass of blood, people estimate about 93% is more. protein and only about 1% each is carbohydrates, so sugars, and fat.

They have to drink an awful lot of blood to get what they need to be able to survive, to fly around all night. Yeah, that's right. This is something they likely need to get enough nutrients to actually make it through the day until the next night when they are flying out again to feed. Their stomach, which is typically a digestive organ that secretes acid. has been converted into a distensible storage organ that keeps the blood that they ingest until the gut is able to process it.

Interesting. So with all that in mind, what exactly were you looking for in the genome of vampire bats? So we were interested in how this very specialized diet actually evolved and what are the genomic underpinnings to adapting to this really challenging diet. And we had a hunch that if you live on such a very specific diet, maybe some genes that other animals need that have more mixed diets would no longer be important for the vampire bat and that we find inactivations or losses of these genes in the genome of the vampire. So why exactly would gene losses be interesting?

Why would that help to explain how this animal came to be? So there are two main explanations for why a gene can get lost in evolution. What we thought will likely happen is the so-called use-it-or-lose-it explanation. So if you have a certain gene and you require this, selection will preserve also the gene sequence, and this will encode a functional protein, because the protein function is at the end what really matters. The other explanation in a way is so-called less is more. we were hoping to find also a few of these cases when we look at the vampire bat.

And less is more describes the case when you inactivate a gene that this can contribute to an adaptation. So it could be beneficial for certain species that adapted to certain environmental conditions on this case, this very specific diet. And if you think about this, less is more, this is at first glance counterintuitive. because we hear about gene inactivations and mutations in genes, typically in the context of disease. But in evolution, sometimes it can be that taking away a gene is actually beneficial. We found examples of this less is more in other bats and other species in the past. And so we were also curious about whether we can find such adaptive or beneficial gene losses in the vampire bed. All right, so let's talk about some of these interesting gene losses you found in vampire bats.

And the first one we want to talk about relates to how they process all of this iron in their diet. What exactly is happening here? Yeah, so blood is not only biased in terms of nutrients, it also contains a lot of iron. And it's estimated that the dietary iron intake of vampires is about 800 fold higher than in humans. And that's something that's vampires and then we have to deal with. to cope with this challenge. And so what we found is that one of these 10 previously undescribed gene losses, one of these is a gene that is specifically expressed in the gastrointestinal tract. And the function of the gene, which we know from studies in mice, is to inhibit iron uptake

from the bloodstream into these intestinal cells. The student, the master student, Moritz, Blumar, who was working on the project, he developed the hypothesis that maybe what's going to happen here is that if you lose this gene, these intestinal cells are able to take up more iron from the bloodstream. And because these cells have a very short half-life and get frequently replaced by new cells, these cells, and with it the iron they contain, would get excreted out of the body. So the gene loss could facilitate a more efficient iron excretion mechanism in vampire bats. And to our big surprise, and this was for me some kind of, you know, eureka moment, Moritz then found a study from the 1980s that had analyzed the distribution of iron in the

gastrointestinal tract of the vampire. And in this paper, they were showing that the outermost cells of the intestine. They are packed full of iron. So you can really visualize that these cells contain a lot of iron. And it could also visualize that these cells and with it the iron is present, are present in the feces of vampire bats. And that really provides evidence that this iron excretion mechanism exists in vampire bats. And that's certainly one part of how they deal with this, in a way, iron challenge. That's so interesting. So instead of some sort of a super gene that allows them to take in iron and process it in

a way that's better than other animals, this is essentially a gene loss that lets them just slough off this extra iron in a really unique way. Yeah. So it's certainly the case that this gene loss is not the only genomic change that contributes to the ability to handle and to cope with this large amounts of iron. But in this case, we believe this losing this inhibitory gene, like a built-in break in a system, that also makes a contribution to coping with this iron challenge. And this then would be an example of this less is more principle that describes when losing genes can be beneficial.

