Specialty Battle: Herpetologists vs. Entomologists

In this exciting episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Laura Fawks Lapole and Kim Baker pit two specialists against each other in a lively debate: Steve Allain, a herpetologist specializing in reptiles and amphibians, and Josh Byrne, an entomologist and insect enthusiast. Listen as they battle it out to determine which field reigns supreme in nature! From venomous snakes to giant crabs, they cover everything from deadly adaptations to the cutest parenting strategies in the animal kingdom.

Perfect for fans of reptiles, insects, and nature lovers of all kinds. Get ready for an episode filled with fascinating facts, nerdy banter, and plenty of laughs as we explore the world of cold-blooded creatures and creepy crawlies.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura Fox-Lepol.
And I'm Kim Baker, and today we're having a specialist battle.
Yep, we have been waiting for this one for a while, and I'm so excited. We have two excellent specialists here with us today, and we're going to pit them against one another to see who has the better field, who has the more interesting species they deal with. I don't know if I'll be able to decide by the end, but I would love to hear feedback from people after all of this.
So let's give a quick introduction to both of them before we get into our battle. Okay, so today we are joined by Steve Allain. He's currently a PhD candidate at the University of Kent where his research focuses on the population dynamics of the barred grass snake and the effects of ophidiomycosis.
Stephen holds a bachelor's of zoology from Anglia Ruskin University and a master's in ecology, evolution and conservation from the Imperial College of London. Steve's main academic interests have been amphibian and reptile population monitoring and the influence of disease. Since 2018, he's been on the council of the British Herpetological Society and is intrinsically linked to amphibian and reptile conservation in the UK.
So welcome Steve, we're glad to have you.
I'm glad to be here.
Awesome. And then our other specialist is Josh, who you've probably heard us give a couple of shout outs to. He's the illustrator for our podcast, but he is also what we refer to as our bug guy.
So let me give you a little background on Josh. He is a nature educator and insect breeder currently living in Texas in the United States. He has a bachelor's degree in animal ecology from Iowa State University, which focuses on animal behavior and nature interpretation.
He primarily works in zoos, but also enjoys teaching and currently has two childcare jobs. In his free time, he likes to sculpt, play Dungeons and Dragons, and daydream about which bugs to get next. So welcome, Josh.
Good to have you with us.
This is gonna be awesome.
So I guess let's jump right into this. I've got questions that I'm just gonna be kind of bebopping forth back in between you both. And we'll see if there's anything that needs to be added.
Kim's here with me too today, and she can add in anything that we're missing.
I'll really dig down and get the tough questions.
Good. Okay, let's start with Steve. So Steve, how long have you been in this field?
So since 2012, so yeah, almost a decade now, which seems like a crazy long time, because to me, it only feels like I started last weekend.
It's one of those things that, when you look back retrospectively, the length of time always seems a lot shorter than it has been. Particularly, yeah, with the whole COVID situation, like the past two years have just disappeared into a black hole. But it feels like the past nine years have been in that same sort of trajectory.
Yeah, totally. I was thinking back the other day, looking back at college pictures, and I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, decade, decade and a bit ago, terrifying. Josh, same to you, how long have you been in this field?
Yeah, casually and at home, like my entire life, I'll get into it later, but I was pretty much raised surrounded by insects by my own choice. And professionally, I've got about six years of experience in zoo outreach. Three of those are ACA zoos and the Iowa State Insect Zoo.
Okay, excellent. So you both have been in the field that you're in for a while. So that leads me to our next question, which is, Steve, would you consider yourself an expert?
I'm not really sure you can ever consider yourself an expert. There's always new things to learn, and the other thing as well at the moment is that so much research and scientific papers are being published a day, it's hard to keep track on, keep on top of everything. And even if you do have a small specialized subject that you work in day in, day out, just trying to keep on top of all of that information that's being thrown at you is extremely hard.
And also, I think the barrier of expert also implies that you have to have some level of trialing error, you have to try some stuff out and it goes wrong and then that informs your decisions later on and stuff. And unfortunately, I haven't exactly had the time or the energy to do any of that trial and error yet. So maybe that's coming next, maybe in a couple of years' time, I'll say, yep, that's it, I've reached that stage, but not quite yet.
I feel, yeah, like with science, it's so hard to write, ever consider yourself, because science is always changing.
