Science Friday - Oyster Breeding, Climate Communication, Hellbender Vs Mantis Shrimp. Sept 10, 2021, Part 2

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

To Breed An Oyster In the ocean, climate change involves more than just warming temperatures. Water levels are shifting, and ocean chemistry is changing.  Changes to ocean salinity caused by shifting amounts of freshwater could have big effects on the health of oysters, who need a certain range of saltiness in the water to be happy.   As part of her doctoral work at Louisiana State University, researcher Joanna Griffiths bred hundreds of families of oysters, looking for clues to what makes an oyster more able to endure salinity changes. She found that there is a genetic component to an oyster’s salinity resilience.  Griffiths joins Scifri’s Charles Bergquist to talk about the work, and the challenges of conducting a laboratory oyster breeding program—in which it’s difficult convince an oyster that it’s time for romance, and often even hard to discern the sex of the oysters involved.     Talking Through The Tangled Terms Of Climate Change When scientists talk about climate change, there are certain words and phrases that get brought up often. Terms like “mitigation,” “carbon neutral” and “tipping point” are used frequently to explain how the climate crisis is unfolding. They’re often found in reports meant to educate the public on climate change, such as the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It turns out a lot of words and phrases that scientists use to talk about climate change are not understood by the general public. That’s according to a recent study from the University of Southern California and the United Nations Foundation. This begs the question: if the public scientists are trying to reach don’t understand what’s being discussed, what’s the point? Joining Ira to talk about better communicating climate change is Wändi Bruine de Bruin, lead author of the study and provost professor of public policy, psychology and behavioral science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. Also joining Ira is Anthony Leiserowitz, founder and director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in New Haven, Connecticut.      An Aquatic Charismatic Creature Showdown: Mantis Shrimp vs. Hellbender It’s time to kick off SciFri’s Charismatic Creature Carnival! Welcome to our celebration of creatures that are overlooked or unfairly maligned by the general public, which, if you look a little closer, have an undeniable charm. Six audience-suggested creatures were chosen, but only one will be crowned the very first carnival inductee into the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame. The first friendly head-to-head battle in this fall’s Charismatic Creature Carnival is between the mantis shrimp and the hellbender, a giant aquatic salamander. Defending the mantis shrimp is Jason Dinh, PhD candidate in biology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. And representing the hellbender is Lauren Diaz, PhD student in fisheries science at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Find a list of upcoming carnival celebrations below!  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 Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we're going to kick off the charismatic creature carnival. Yay! But first, Louisiana is still working to recover from Hurricane Ida, a storm made worse by the warming waters of a changing climate. Climate change is affecting that region's wildlife, too, and what we all eat. Here with the details is SciFri's Charles Berkwist. Hi, Charles. Hey, Ira. Today we're talking about oysters. Oysters, that is big business in Louisiana.

Yeah, around 70% of the oysters caught in the U.S. are harvested on the Gulf Coast. So naturally, folks there are interested in the potential effects of things like climate change. You know, this makes sense because I imagine it must be something like corals bleaching when they get too warm. It's actually more complicated than that. Climate change doesn't just mean warmer water. It means changes in water levels and in water chemistry, too. I talked with Joanna Griffiths. Her doctoral work at Louisiana State University

involved breeding different oysters to see how they were able to adapt to changes in ocean salt concentrations. It turns out a few parts per thousand can make a big difference to an oyster and water levels are shifting. In Louisiana, because they're in like hurricane alley, they're actually getting tons and tons of fresh water.

And then there's also the Mississippi River right there, which is just dumping huge amounts of fresh water into the estuary and where the oysters live. Louisiana trying to deal with their subsidence issues, one of the things they're going to do is divert more fresh water out of the Mississippi. And so it's climate change and also like human alterations to the environment where we're actually physically going to be putting more fresh water on these oysters, which is also really stressful for them. How tight a range does the salinity,

need to be in for an oyster to do well? What are the boundaries there? Actually, oysters are really, really good at handling a really wide breadth of salinities. You can find them in full-strength seawater, which is around 35 p-pt, and then also as low as three p-pt, which is pretty close to like fresh water. And they can handle all of those splenities. It's just that they can't handle it for very long. So if they're in the three p-pt for more than a few weeks or so, then it's starts getting pretty stressful for them. And then it's a little different for the larvae or the really juvenile oysters because they don't have as much capabilities of dealing with that really low salinity water for as long as the adult oysters. So you were looking at sort of how to get

oysters to be more resilient to some of these changes that we were talking about. I'm going to start by saying that I know next to nothing about oyster reproduction. In the wild, how does it happen? Oysters are kind of like found all in like groups together. And so usually it's like during the summer months when it starts to get a bit warmer. And then one oyster decides,

oh, it's looking really great out here, time to start releasing all of my milk or my eggs. And then once one oyster starts going, the one next to it was like, oh man, I got to get going too. And so they all just sort of like release everything into the water column. And then the firm and egg find each other. And then you have fertilization in the water column. And then after around like 10 days or so, that little embryo will sink to the bottom of the floor and try and find somewhere where it can settle down and get like a firm grasp that they can start feeding.