That's very cool. Well, let's move on to another one of these genes. And on our program, we've talked before about how smart vampism. pirate bats are. So tell us what you found in the genes associated with these bats brains. One of the other genes that we found is an enzyme that is expressed in the liver. The other place what is gene is expressed is the brain. And in the brain, it's the only enzyme that is able to degrade to metabolize a certain cholesterol compound. And this cholesterol Metabolite is very interesting because this metabolite stimulates receptors.

These receptors mediate learning, memory, and social behavior. And there were a number of studies that showed if you increase the levels of this cholesterol compound, then memory and learning and social behavior is enhanced. And if you experimentally reduce these levels in rodent models like mice or rats, then memory learning and social ability is reduced. If the only enzyme in the brain that can break down this important cholesterol metabolite, if that gene no longer exists in a vampire bat, we would expect that the levels of this cholesterol metabolite are increased.

And with this, we can predict that this should then have a positive effect on social behavior and cognitive function. And I should say when we started this, project, I was mainly interested in the dietary adaptation and what kind of solutions to the physiological challenges vampire bats have evolved. But I didn't know about that they are maybe among the most socially advanced bats that are out there. They are very starvation sensitive. So they really have to ideally feed every night, otherwise they are risking starvation. And to alleviate this problem, they are helping each other out. So one bad that was able to feed

can regurgitate blood and therefore feed another individual that was not able to feed that night. And they tend to share their food with other individuals that were helping them out in the past. And this requires some long-term social memory. So you have to remember individuals and what they did to you in the past. And that's a pretty unique behavior among mammals. What probably maybe enables these special cognitive functions and this social behavior is that among 270 bats where such measurements exist, the vampire bats have the largest brain volume compared to the relative to the body size. So these social behaviors are likely linked to a larger brain, and we think that losing this enzyme that metabolizes this important cholesterol metabolite, that enhances memory and learning is something that is maybe connected to this advanced social behavior

that these species show. You seem pretty enthusiastic about studying these bats. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, it was fascinating to learn more about these species, learn more about the genes. They lost what they do, what they do in other animals, and how we can connect them to traits, to something that has changed in a vampire bat. But I think there's much more to learn. So gene loss is certainly only one type of evolutionary change. We have sequenced the other two living vampire bat species. And with this, we would like to conduct a broader, more comprehensive study to look into the genes

and maybe also the regulatory elements that determine where and when these genes are expressed. to learn more about the genomic basis of adaptations to blood feeding and in a way to get a more complete picture on what happened at the molecular, at the genomic level, that allowed these adaptations. Dr. Michael Hiller is Professor of Comparative Genomics at the Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Hiller, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much.

After the break, we're putting the ethics of brain research in the spotlight Stay tuned for that. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankowski. In recent weeks on our show, we've told you about efforts to explore and map the human brain through tissue donations and how researchers want tissue samples from all kinds of people to help them better understand the brain's operation. We've also talked about the troubling tale of a bionic eye implant company that left users without tech support and is now pivoting to brain implants. These two stories point to different aspects of the rapidly advancing field of neuroscience and technology,

and each comes with its own set of ethical questions. As humans advance in their ability to understand, interpret, and even modify the human brain, what ethical controls are in place to protect patients, to guide research, and to ensure equitable access to neural technologies. Joining me now is Neurotech ethicist and strategist Karen Romolfanger. She's the founder of the Institute of Neuroethics, Think and Do Tank, based in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Neuroethics is a word that many people may not have heard before, so how would you define it?

Most simply, neuroethics explains and explores the ethical, legal, and social implications of new advances in brain science and brain technology. Is there something special about neural research that was said at a apart from other kinds of medical science or genetics, when it comes to this ethical framework that you work in? Sometimes there are very unique concerns, and sometimes there are concerns that are different in degree versus kind. If you think about having an appendectomy, you don't necessarily feel like that changes who you are.