Yeah, I share a lot of the same views as Steve here, but I would say in certain things, you may as well call me an expert if just the colloquial definition of expert is someone who can answer most of my questions. With insects, there's just so much. There are so many of them, and no one knows anything about most of them.
It's impossible for someone to be well-learned on all the aspects of entomology, and no matter what, you're always going to be learning more. But generally, when people come to me with questions on insect biology or captive husbandry or behavior, I'm like, well, I can give you a pretty good answer, so I don't mind if you call me an expert, but never ever think that I will know everything.
Good to know, good to know. Well, at least you both seem like you have a good grasp on your field, which will help with the uncoming questions. Okay, so Steve, why did you decide on the field that you're in?
And so I guess before we continue, I keep saying the field. From Steve's bio, you can tell that he likes and works with reptiles and amphibians, and that is the field of herpetology. So Steve, why did you choose that field?
I guess it's maybe the same for Josh, but I just never grew up, you know, I was chasing frogs and lizards around as a kid, and I'm still doing it now, but just being paid to do it, which is great.
Yes.
And yeah, yeah, it's one of those things that, having that experience as a kid, you know, you know, your perspective of these animals changes through time, you know, in the beginning, you know, you were just chasing them because it was fun, but then as you get older, you start to develop questions about, you know, how they function, you know, the, you know, the life cycle, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And yeah, so I guess that the main answer is I'm just satisfying that inner six year old and trying to get to, you know, the answers to the questions that, you know, that have been bothering me for, you know, the past 20 something years.
Yeah, totally. I think that a lot of us can relate to that, especially in this, in just the nature field in general. Right, we're all just large children.
A hundred percent, yeah. Is it the same?
Yeah, it sounds cheesy, but I really feel like I was just born into it. I've had a strong affinity for insects since I was around two years old. My mom tells me that I once stopped talking to my grandpa for a day because he stepped on a beetle in front of me.
She was like, the baby's mad at you. But I think what must have steered me specifically into insects was just how accessible they are. Like baby Josh really loved birds and other large animals too, but I couldn't get close to them like I could with insects.
I couldn't study them as carefully. They were always around. I think I saw all animals on an even footing value-wise.
They're all animals, they're all interesting, and insects are just there more often.
Cool, cool. And I guess as a follow-up question, Steve, just because I'm wondering, because I'm not familiar, were herps accessible to you as a kid where you lived?
They were, yes. So like Josh, the crazy thing is, at a young age, I was crazy about primates. I wanted to become a primatologist, and then realized that there weren't any native to the UK.
And so, you know, just from one wayside. But we had a garden pond, and so there were frogs and toads and newts there all the time, you know, in the spring and the summer, growing up as a kid. And yeah, there was loads of other amphibian reptiles in the area near my house.
Unfortunately, the UK only has 13 native species of reptiles and amphibians. There's only a handful, but lots of them are very locally common and abundant. So yeah, you trip over them literally everywhere, which is good, because you know that was formative for young Steve.
Yeah, totally. Okay, great. Next question is, Steve, when you tell people that you're a herpetologist and then when they ask you what that is and you say that you study reptiles and amphibians, what is their reaction?
It's a mixed bag. I remember when I first started my bachelor's and told people that I wanted to become a herpetologist, they all immediately jumped to the root word and thought, well, they're going to study herpes. I'm like, yes, that's why I'm studying herpes.
And now I think, you know, since 2012 when that happened, people have got a better handle on the word itself. I'm not entirely sure how because I haven't really seen that much, you know, an increased use in popular culture. I think maybe people are a little bit more switched on, particularly given the whole climate crisis and deforestation and other bits and pieces that, you know, there's going to be information out there that's accessible to people that perhaps I've just missed.
But yeah, some people think it's quite cool, you know, particularly teenagers, you know, they think you can work with snakes. Wow, that's so cool, man. And then, you know, yeah, there's other group of people that are completely disgusted because, you know, they see reptiles and amphibians as these slimy animals that, you know, you shouldn't really care about because, you know, they just, you know, do their thing and get in their way sometimes and whatever else.
But the surprising thing is, is that when I tell people that I specifically work with snakes here in the UK, most of them are like, we have snakes here? What? There's three native species, guys.
Okay, the probability of finding them is extremely low, which is probably why people haven't, you know, I think this is one of the reasons why people are scared of snakes is because you can't see them as easily as, you know, birds or mammals, you know.