So that's what would happen naturally. But you're trying to do this in controlled conditions in your lab. How does that work? How different is it? Yeah, it's really hard to get oysters to want to spawn. So there's like a few little tricks that we've done. And one of the reasons that was also a little bit more difficult for my experiment is that because I want to cross one specific parent with another one, I have to know that the eggs and sperm are coming from that particular oyster. So we can't really do these big spons of all of them in the group. And so what you can do, you can sort of like mimic what's happening in the wild. You can put them in their own little individual tank and then you sort of heat up the water. And oysters have this freak out response where they're like, oh no, it's getting really stressful out there. I don't know what's going to happen next. I better like start reproducing as fast as possible.

But that doesn't always work for all of the oysters. Some of them are really stubborn. And so what you can also do, you can just like open them up, which unfortunately means that they will die. since you're opening. And then you can do what we call strip spawning, where you just basically cut out the eggs and sperm manually, and then we add it to salt water, and then we add the salt water of the sperm and eggs together, and then just let the rest happen itself. You're using certain tricks to make the oysters think it's time for romance. You talked about sort of increasing their stress level by warming the tank. Are there other things that you do? Yeah, there are a few other

tricks, you can collect a little bit of sperm from one of the males. And then you can make that sperm infertile by putting it in the microwave just for a few seconds and basically killing everything. But it still has like all the chemical cues that would maybe potentially initiate other oysters to start spawning. So with that now in fertile sperm, we can just add little drops to where the other oysters are located and hopefully those chemical cues get them going. But oysters will also not spawn if they're not ready. So if their eggs are still not quite ripe yet, then like none of these trucks will really work. And then you don't really know what the problem is until you open up that oyster.

And you can you can actually physically see and tell that the eggs are just like not ready to go sometimes. So we'll have to just like set that female assign and be like, okay, she won't produce any viable offspring. which is another problem too because sometimes you can tell and you think they look fine and then you like go for all the fertilization steps and then you look to see if you have any little embryos

swimming around a few days later and there's absolutely nothing there and you're like okay so I think I made over like 250 families and I think I at the end of the experiment only 30% survive like I think it's probably combination of just like

the eggs just weren't ready to go or it was just a bad match and they were potentially incompatible and so didn't have any viable offspring from those families. If I'm on the beach or in a restaurant, say, can an ordinary human look at an oyster and tell if it's male or female? No. Actually, you can't. It's really hard. And even when the oyster releases its eggs or sperm into the water column, it's like, it's microscopic. Like, you got to, like, take out a little sample and put it under a microscope. Another really annoying thing of oysters is that, you know, when you're trying to do these experiments, you need, like, 50% females and 50% males. But oysters

are actually three quarters of them, I believe, are male when they're around that, like, young age, maybe like a year or two old. So most of them start off male. And then some of them later in life will decide to switch and they'll become females. And so as they get older, then you start to have this more of like 50-50 ratio of males to females. But a lot of oysters will just switch halfway through their life and they'll just become females after a little bit. So when you're in your lab and you're trying to pair one specific oyster with another specific oyster, you don't even know if they're compatible sexes. Yeah, so the first step is just trying to get them to spawn and then you got to figure out, oh, okay, well, is this a male or female? And then if it's,

you know, one of those, I can be like, okay, this one is going to get crossed with this male and this female is going to get crossed with this other male. So I sort of have to like wait and see what I have. And because I had this specific breeding design that I was following, I kept having to like spawn more and more oysters because I didn't have enough female. to go around of all of these males. What's the sort of end goal here? Do you envision people then taking your most successful ones and cross-breeding them and seeing if you can get to like level two or level four or is this where it ends? So I guess the main goals of the experiment was sort of see what are the different tools that these oysters have for surviving in these really stressful salonities.

And one of the tools they have in their toolkit is they're like genetics. So which oysters have the right genes that will help them be more resilient to these stressful communities. And basically what my research showed is that, yes, genetics plays a huge role. It's not necessarily the environment that your parents were in that's going to influence the offspring. But it's that parent's genetics. So that just goes to show that we can pick the oysters. and the parents that are growing really well, despite what salinity they're in, if we just always pick those oysters that has those really good genes or those genotypes,

then we can potentially continue to breed oysters that are more and more resilient to low salinity. Now you've moved on. You're looking at other species entirely. Are there commonalities that you're finding in your current research versus the oyster? work? Yeah, I'm actually doing a pretty similar experiment now at UC Davis where I have, now I'm working with this Delta Smelt fish, which is a freshwater fish actually found in the San Francisco estuary, and they are pretty endangered. So there's like a hatchery population devoted to them. And I did a similar breeding design where I crossed different parents of like wild or highly domesticated fish. And I also reared those larval fish at,

now with two different temperatures, so a slightly different climate change-related question to see if they, like, how plastic they are, if they're bigger under warmer temperatures, and then if there's any genetic control for that as well. And for the oysters, it looks like, you know, most of their ability to persist in the future is going to be through genetics, and they have lots of genetic variation to adapt. that is not the case for these fish, though. So it seems like these fish have a really low potential to adapt to, like, warming temperatures.