But if you have part of your brain lost or part of your brain function lost, you might fundamentally feel like you're changed or that your loved one who has had that experience has changed. So the ethical implications around any kind of brain intervention are really around questions of how have we maybe altered someone's ability to have their own privacy, to have the kind of intersaintom of their mind private, how have maybe any of these interventions or what could they do to challenge how we think about ourselves or our ability to be authors of our own lives? and also how might certain kinds of information and ability to intervene with our brain challenge,

how we consider our ability to make decisions about things and how people see us as humans. That's so interesting. I mean, just to explore this a little bit more, any time you change, augment, do surgery on the human body, in some ways you are essentially changing who you are. But you're really saying the brain is different. I mean, we know how powerful it is. We know what role it plays.

But it is different in that way in terms of how it is linked to our personality, the very usness of us. Yeah. When we think about neuroscience and we think about discoveries about the brain, we're looking into an organ that affords us. The very thing that makes us feel like we're us, maybe the most prized thing we have, our cognitive experience. So there's something totally different about that. But in addition to that, you know, there's something, it's not just that the brain is special biologically. It's also special culturally.

So you can't really divorce these biological findings from the cultural meaning that we imbue as a society. So we have seen really fundamental and old brain technologies, the EEG or electroencephalogram, that are being used to make determinations of death or being used. used in part to make determinations of death that are being used actually have found their way into our court systems. I study cross-cultural neural ethics, and part of that involves me looking at cultural variations in defining the brain's role in whether the brain is my identity. So in typical Western cultures, probably risking pain with too broad a brush, is that we really have a

fairly separate identification of the brain and the mind. The brain does one thing, mind does the other thing. And we see that even in our divisions in clinical practice with having neurology deal with certain brain diseases, but then we have psychiatry dealing with these mental disorders, which we know are actually tied to the brain. So it's kind of interesting how we divide this. But if you look at cultures in East Asia, for example, the term for mind doesn't really even exist in the way it does for us. In Japanese, there's this term Kokoril, which is the mind, brain, spirit as inseparable from each other. And in Chinese, for example, this is Xin and in Korean, it's mom.

And when we look at those societies and if we do studies on asking publics, do you think that if we identified a brain injury in an individual or a brain abnormality would this alleviate or reduce their culpability and accountability from a crime? And in Western countries, we have more of an inclination to apply those findings. into the courtroom, whereas in preliminary surveys in Taiwan, for instance, there is no difference considered with how one might think about someone's guilt or culpability. That's so interesting. I guess I'm wondering, because of this vast diversity in the way that we consider the brain

and the mind culturally and the vast diversity in the way that we interact with the world, how do you think we should even consider the idea of what normal is, about what standard is, about what neurodivergent is? That's another great question. I mean, the term normal is such a dangerous phrase, actually. And its origins actually come from a more eugenicist origin, an attempt to separate those who could fit in a certain part of, If you look at the bell curve of what we think is normal, we want to cut off the tails. I mean, this is how we've tried to repeatedly ostracize and separate people. And what's really dangerous in making studies about the brain is that as scientists,

we're really trained to look for certain differences or even mathematically what we consider significant differences. But some of these differences, the lines that we use to divide difference are really socially constructed. So if we think about gender or race, which are often used in these studies and probably harkens back to some of what you talked about with your brain bank studies, these are very dangerous ways to make assumptions about people and often reify these biases that we already have in society and making them even more dangerous. And the way that we think about difference, and especially with an organ and science from the brain that is so identifying with humans and has so much cultural meaning, you have an opportunity to, a bad opportunity to reinforce these lines, these artificial and invisible lines that we demarcate around certain groups of people to further disenfranchise them. So how do you get around that?

And the way that we've been advocating to get around that is really have inclusive conversations with patient advocates, with lived experience advocates. Can you get some input about how people identify their range of so-called normal. What is their experience? Can we integrate that and think carefully about what biases we inevitably all have and how that might make its way into science? I'm wondering how these concerns inform research that might help to predict some kind of neural outcome later in life or a biomarker that's linked to brain function somehow.