If I'd never seen a bird before, Oh, yeah, yeah.
If I'd never seen a bird before and, you know, I went, you know, a woodland and saw a crow or something else that was quite large and intimidating, I'd probably be scared as well, you know. So I think that those lack of positive interactions sort of create this sense of fear, and especially it doesn't help that the media and, you know, film and TV just, you know, reinforces that. But yeah, so it's a mixed bag.
Most of it's positive, but sometimes people get, you know, a little bit confused or disgusted and, you know, just switch off the conversation whatsoever and just, you know, keep on walking.
Yeah, yeah. And I know, Kim, you were addressing, like, the fear of snakes and stuff in our Animals of the Occult episode and stuff.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. It just seems like people, and I think there's been studies, too, that people kind of have a little bit of an inherent fear of them, and I love the idea of being able to try and lessen that fear. And much like you said, Steve, sometimes people are like, no, thank you, not for me.
But it's really cool.
Steve, how big is the biggest native snake that you guys have?
So the biggest native snake is my study species, the bird grass snake, and it grows to 1.8 meters in length, although most individuals are about a meter in length. So they're not huge. But if you've never seen a snake before, then it's anacondasized, I guess.
And that just reminds me, I was interviewing a wildlife rehabilitator around here once, and she was specifically rehabilitating birds of prey. And she said she got a call once from someone who said that they had found a bird. They didn't know what kind it was, but it needed help.
And she was like, OK. And they're like, it has talons. Like, it's definitely a bird of prey.
She goes to pick it up. It was a sparrow. That sparrow had talons.
But I guess it, yeah, if you'd never seen a bird of prey before or talons, then just like that snake, it must be, like, legitimately terrifying. Oh, man. Okay, Josh, same to you.
How do people react when you tell them that you study? Well, first of all, does anyone even know what entomology is when you say that?
Not usually. I actually open up a lot of my education programs with my name is Joshua and I'm an entomologist. Raise your hand if you've ever heard that word before.
And a lot of kids and adults both will not raise their hands. But especially like adults are usually much more suspicious than kids. I'll bring a bug out at a show, have something out of my hand, and the kids will swarm me and the adults will pretty often just leave the room.
And what really breaks my heart is when they try to convince the kids, don't go near that. That's gross. They tend to be suspicious that it has value and that it's even interesting to start with.
I think especially the way that we used to look at insects as being basically biological robots has really turned a lot of people to the opinion that they're just not that interesting, not that complicated. Although there may be many of them, they do one thing and that's it.
Right. I definitely think that's how people see plants. A plant's a plant.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, very much. That's how I see plants.
Plants are food for bugs. What else do they do? But yeah, kids are really easy to be one over to the bug side.
But really, once people form a connection with them at all, even if it's just that my praying mantis looks over at them and they make eye contact, once they form that connection, they have a chance to stretch themselves a little bit and be okay with being surprised, be okay with getting a new mindset about them. And so I feel like it's a really rewarding specialty because a lot of people don't like it at first, but I get to watch the process of people coming to like it over and over and over again.
Yeah, yeah, that is really cool. I like that you both too have like your prime audience. Like Steve's got the teens and Josh has the little kids.
Yeah.
We gotta catch them early.
We gotta team up. After we thrash each other in this battle, we will team up together.
If I survive, I'm definitely up for that.
All right. Next up. So, Josh, we'll start with you this time.
How many species, like if somebody wants to say, I'm an expert in entomology, how many species are you supposed to have learned?
Oh man. Well, if anyone says they're an expert in entomology, they are a fool. That is just something that they've proven.
But my two specialties, what I work with the most and would say that I know the most about are mantises and cockroaches. And there are about 2,500 known mantis species and 4,500 known cockroach species. And I have it really easy compared to other insect people.
There are 400,000 different beetles alone. That's just beetles. And so generally, it's good to have, for entomologist, it's good to have a working knowledge of the 100 or so most common insects in your general area.
What are people going to find in East Texas that they are going to ask me about? I want to know those insects. And then an additional 60 to 80 hobby species that I either breed in captivity or will encounter in other people's collections.
That's an impressive working knowledge. It's a lot. I would love to know, think about...
I think I'm a generalist. I know a little about a lot of different things. I don't know if I can...