So they didn't have quite as much genetic variation, but they also had tons of plasticity, right? So they could still be a lot bigger under warmer temperatures. Whether that would be beneficial or not, we shall see. Yeah, it's sort of like similar, but the opposite. So all species are going to be different, and they all have. have different tools in their toolkits for how they're going to respond to climate change. And so that's why you kind of have to take, you know, this approach to lots of different species and we can't just do it for one species and then extend it to all species because they're all

probably going to respond slightly differently. Joanna Griffiths is a postdoc at UC Davis. She did this oyster breeding work as part of her doctorate at Louisiana State University. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for reaching out. For Science Friday, I'm Charles Bergquist. Thank you, Charles. We have to take a break, and when we come back, scientists have been telling us about climate change for decades. But it turns out the general public doesn't understand a lot of what they're talking about.

We'll translate. Stay with this. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. When you hear scientists talk about climate change, there are some words and phrases that get brought up a lot, right? like mitigation, carbon neutral, and tipping point. They are often used to explain how far we are in the climate crisis. You find them a lot in reports meant to discuss climate change with the public. Maybe you've heard these terms on, well, on this very show. It turns out that a lot of the words and phrases that scientists use to talk about climate change

are not understood by the rest of us. That's according to a recent study from the University of Southern California and the United Nations Foundation. This begs the question, if the public you're trying to reach doesn't know what you're talking about, what's the point? Joining me today to talk about

better communicating climate change are my guests. Wendy Brun de Bruhn is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology, and Behavioral Science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and Anthony Leisowitz is founder and director of the Yale program on Climate Change Communication. That's for Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Welcome to Science Friday, both of you.

Thanks for having me. Thanks, Ira. Wendy, let me talk with you first. Your study found that the public had trouble understanding these terms. And as the lead author, I want to ask you, was the result surprising to you at all, or was it expected? Well, some of the results were expected, and some were surprising. So what was expected is that in the science of science communication,

We've long been telling experts that it's important to use everyday language when communicating with general audiences. And so it was not surprising to me that some of the climate change terminology was difficult for people to understand. But so what was surprising to me is that, so we interviewed people who varied in their concerns about climate change. And we found that even people who said that they were concerned about climate change didn't. not necessarily know what to make of this climate change terminology. And so that means that people who, you know, might be willing to engage with climate change communications may have trouble doing so. Wow, that is very interesting. Can you walk us through some of the specific terms that you looked at in terms that people had trouble with? This is how we did the study. We asked these climate scientists

and climate communicators to identify the key terminology that is central to understand. understanding climate change communications. So those, they selected the terms and they included mitigation, carbon neutral, adaptation, and so on. And then we interviewed people from across the United States who varied in their climate change concerns about these terms. We asked them to define the terms and give us suggestions for describing these terms in a more simple way that is easier for people to understand. You know, I find that unfortunate for us because those are terms we use on Science Friday over and over again. Tony, what about you? Does it surprise you at all that the public is confused by terms that we use all the time? Well, I think I had a very similar reaction to

Wandi. I mean, in many ways, this is very much consistent with what we've learned over many decades of research on science communication, and that is you've got to keep it simple. You've got to use terms that people do understand in their everyday language. And I would just say that, you know, this is a very common problem for all of us. And then we call this the veil of knowledge, not the veil of ignorance, but the veil of knowledge. And that once you come to be an expert in something, and it could be anything, it could be auto mechanics, that you tend to assume that everybody around you understands what you understand. And, I mean, how many times you've, you know, visited your doctor and said, hey, Doc, what's wrong with me? And they start using all these

terms that you have no idea what they're talking about, and they just assume that you know what they mean. So this is a very common problem, and I think what this study has really done a nice job of is really digging into what we call the mental models that people have in their heads around these terms. And in fact, the most important audience for these findings is those of us in the climate expert community, because often we just assume, because of this veil of knowledge, that everybody around us knows what carbon dioxide is, that knows what mitigation or adaptation are, when in fact, many people really don't know what these terms are because they've never encountered them, quote, unquote, in the wild.