I'm thinking about everything from the autism spectrum to development of Alzheimer's. There is an amazing movement in science in general and towards predictive health and certainly in neuroscience towards predicting risk for developing certain brain diseases or conditions. And this offers us a rich opportunity to develop tools to intervene early that might be in positive ways, maybe even slow progression of certain diseases or even shape more positive outcomes. So there's a lot of benefit in doing that work. The challenge in doing that work well is, again, making sure, like, how do you communicate to someone giving their information or data in this case? How do you communicate to them, what you're doing?

How do you communicate to them, how you're stratifying people in your analysis? How do you communicate to them, even if you are to develop a risk number or a risk assessment for their likelihood to develop autism or Alzheimer's, especially Alzheimer's is one to think about, you know, Alzheimer's. is devastating, but what does a prediction that I'm likely to develop Alzheimer's? What does that give me? There is no cure at this point. It really isn't a treatment. So have you just given me a sentence for who I'm going to become? Or have you really given me some opportunity to change my lifestyle and do something better? It's hard for participants in those studies to evaluate that information. It's hard for researchers to understand how to return that kind of information,

particularly if you participate in those kinds of studies, you want to know. And that's if you know the study is happening. But there's lots of studies now happening trying to predict certain patterns and trends and behaviors and disease development progression. I mean, right now there are studies going on trying to understand how to handle mental illness in a post-COVID world, or we're not even really post-COVID. And lots of this information can be apprehended, not from a mind-reading device, But through the information we give away on a regular basis, through my social media updates,

how am I feeling? What am I thinking? Through our pocket sensors, which are our phones, our phones have an accelerometer. We have apps where we give information about how well we are, how we're meditating. I mean, Apple and Amazon are in the healthcare business now. I mean, everybody is tapping into this wealth of information about people that isn't necessarily even health information that is being turned into health information. So we really need to understand how this ecosystem is evolving.

And it is so hard to keep up for everyone. And this is why we need ethics designed into the very inception of a project before you even launch it off the ground. Have we developed the technology so that it's accessible for everyone? Have we designed our questions so that it's fair and incorporated our biases? have we included a patient population or user population who is empowered and are respected throughout the process and can actually properly have informed decision making? And in the end, are we sharing with our users what the results are in the limitations of the

understanding of the results? And also what safeguards we have in place for those kinds of inferences that we're making so that those kind of inferences aren't going into streams or context we don't. want them to, like legal systems, maybe like health insurance, life insurance, like to our employers. We're talking about some of the big ethical questions in neuroscience research and technology with neurotech ethicist and strategist Karen Romlfanger. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

You talked about some of the tech that we wear in our pocket or on our wrists. As I mentioned in the introduction, people are making technology that interfaces directly with the brain. I'm wondering how this ethical framework ties into that, the idea that we are able to put devices into our brains essentially to change our function, and that's going to create a whole new set of data questions. It's going to create a whole new set of ethical questions for us.

Yeah. Those brain computer interfaces or BCIs have remarkable promise to alleviate suffering, and promote wellness in ways that other technologies interfacing with the body might not be able to. Brain computer interfaces now have restored movement, have restored communication abilities and independence in those who have suffered from stroke or spinal injuries. And I and myself, in my work with deep brain stimulation, have watched in the OR the implantation of electrodes into deep structures of a patient's brain, a person with Parkinson's disease, while they were awake, where their uncontrollable tremors were transformed into smooth moodness.