It takes up way too much space in my brain for anything else. It's like if I forget something, oh, I forgot your birthday. Sorry, brother.
It's this bug knowledge taking up that spot.
There's no room for anything else. Steve, what about you? How many species are you expected to know as a herpetologist?
Well, this is the issue. I suspect the same with Josh, is that the goalposts keep changing. And so every year, on average, about 150 new amphibian species are discovered, and a single number of reptiles.
And the main reason is that molecular techniques have become readily available and really cheap now, so we can go around, do a population assessment of a species and then find out it may be multiple instead of just one. Of course they are, they all live on different islands. Of course they can be a different species.
Just because they look the same, we shouldn't ascribe them the same name. The other issue as well is that the Victorians, when they went around the world collecting all their stuff, they focused primarily on birds and mammals because they were the ones they could command a higher price for. They shot all the lows, skinned them, sent them to Paris, London, Berlin, wherever it was.
And so now today, there's only about five new bird species found a year in about 30 or 40 mammals, which is still a lot. But compared to the backlog that we have of amphibians, we've doubled the known number of amphibians over the past 20 years.
And these collectors would catch reptiles and amphibians, stick them in a jar, and just send them to the taxonomist as bycatch, as opposed to going through them properly. So there's still people going through these historic specimens to make sure they are what they're supposed to be, and developing techniques to test that genetically as well.
I feel like that's an intern job, to go through old jars.
It's got to be fun, just staring at jars all day. It would be pretty disconcerting if you think you see a frog move while it's been set in form. But in terms of how many species that I'm expected to know about, thankfully, as I've already alluded to, there's a very small number of reptiles and amphibians in the UK, so I have quite a good knowledge of those guys, as well as some of the others from Western Europe and other areas of my research interest.
I always tend to prune myself when I go on a holiday to learn about the local reptiles and amphibians, so that if and when I come across them, I know what they are, where to find them. The other important thing, of course, is whether or not they're deadly. The last thing you want to do is go up to a venomous snake thinking it's friendly, and then finding out the hard way that it's not.
Right, because as Kim and I have already talked about, at least with us, when you see a snake, the first reaction is not to go away, it's to go say hello. Can I touch it? You definitely want to make sure.
Exactly, just go boop that snoot and say hello.
Okay, excellent, excellent. Oh, and I guess also another follow up question, Steve. Is your species of the grass snake, is it only found in the UK or is it elsewhere?
It's not known, it's found in Western Europe. It's found west of the Rhine. It was elevated from subspecies level back in 2017.
And yeah, it's caused a huge headache because the local media reported it as a new species being found in the UK. When really it's the same species, it's just got a shiny new name.
I feel I'm sure it's the same with both of you two. I know that even if it's not a new species, like you're saying, a lot of times things are changing with just taxonomic names. Like here in the United States, there was the big thing over like black rat snakes or like Ophidio and changing that whole family.
And I'm sure with insects, it's all the time too, splitting, splitting, splitting.
Yeah, splitting, lumping. The big thing most recently, at least with stuff that's adjacent to me, is that termites were found to be so similar that they moved them into the same group as cockroaches. Of the 4,500 roaches, about 1,000 or so of those are termites.
The more you know. Okay, Josh, do you have any special projects that you're currently working on that are related to your field?
Yeah, I'm working with some other breeders in the United States and worldwide to establish reliable captive breeding procedures for a few dozen mantis species.
Cool.
A number of these are in danger of habitat loss and other human-associated sorts of threats. And as they are becoming more and more popular in the pet trade, we're trying to reduce the amount taken from the wild and to really be able to do conservation through citizen science and captive care and make sure that even if their habitats are disappearing, that these are never going to go away from either people's private collections or zoos and other institutions. And along the way, we really increase the awareness of their importance too.
Yeah.
It's been really fun watching our community grow and being able to see where we started out with just a few hundred people who all knew each other to people saying, hey, I saw a mantis at my school for some science program. What is it like to take care of one of these? What do we need to do?
So you're doing like almost like care manuals and how to be so successful that they'll breed.
Yeah. There are quite a few of them that have never been studied in the wild. And so it takes a lot of learning about what that habitat is like, trying to replicate it.
And we're seeing new behaviors. We're seeing new social behaviors and pheromone associated behaviors. And even just their reactions to UV light versus incandescent light, a lot of stuff that's never really been noticed before, we get to be able to see in our own homes.