That's really interesting. Wendy, do the people think they know what these mean and then get them wrong, or they just don't know what they mean at all? Also, for some terms like mitigation, people thought that the terms were confusing and they said that they didn't know what it meant or they confused it with, mediation. But for a term like adaptation, people said, yeah, that is actually a relatively easy term, and they thought they knew what it meant. But when we asked them to define adaptation, we often heard things like adapting a book into a movie, which is a correct definition of adaptation.

It's just not how it's used in the context of climate change. Now, you also asked study participants to suggest their own alternative words that scientists could use. Could you give us an idea. How did that work out? So, for example, instead of saying mitigation or when you use mitigation, you could explain it as policies that you implement to help stop climate change. That's something that people suggested. For adaptation, it's making changes that can help us to survive climate change. And so, as you can hear, these are just simpler ways of saying the same thing. Yeah, but Tony, do you think the media that talks about this all the time is going to take a one word and substitute five words for it?

No, probably not. And so, look, this is an evolving thing, too. I mean, let's not forget that with experience, with the use of these terms, people become more familiar with them. So it's not like forever and forever people will never understand what, say, carbon emissions are or what mitigation is.

And let's just be honest that when it comes to actual media conversation and the level, the scale of media communication about climate change, most people say that they almost never hear about it. So I know those again, for those of us in the climate expert community, we see it all the time. We're seeing, look at all the coverage that has been happening around this. And it has been increasing.

But it's still a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket in most people's worlds. They don't hear the people that they know, their friends, their families, their local communities talking about it. They don't tend to hear it from the media that they're paying attention to. So, you know, one thought is, though, that as climate change becomes, ever more present in our collective discourse, in our collective consciousness. We will learn these terms because they do get used more and more. But that doesn't give experts a pass. You still need to try whatever possible to use simplified language that people automatically understand that doesn't require a full semester course in climate science to understand what we actually mean.

I want to pull out a phrase you used in that answer and you said that they don't hear it in the media they're used to listening to, or perhaps watching. I'll add that. I mean, climate change has been so politicized in this country. I don't expect that in some alternate media, you're going to be hearing people talking about tipping point or carbon dioxide removal or adaptation at all. Absolutely. And, you know, there are definitely differences. We're seeing different, let's call them, ecosystems of information about climate change out there. This has, of course, become politically inflected, where you see very different conversations about climate change, or frankly, none at all at many times within, say, more conservative media. But even within those that say the more

progressive sides of the fence here in the United States listen to, even there, especially on the networks, climate change has been pretty absent until just very recently because of some of these more extreme events. We're starting to see climate change being connected a little bit more, whereas, say, the print media, the newspapers, that have done a far better job over the past few years. But TV is still predominantly kind of a wasteland. I call that dereliction of duty, but let's get away from my editorializing. Can I follow up on that? Yes, please, Wendy. So I think in part because the weather events are becoming more extreme around the world, I think people are becoming more aware of climate change. I've been analyzing the data of the Lloyd's Register Foundation,

World Risk Fall, and they surveyed more than 150,000 people around the world in 142 countries, and they're finding that 69% of people around the world are now saying that they're concerned about climate change, and even in the United States, the majority of people is now concerned about climate change. So I think people are becoming more aware, slowly, although there's still work to do. But then when we survey people who are concerned about climate change, what we're often finding is that they do not necessarily know what they can do to curb climate change. And so, for example, surveyed people about what they can do to reduce the climate impact of their food choices. And a common answer that we're getting is choose food that has less packaging. And reducing the packaging is a good idea, but a better thing you can do to reduce the climate impact of your food choices.

choices is to eat less meat. And we're finding that even people who are concerned about climate change do not necessarily know that. And that suggests that climate change communication should start focusing more on the people who are already concerned about climate change, whereas I think in the past, climate change communications have focused more on convincing the climate deniers that climate change is happening. And so perhaps we've overlooked the people who are concerned about climate change and have perhaps failed to communicate to them about what they can do about climate change. So much of the U.S., as you pointed out, has experienced extreme weather this summer. And of course, just last week, we in the East dealt with Hurricane Ida. And I heard from some

people, and I know in New York City, you've seen the pictures of those flash floods, the flooding of the subways. They said, you know, we got warnings, but we don't know what that means because we never get flood warnings in the middle of Manhattan. Do you think the language around severe weather then needs to be more clear, too, Wendy? I think that wherever we can, we should use clear language. Whenever you revert to jargon, it may be difficult for people to understand what you're trying to say. And Tony, you agree? Yeah, I mean, we've actually done studies in the past finding that, for instance, one of the primary communication devices that NOAA and the hurricane centers use to communicate the risk of a hurricane is this so-called cone of uncertainty. I'm sure you've seen it