I mean, this is a person who couldn't hold a spoon to feed themselves before. Then there are patients who have intractable depression is where nothing has worked. And they claim they've regained their independence and have said that these devices have restored their humanity. They need a remarkable tear-jurking feats of science. But they're still in their infancy. And so with those kinds of technologies, we have some uncharted. territory to think about with data security, identity, and blurred lines between the technology and ourselves and stigma, as we talked about earlier, as it relates to predictive technologies

that are forecasting brain disease. And what's kind of interesting and kind of urgent to think about is these blurred lines of where the technology starts and where we end. And there are studies have shown that patients start to wonder, am I still the author of my own life? Am I the narrator or is the technology narrating? Well, I think all of this gets to my last question for you. It has to do with the role of ethics and ethicists in all of this. It seems as though as we develop these technologies or as we approve these technologies for use at the governmental or regulatory level, that that ethical framework needs to be

baked in at every level, I guess I'm wondering how we make sure so that we don't have to be asking much later, what do we do? John, this is my life's work, actually. I think the important thing to do is to figure out at which, what is the system, what are the incentive structures of different stakeholders, what tools are appropriate, and what timelines can you implement certain neuroethics guidance. And as a professor, I was actively involved in engaging, you know, the next generation of scientists and trying to train them to think about science and ethics as an integrated question.

So can we be trained as scientists to think about solving a technical problem simultaneously with a social problem? And we do this. We can do this as an example when we did design wireless technology. We also have considerations of cybersecurity. What similar things can we do for neurotechnology? One of the examples we've put forth with EEGs, for instance, this is a tool that's still is not optimized for scalps that grow coarse, curly, natural hair, as in those with African descent. This is a technology ubiquitously used that doesn't work for the global majority. How did this happen? That happens from not having a socio-technical framing in mind with science, discovery, and practice.

Then there are other tools that we're working on with transnational policy organizations. So the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is a transnational policy organization who has put forth a lot of guidance in emerging technology. But neural technology is the first one they felt compelled to put forward ethical principles. So now I'm actually working with them to see how can we implement each of these principles and asking those exact questions that you're saying, what are the tools we have? Some of them are soft law tools like guidance or codes of ethics. how might some of these be translated into hard law like legislation? And also understanding that laws don't always fix everything. So we need to use nimble instruments. We need to be creating cultures where people are allowed to think about ethical inquiry on a regular basis. And finally,

I also run a consulting entity where I roll up my sleeves when I'm not doing the policy and academic work and get in there in the weeds with companies and figure out, you know, what's your regular protocol like? How can we make this easy and seamless? Well, we've run out of time. Karen Romolfinger is a neurotech ethicist and strategist. She's the founder of the Institute of Neuroethics Think and Do Tank in Atlanta, Georgia. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today and grappling with these big issues. I really appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Thank you.

When we come back, how art can help lore, even the most bug shot. to appreciating insects, with some help from a few thousand cicadas. This is Science Friday. I'm John Dankoski. We've been talking about bats, brains, and, well, now how do you feel about talking about bugs? That's the theme of an art exhibition that's been at the Staten Island Museum since last year's fantastic emergence of brood ten cicadas. It's called Magisicata by Wisconsin artist Jennifer Angus. And yes, that means lots and lots of insects on the walls and in displays. The exhibition is closing later this spring, but video producer Luke Groskin captured it in a video that you can see on our website,

ScienceFriday.com slash insect art. And producer Christy Taylor also went along to see Magiaceta. Hey, Christy. Hey, John. Well, I've seen a lot of gorgeous pictures of this, and I watched the video, but I couldn't go myself. So maybe you can tell us what it's like in this big room full of bugs. Yeah, John, it was actually one of the best experience. I have had all pandemics so far. You walk into a big room with pink walls, which are actually made of insects, the color in them. It's full chandeliers and this very Victorian array of display cases,

bell jars, a giant cabinet of curiosities with dozens of drawers. And every single one of these cases and jars is a scene with pinned cicadas, other insects, household objects, buttons, flowers, fabric, all kinds of colors and textures. If you've ever read an I-Spy book, John, it's kind of like a fully immersive eye spy. Cicatas are lighting matches, reading little books, they're having deep conversations with butterflies and animal skulls. There's something new to notice every time you look. That sounds really amazing.