on television or in newspapers. And what we found is that people really don't understand what that is. I mean, people confuse that cone as like, this is the swath of destruction, not just the projected path of the eye of the storm. And that's actually led to real-world decision-making where people thought, oh, I'm outside of that cone, therefore I don't need to evacuate. And there have been examples in the past where in fact they actually did get hit by the hurricane and thus suffered damage or even death. So it's just to say that yes, of course, this is a generalized principle is that when you're speaking to a diverse public, that of course includes not just diversity of people across race, class, gender, et cetera, but also education levels. It's really, really important

that you be trying to think about how do you use simple, clear language that is repeated often, repeated often, repeated often, and we usually forget that part, by a variety of trusted messengers. And that's really, really kind of a basic set of guidelines around communication. And who's going to be responsible for being that responsible party of communicators? Is it the government? Is it the media? Is it the weather people on television? It's all of the above. I mean, all of us that are in the business of communicating with the general public, it is partly our responsibility. And so those, those people are in the business of communicating with the general public, And so those scientists that do engage the public, and thank goodness, many more of them are stepping up to the plate to actually communicate with, you know, local communities, national communities, going on national television, et cetera.

When you do that, it's really imperative that you learn, because many scientists haven't really received much training, how to communicate effectively with a broad audience. So it's not just the media, though the media needs help too. It's also scientists, it's political leaders, it's faith leaders, it's business leaders. I mean, really, anybody that is engaging a larger audience. This is Science Friday from WNIC Studios. You know, I was wondering as I was watching the weather reports and the kinds of things we're talking about, that maybe what we're going through with COVID, COVID messaging might be a good model. I mean, how many people ever heard of an mRNA protein before?

and now they're just, you know, spikes on its cells. And the whole nation is getting a lesson at the same time in biology. Could this also be true of climate and weather? If climate and weather received as much media attention as COVID-19, I think what we would see that people would have a better understanding of key climate terminology. And I would just add to that, that unfortunately, I think COVID also shows us an example of how poor communication works, especially in a politicized environment. Right.

People are incredibly confused about the dangers of COVID, and now we're talking about the dangers of different kinds of so-called cures. This is where it's not just the fact that people don't understand what a virus is or how it works and how best to protect yourself and what the scientific community has to say, but then it gets all inflected through our politics. And those trusted messengers for some people are not Dr. Fauci, are not the scientists. They're trusting other people who are telling them that either this is not a problem at all or you really shouldn't be worried about it or, hey, here's a bunch of other potential ways to protect yourself against this potentially dangerous, dangerous virus. So unfortunately, the U.S. is an example as well of the power and the influence that politics can have on our mutual understanding of a problem like COVID, just like it's a problem with climate change. Do scientists understand this themselves? I mean, that they need to be better communicators? Yeah, I would say there's been a real sea change in the climate science community over the past, say, 15 to 20 years,

where for a long time, and an earlier generation of scientists were really brought up in a cultural standpoint of our job is to do research, to publish our findings in peer-reviewed literature, and then to essentially let the policymakers and others learn what they can from it and make policy based on it, that we don't engage. That basic philosophy has gone out the window a long, long time ago, because increasingly they recognize that we are studying systems that are literally being ripped apart in front of our eyes, that as experts in climate change or species extinction, et cetera, we have unique knowledge about how the world is working and how it's coming apart. That is really important to communicate not just to our fellow scientists, but to the larger set of decision makers throughout society,

not necessarily telling them what to do, but absolutely with the mission of trying to inform the decisions that policymakers make all the way down to everyday people who are making decisions about how to engage these issues. Wendy, what's your take on this? Yeah. I think we're increasingly seeing that climate scientists are very concerned about communicating clearly about climate science to general audiences. But one challenge is that climate scientists are not necessarily trained in science communication. And so they may try to say things in a simple way, but if you're highly educated in a particular domain, you may not realize how to put things in simple words. And you may not think like a layperson anymore. So it may be difficult to find those simple words.

So something that I often recommend is that, you know, if you have a difficult time finding everyday wording to describe your recommendations, what you could do is work with. members of your target audience to help them to simplify your message so that it's more broadly understood. Well, unfortunately, I have simple words to say we have run out of time. I'd like to thank both of you for taking time to be with us. Very interesting conversation. Wendy Brun de Bruhn, Profos Professor of Public Policy, Psychology, and Behavioral Science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Anthony Leisowitz, founder and director of the Yale program on climate change communication in New Haven, Connecticut. As I say, thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Thank you very much. Thanks, Ira. You're welcome. We have to take a break. And when we come back,

we're kicking off our charismatic creature carnival, getting wet and wild with the mantis shrimp and Hellbender Salamander. And it's up to you to pick your favorite. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. And it's the moment you've all been waiting for. It's Time for our charismatic creature carnival. Joining me today, as always, is our charismatic creature correspondent, sci-fi producer Kathleen Davis. Hi, Kathleen. Hey, Ira. I'm very excited to be here.

Me too. So we're kicking off the carnival today. Tell us a bit about what we've got in store. So over the next three weeks, we are shining a spotlight on six audience suggested charismatic creatures. And by charismatic, we mean a creature that's overlooked or unfairly maligned. by the general public that once you look a little bit closer, it has an undeniable charm to it. That sounds like you're talking about me there, I think. I'm not kidding.

Somebody actually did suggest you as a charismatic creature. Is that right? But we had to take you out of the running, unfortunately. That also means that undeniably cute creatures like koalas or pandas or capy bears, they don't belong here. We're highlighting animals that you might write off at first, but they deserve a closer look, you could say. And we're going to do these head-to-head friendly battles between two creatures.

Each creature has an expert representative who's going to try to convince you and our audience that their creature is the most charismatic of each round. We're going to have a few weeks of voting. And then at the end of the carnival, we will have our very first true inductee into the charismatic creature corner hall of fame. Okay, enough talking. Tell us about how these creatures got chosen. Yeah, so we got dozens of really great suggestions. from our audience members. And then we had the SciFri staff vote on their favorites, and we were

able to narrow them down to six. So, Ira, are you ready to learn what creatures are part of this Falls charismatic creature carnival? More than ready. Hit me. Okay. So your six possible champions are the I-I, the Hellbender, the Mantis Shrimp, the Appossum, the Pigeon, and the Shoebill Stork. Okay. Okay. Those are some great, great candidate. dates, let's kick off our first matchup. We're going to have one per week for three weeks. So which creatures are we going to hear about today? Okay. So for our first matchup today, we are heading into the water. So I would like a drum roll, please. In one corner, we've got the mantis shrimp. This creature was suggested by Garrison from Charlotte, North Carolina. He left us this message

on our sci-fry vox pop app. I'd like to nominate the mantis shrimp. for the charismatic creature carnival. The banished shrimp has a few features that make it worthy. For one, it's got an incredibly powerful punch, capable of producing heat and light. It's got some of the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom, and the charismatic bow on top is that it is certainly colorful enough to attend a carnival in style.

That's a pretty good argument. Pretty good. And representing the mantis shrimp in our charismatic creature carnival is Jason Dyn, PhD candidate in biology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Welcome, Jason. Thanks for having me. And in the other corner, we've got the Helvender Salamander. This creature was suggested by listener Timothy from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who wrote us on Twitter. He said, everyone now knows axolotls, but here in Appalachia, we think bigger, offering our hellfing

Bender Salamander. And defending the hellbender in our carnival is Lauren Diaz, PhD student in fisheries science at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Welcome, Lauren. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, we're happy to have both of you. I can't wait. We're excited to have you all here. And just a note, this segment was recorded in front of a live Zoom audience. And if you'd like to join us live on the next time we do this to find out how you can join a future live radio recording, go to Science. ScienceFriday.com slash live stream. Okay, let's go first with a basic description of these creatures. What do they look like? Where do they live? Jason, you're up first. Start with the mantis shrimp. Sure. So mantis shrimp are about 450 known species of crustaceans in this group called stomatopods.

They live in the tropics and subtropics in burrows on the seafloor. And these can be either constructed burrows out of sand or they can be from natural crevices and things like corals. or rocks. And so they're pretty small. They could be anywhere from less than an inch to over a foot, but generally they're around the size of a cigar or your finger. And they could be anywhere from just plain bays to just extremely gaudy and colorful. They're kind of look like lobsters in the back, but in the front, they're just totally

unique. So they have these huge eyes that kind of just are always moving independently from one another. They have these antennal scales that flare out from the sides of their heads that are super colorful, and they have these really fast feeding appendages that they fold up underneath them, like a praying mantis, which is how they get the name, mantis shrimp. Lauren, I think you've got your work cut out for you with your Hellbender. Give us your best description of the Hellbender. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it sounds like a motorcycle group to me, but tell us, tell us what it is. That would be a really good name for motorcycle group. So Hellbender Salamanders really broadly are in the giant Salamander family, Cryptobrancaday, which are the largest amphibians on Earth, and actually, hill vendors are North America's largest amphibbean. So I like to describe them mostly as kind of like a big slimy rock. That's what they look like to be. They're really good of camouflage. They can reach up to about two feet long, which is really, really big, have this really like flat, wrinkly, brownish, splotchy body. So when you see them underwater, it's really, it's hard to see them,

especially from like above the surface. They just look like another rock. These beady, tiny little eyes, a big paddle-like tail for swimming, keratinized toes, which truly the only, salamator, I know that has pretty much fingernails. And they use that to kind of crawl along the rocks and really hold their grip. They are fully aquatic and don't have external gills. So that's actually where the name for the brinket comes from, hidden gills. And as far as their habitats, they live under boulders in rocky, clear mountain streams with fast-flowing water. Throughout East North America, the best populations are around the Southern Appalachians like North Carolina, Tennessee. There's other populations up north.