It really is. I would really love to go back before it closes. And I had a conversation with the artist, Jennifer Angus. She's also a professor of design studies at the University of Wisconsin and Madison. We also talked with Colleen Evans, who is an entomologist and director of natural science. science interpretation and collections at the Staten Island Museum. And I started by asking Jennifer to talk about the walls of this pink Victorian room. One will be struck by the pattern on the walls, which look kind of like a cell nucleus within each circle, which is formed out of cicadas.

There is one unique cicada. And there are close to 50 varieties of cicadas. and under the cicada that's in the center of the circle is a brass plaque with its Latin name. So there is this tip of the hat in an art installation to the science behind this. And all of these cases are filled with insects, as are the drawers. So you are walking into a world that's dominated by the six-legged. Colleen, what would you add? There's just so much diversity in cicadas, first of all.

So a lot of the ones that Jennifer used in her work are from Southeast Asia, so they're not ones that are native to the United States. In the United States, we're used to seeing either the periodicals, which are these little black cicadas with those vibrant red eyes, or we see a lot of the like dog day cicadas, which are kind of camouflaged looking. They're browns and greens. But the ones in the exhibit, they're so vibrant.

So there's oranges and blues, these colors that we're not used to seeing on a cicada, but it totally exists. Jennifer has not recolored them in any way. It's their natural coloring. They are just that vibrant. And they create just this really fantastical pattern on the walls. And then there's like these beautiful swooshes also of cicadas, kind of in between the different bacterial or viral shapes.

There's a swarm. It's hard to tell perhaps if the, The building is swooshing or crawling, and these cicadas have decided to neatly form themselves into this pattern, or are they actually escaping these patterns? Let's contemplate that. In the meantime, Colleen, so the Staten Island Museum has a very unique relationship with the humble and hopefully not too creepy cicada. And it has the second largest collection in the world. How did that come to pass? So the Staten Island Museum, we were founded in the late 1800s.

by a group of men, all Staten Islanders, one of whom is William T. Davis. He was 19 years old at the time of our founding, which I just love to point out because a lot of them were quite young. And William T. Davis, in particular, later in his life, became the world expert in cicadas. So like the early 20th century, he was the guy you would talk to in the entire world if you had questions about cicadas, whether or not, you know, what a species you're looking at, what they're doing, what their biology is. Like, he was a guy you'd want to talk to. And because of that. So he did a lot of collecting on his own. He was actually very particularly interested in periodical cicadas. We've quite a lot of those. But then people also sent him

cicadas from all over the world. So we have a worldwide collection in our institution. We have probably 36,000 cicadas in our collection, which is a lot, mostly from the United States, but from elsewhere as well, so from all over the world. Wow. And why was William T. Davis so obsessed with cicadas? So he first, I think, got interested in the periodical cicadas. Those are the ones that emerge every 13 or 17 years on the East Coast of the United States. And they have those really large populations that emerge. So, you know, literally thousands, millions all clustered in one area. And so they create these huge sounds. I think a lot of people who have been on the East Coast of the United States have potentially experienced it where it's just, there's just so many

cicadas in one spot. And he loved it. The name of the exhibition comes from the genus for periodical cicadas, which is magic cicada. And that's a term that William T. Davis coined in 1925. So he realized that periodical cicadas were different enough from other cicadas that they warranted their own genus. And he created this adorable portmanteau of the words magic and cicada and decided that's what they needed to be called because he just found them so magical. That's really interesting. Well, and Jennifer, last year was the big emergence of the Brood 10, that incredible big group of 17-year cicadas, which were part of the inspiration for this exhibit. What was the appeal of this emergence for you

in creating a piece of artwork? So it was very clear to me that we would celebrate the cicada. I mean, there was no other way to go. And I actually, with Colleen and a friend of ours, chef Joseph Yun, we went to the Princeton area, which was a hotspot of the, the emergence and it was my first experience with the periodical cicadas. And I really feel that it was one of the things I hope we will remember all my life. The day I arrived, it was quite warm, and the next day it was cold. And it was as if the cicadas had been stunned. Now Joseph was collecting cicadas to that he would later cook up. And Colleen and I had made a kind of a that what we were collecting were those that were recently deceased.