around Pennsylvania and Ohio that are still, you know, existent. And then there's also a disjunct population in Missouri, which is considered a critically endangered subspecies. And so their need for clean, fast, blowing water is a spoiler alert, a bit of a problem these days. So yeah, I think that's, that's a for the description. Now, Catherine, one of our listeners from the Hudson River Valley, has a question about how the hellbender got its name. Yeah, that's a question I get so often, because it is such a weird name to give an animal. But it comes from probably the fact that they are considered traditionally ugly to a lot of people. I don't think so, but a lot of people do think that. And so back in the day, the first time people ever saw them, it was like, oh man, this creature

from hell bent on returning. That's like the thing that everybody says. Now, one other thing that I wanted to ask about hellbenders, so one of my favorite things about them is that they have a lot of nicknames. So I've heard snot otter, devil dogs, lasagna, Lizard. Lasagna lizards? I know. I know. Wow. Do you have a favorite nickname, Lauren? Yeah. I actually, lasagna lizards is probably my favorite. And they're called that because they are so wrinkly. So the sides of their body look like the sides of a lasagna, which is so creative. But yeah, snot otters probably the most common one. I have also heard Alligating Alligator, since they're up in Pennsylvania, Ohio region. But yeah, yeah, really fun nicknames. People love that.

Wow, that's terrific. Yeah, I love something with a lot of names. I'd like to go back to something Jason said about the mantis shrimp, the color can be really incredible. As our listeners said, they really do seem decked out for a carnival. What role does color play for all of these creatures? Yeah, so mantis shrimp vision is kind of incredible on a couple of fronts. And they have a totally unique way of seeing color, which is what's so cool about them. So mantis shrimp have 12 types of color receptors. We have three, red, green, and blue. Your dog, has two. Birds have four. They have one that can see into the ultraviolet. And mantis shrimp can also see into the ultraviolet, but there's this, you know, kind of crazy question of if birds can do it

with four, why do mantis shrimp have 12? And so one theory that people had was that, well, maybe if they have 12 color receptors, they can better discriminate between colors. But experimental evidence in the last 10 years has shown that they're actually not that great at discriminating between colors. They're about five times worse than people are. So to this day, it's still not really clear why they have 12 cones, and there's a lot of ongoing work trying to figure this out. But the prevailing theory so far is that it's a way for them to really quickly identify colors. So when we identify a color, we have to basically in our central nervous system, compare the stimulation of all three types of our cones to figure out what color that is.

But if a mantis shrimp, for example, just has a yellow cone, it can just have a very quick lookup table and say that's yellow without having to do any cross-cone comparisons. Wow, great description. People may have heard about these before because they're famous for their punches. I mean, tell us a bit, a little bit about what the heck is going on with their amazing punching power. Sure. So mantis shrimp achieved one of biology's just highest acceleration movements. They can exceed what humans can engineer both in terms of size and speed.

And so they're remarkable on a couple of fronts. They're really brief. So an individual strike lasts about three milliseconds. I would say that's like in a blink of an eye, but that would be a total. total understatement. A blink of an eye takes about a hundred times longer than that. Their peak speeds reach that of a car on the highway around 70 miles per hour, and they're accelerating probably around equally to a bullet coming out of a 22 caliber rifle. When they actually strike something, their peak forces are equal to that of a hyena, which are these animals that have

specialized skull structures to literally crush bone, and they're doing it at such a different size, right? So mantis shrimp feeding appendages are less than a gram. They're about the mass of two toothpicks. Hyenas are about 20 kilograms, so that's a 20,000 fold different in mass and producing the same peak forces. They're doing it by using a series of springs and latches. So instead of actuating their movements with muscles, they're actually actuating it with springs. And so this is similar to using a bow and arrow. If you wanted to throw an arrow using just your muscle power, you, or at least I wouldn't be able to throw it very far or very fast. But if you kind of just took that same energy, you loaded it into a springy bow, latched it until you wanted to release it and then let go. You could

get the air to go really far and really fast. And so that's basically what Mantis shrimp are doing. They have these really high-force muscles inside their feeding appendage that they use to slowly load all of these spring elements inside their feeding appendage, things like deforming their cuticle. And they hold the impales with a latch until they're ready to strike. And as soon as they let that latch go, a huge amount of power delivery goes to this rotating hammer that they use to smash their targets. And they do it for a couple of things. They use it to smash prey. They can break open snail shells, they actually hit the shells so hard that they're boiling a tiny layer of water on top of the shell. It's a phenomenon called cavitation. They're literally ripping the water