I mean, we are very much, we want to see these cicadas thrive. I really got personally involved with them because as I was crouching down to pick up something that I thought was dead, I'd see a leg move. And I realized, oh, it's just stunned with the cold. And so I started picking these cicadas up and started to feel like a bit of a matchmaker. Because that's in cicadas. We know they've lived underground for 17 years, but in their adult form, they are looking for love. And so I started putting them on branches, and I yelled to Joseph, do not come over here.

I've spent a lot of time matchmaking. I want romance to happen. Jennifer, you have positioned so many of these cicadas in a really, really human position. They're up on their rear legs. Sometimes they appear to be teaching or doing textile art. What was your goal in giving this sort of anthropomorphic feel to these insects? Well, I think that one of my goals is to have people think about insects differently. We all know the importance of bees and we're hearing about colony collapse,

the death of millions of bees. And this is already having an impact on prices of fruits. We need insects to decompose matter, but they are also an important link in the food chain. Perhaps that's their greatest job. So I alluded to this emergence of Brood 10 in the millions, and many of those that come out of the ground first get eaten by birds and small mammals. And I think people honestly don't care a lot about insects, but they care a lot about birds. So if you're seeing fewer birds, is it because they're fewer insects? So I want people to start thinking about insects differently.

And I anthropomorphize them because they become a bit more relatable. If a person can think about them as leading lives perhaps parallel to our own, then there's a sympathy and perhaps you won't stomp on it or pull out the can array. Colleen, is there a role for art like Jennifer's in science communication to that same end? I mean, is beauty itself educational as you sort of see it playing out in the museum? Absolutely. So a lot of people knowing that that room is full of insects, you can almost kind of see them embracing themselves before they go in because they're so uncomfortable with the idea of being surrounded by insects that they really have to almost

psych themselves up to walk in. Not everybody. But of course, like those people who already have maybe a phobia associated with insects. They really have to kind of take a beat before they walk in. And you can see just while they're moving through the exhibit, their body language changes. They relax, they calm down. They realize, oh, this isn't actually anything to be scared of or upset by. And then you can notice that they start getting closer to the walls.

They actually start seeing them as individual insects and start asking questions. And then, like, in that moment, suddenly they're interested and they're invested and they want to know, okay, well, why? Why are these insects here? Why is it important? Why is this one different than this one? They get that moment to finally make a connection with an insect that they may not be able to do. It's a living one that's like flying at them. That would be much more upsetting than having these arranged in a beautiful pattern where they can kind of get up close and take a minute with them. That reminds me that people often say to me, I'd hate to see that flying at me. And some of these cicadas and other insects are so large that actually they're not very good flyers.

So I don't think it would be very threatening. You'd have a chance to duck. And quite honestly, they don't fly a whole lot anyway. Well, and Colleen, Jennifer, you know, we're entering spring finally. We might not be able to find cicadas anytime soon. But what's going on in the insect world that we can observe, that you hope we do, go out and appreciate. So some insects are starting to wake up from their winter hibernations, especially on a warmer day right now. You might start seeing, especially like some of our

overwintering butterflies are starting to come out. You might see like a morning cloak or something if you're very lucky. And so it's a good time to start connecting with those. A lot of your aquatic insects are coming back to life or at least starting to move around. So if you look in the water, you might start seeing them on a sunny day, start seeing little guys moving around in the bottom, maybe coming up for air. And of course, as we move further into spring and summer, you're going to start seeing a lot of your pollinators waking up, coming to all the different flowers that are blooming.

And so, yeah, it's a good time to just start connecting with them as they move around their space and start doing their thing. You know, as I think about insects where I live, July is a wonderful time because the fireflies come out. And to me, those are so magical. And back to the exhibition, I think that what, That's really that magic is something that I want to tap into, you know, that really insects are absolutely not only beautiful, but amazing. I mean, especially these periodical cicadas.