molecules apart into water vapor. And when that bubble collapses, it's super energetic. It creates super loud sounds, tiny flashes of light and heat equivalent to that of the sun. And the force of that collapse can actually exceed the force of the initial strike of the hammer. So with one strike, they get two punches to break open these shells. And they're super clever with how they actually use the strikes. So they'll target the snail right at the opening where they're most likely to break it open and get the meat. If the snail's too tall, they'll do this kind of like rotation thing, and they'll hit them at the top where they're most likely to get fracture. So they're hitting hard and they're hitting really cleverly. Just a quick note that I'm Ira Flato and this is Science Friday

from WNYC Studios. Wow, so much good stuff, so much to digest about these two. charismatic creature candidates. It's time to hear your final arguments, your best and final arguments for why your creature is the most charismatic. Jason, let's start with you. Sure. So I think that mantis shrimp are the most charismatic for two reasons. One is that they're totally unique and that's due to their evolutionary history and two is that there's totally awe-inspiring animals. Like, there are a lot of animals that do one or two really cool things, but it seems like wherever you look, the mantis shrimp is doing something kind of remarkable, whether it's like a totally unique way of seeing or devastatingly fast strikes. And so in this way, it's kind of like a glimpse into

nature's evolutionary playground where we can find some really unique solutions to evolutionary problems. And as scientists and engineers, the more we learn about what Mantis Shrimp do, it seems the more we're learning how to apply these to our own science and engineering. So there are some engineering groups working with the lab that I'm in to look at how the individual components of a mantis shrimp's feeding appendage can inform really small and fast robots. They're a material scientist looking at how mantis shrimp can break open snail shells, but not damage their own hammer in the process to make impact-resistant materials.

If you remember cavitation, it happens everywhere when you move really fast. Ship propellers cavitate all the time, and it destroys ship propellers. It can blow the cover of submarines. But mantis shrimp, despite being able to cause cavitation on these snail shells, almost never cavitate on themselves, even though they're moving incredibly fast.

And so there's just so much behavior and morphology that we're learning about the mantis shrimp. And I think we're just starting to scratch the surface. Okay, Lauren. It's your turn. Very different creatures, but they're exciting in their own ways. Let's hear your argument in favor of the hellbender. Yeah. If the name Scott Otter didn't already convince everyone that they're the most charismatic creature, I would say that they're also incredibly unique. Pretty much a living fossil, a relic of the past. There's only three giant salamanders on Earth.

We are lucky enough to have one of them. And they also, to me personally, represent this amazing and fragile and sensitive and beautiful habitat. There's nothing more beautiful than like being underwater in like clear mountain stream and seeing all these super cool fish and insects that nobody ever really gets to see. And to me, hellbenders are kind of poster child for that environment and are a big reason why I love them.

And they can act as an umbrella species. So when you protect a hellbender, protect hellbenders, you are basically protecting everything else in the stream. So in that way, they're like the poster child for stream. I would ever see in conservation to me. Two great arguments. And Ira, this is normally the time where I'll ask you to choose whether

you think these creatures are charismatic or not, but because this is the charismatic creature carnival, we already know that these are very charismatic creatures, and we're going to do things a little bit differently. Glad you're taking the pressure off of me. All right, so what are we doing this week? So this decision is now in the hands

of our listeners, so we want you to vote for which of these Creatures is your favorite that we talked about today. Which one do you think is the most charismatic we want to hear from you? So to vote throughout our carnival, not just today, you're going to go to ScienceFriday.com slash carnival. Voting is now open for this first matchup until next Wednesday at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Let me repeat that important link at ScienceFriday.com slash carnival. And I am on the edge of my seat to see what you listeners choose, because this is a exciting. I want to thank our experts this week. It was great to learn more about these charismatic

creatures. Jason Dinn, Ph.D. candidate in Biology, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Lauren Diaz, Ph.D. student in fisheries science, Oregon State University in Corvallis. Thank you, both for joining us. Thanks for having me. Vote mantas shrimp. Yeah. Go hellbenders. Thank you so much. Okay, Kathleen. Who or what is in store for our charismatic creature carnival next week? So next week, we are going mammalian. It's a head-to-head match between the opossum and the I-I. Yes, Katyn. Oh, the creature. I see what you're saying. These are some funky creatures. Yes. And so our listeners can join the behind-the-scenes recording of that segment and get the opportunity to ask our experts questions. That's happening next Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern Time. Go to ScienceFriiday.com slash live stream to sign up.

Thank you, Kathleen. Terrific job today. Thanks, Ira. Excited to keep the carnival going. Yeah. Oh, one last thing before we go. We want to welcome new listeners from the Publix Radio Network in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Welcome aboard. Also joining us our listeners from KCPB Coast Community Radio in Astoria, Oregon. It's great to have you all with us. That's about all the time we have for this week. If you missed any part of the program, you would like to hear it again. Yes, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.