Imagine 17 years underground. And then this emergence, as Colleen described with William T. Davis, that he named the magic cicada. and I hope that that is captured in the exhibition. Thank you both so much for the time today. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Jennifer Angus is a professor of design studies and artist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Colleen Evans is Director of Natural Sciences Interpretation and Collections at the Staten Island Museum.

I'm Christy Taylor. Thanks, Christy. And if you want to learn more about the Magiasea Ceda exhibit at the Staten Island Museum and see what we're talking about. We've got that gorgeous video walkthrough for you from video producer Luke Groskin. Check it out on our website, ScienceFriday.com slash insect art. The exhibit closes on May 22nd. Hope you get a chance to see it. I'm John Dankowski, and this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. We've been talking about art that incorporates the beauty of cicadas, but what if you wanted to make a little insect art of your own? You can learn the ins and outs of starting your own ins and

collection in our virtual insect pinning class next month. Joining me to talk a bit about her love of all things invertebrate is the leader of that class, Brittany Hahn. She's an insect pinning enthusiast and an environmental biology student at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. Welcome to Science Friday, Brittany. Hi, thanks so much for having me. So I described you as an insect pinning enthusiast.

What is it about pinning insects that brings you so much joy? I think definitely one aspect of it is that it's certainly just a really fun activity. I enjoy doing really small, like, detailed tasks with my hands. But of course, there's also the greater goal of insect pinning, which is to compile this really big scientific database that spans long stretches of both space and time. So that researchers can then use that data for lots of ecological studies or morphological taxonomical things in the future. We all know that bugs are everywhere, of course, but if you really, really go looking for them, it'll seriously open your eyes to the diversity of what's truly out there. I just think that getting to be able to handle that with my own hands is also just a really fascinating thing.

What's a really good bug to find if you're a novice like me? If you wanted to do this, but you weren't sure what to do, what would you start with? The least time-consuming thing off the top of my head would definitely be a beetle. The short story of it is that you just stick a pin through the right Elytron, which is the shell, the right shell, quote unquote, of the beetle. The other question that I have for you is, when you collect these bugs and you pin them, obviously one of the things that has to happen is the insect has to die. Does that cause you any concern? Should it cause concern of anybody who's out there interested in collecting insects? There are an innumerable amount of insects out there on the planet. There are trillions. And when you

really think about it, you're actually kind of killing them. every day, no matter what you're doing, like stepping on the ground, driving your car, you're inevitably killing lots of those every time you drive, et cetera. So collecting insects on an individual basis certainly will not harm populations of those insects as well. So what are some insects that you're looking forward to seeing this spring and summer? Are you going to go bug collecting this summer? Oh, of course. Absolutely. Pretty much literally anything. I'm looking forward to seeing all the classic beetles, moths and butterflies, but then I guess also, the ones that you don't see is often like maybe mantids. Yeah, a bunch of other things. Yeah.

How big is your collection? Um, how big is my collection? I've made one collection of at least 40 specimens. I took another class where I made another 40 specimens. I took a different class. That was aquatic entomology. That's a totally different method of preserving things in ethanol. That was well over 50 specimens. So around like at least 200, I think, plus some other personal stuff I've done outside of class. Very, very cool. Well, we're all very very, very excited to take this class along with you, Brittany. Thanks so much for joining us today. Yeah, thank you so much again for having me.

Brittany Hahn is an insect-pinning enthusiast and environmental biology student at SUNY's College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which is based in Syracuse, New York. If you want to see entomologists in action and learn more about how you, yes, you can start your very own insect collection, just like Brittany. You can sign up for our free insect-pinning virtual event. It's coming up this April. Go to sciencefriday.com slash insect-esecting. class to RSVP today. Once again, that's sciencefriiday.com slash insect class.

That's all for this week. If you missed any part of the program or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts. Or you can ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Say hi to us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I was back next week. I'm John Dankoski.