Man, don't even get me started on UV light. I was trying to learn as much as I could about UV light for reptile care last year.
Oh, man. Dude, that's a deep dive.
There's just nothing. And really, the UK is the leader in knowing about UV light. There's a vet there.
Fran is her first name.
Oh, yeah.
She's amazing, and she's leading the research. I can't believe how little is known about UV light with reptiles. Oh, no, I was going to say, speaking of reptiles, we have an expert here.
I was going to say that I think the reason why we're leading the research on UV light and reptiles is because we don't really get much sun. So it's beneficial to have some UV around the house just in case you need to get some vitamin D on a cold, wet summer's day.
So true. So right. And with that in mind, so Steve, do you have any...
Well, you've already alluded to your research, but can you tell us a little more about it?
So I'm working on another project as well as my research.
Oh, true.
Yes, double points. My research, I've just finished my third and final year of data collection for my research. So I've been, what's the word I'm looking for?
I've been taking an annual pilgrimage, as it were, to Eastern England every summer to go and visit my field site for five months of the year. Have some cover boards down, go around the field site twice a day if the weather is good, lift them up, catch with the snakes I can, take measurements of the body, the weight, the length, swab them if they have any clinical signs of disease. If they don't, I swab every fifth snake just to act as a negative control sort of thing.
And then, yeah, take pictures of them all. They all have unique belly patterns, which is great because you can tell them apart. It does mean that you need to do some image manipulation when you get back from the field to be able to match them up using like a pattern matching software, because not every snake is cooperative when it comes to having their photo taken.
So, yeah, I've managed to master it for most of the snakes. There's a few that are, yeah, a little bit temperamental and stress. They like to hiss at you and hoot up and pretend they're a cobra, despite the fact they're anything but it.
And yeah, so I'm now in the lab stage of getting all my work sort of out. Unfortunately, due to COVID, it's been delayed because of, you know, the world's been a bit crazy, and then if it all goes well, I'll be ready to submit my thesis in June and then defend it and then, you know, be a doctor if all goes to plan, but we'll see how it goes.
That's so exciting.
Yeah.
A lot of people said I seem pretty chill for a person that's, you know, up against it, but, you know, this is my, you know, usual demeanor is just, you know, pretty laid back and, you know, chill. So, yeah.
If you like reptiles, cold-blooded, yeah.
And, yeah, so my other project is related to amphibians. So before I started this PhD looking at snakes, I spent a lot of time studying frogs and newts. And so this project is looking at a non-native species of toad here in the UK that is native to the rest of Europe.
And they've been here for over a hundred years now, and they're called midwife toads because the males carry the eggs on their hind legs. They incubate them for up to six weeks. It's usually two to three, up to six weeks, depending on the weather.
And then the tadpoles develop in the eggs. And then when they're just about to hatch, the male seeks out a pond and deposits them, and then they hatch out and he goes away. The interesting thing about them is they're very small and cryptic, so they're about five centimeters in length maximum.
Whoa, that is really tiny.
And they make this really cool, but otherworldly beeping sound as they're mating call, which is one of the ways that people were alerted to being in their garden. The original population in Central England has spawned multiple others where people have had them in their gardens. They like the fact they've got them around, so they sound a bit exotic.
And when they move house, they either accidentally move them because they're hibernating in their plant pots, or they grab a couple and move them to the next garden. And so, you know, there's been all of these introductions around the country. And so what we're doing is we're swabbing these toads for the chytrid fungus, which is an infectious disease, which has been implemented in the decline of extinction of hundreds of frog species worldwide.
Oh, yeah. Just to make sure that, you know, they're not causing any negative effects for our native amphibians, but also taking DNA samples to see which populations are related to one another and how many separate introductions ever have been. Because what confounds us even more is that midwife toads were a popular pet in the 70s and the 80s.
And so it may be that some of these populations were someone's pet that either got, you know, either was released or escaped. And so that's something that we want to check for as well. Just to be on the safe side when it comes to the whole disease thing and negative impacts for our other species, because it's likely that the toads that have been here for over 100 years are probably all disease free.
Because midwife toads are, you know, extremely susceptible. So in the assemblages where we've been studying them, you know, there are multiple amphibian species, and they're the most susceptible ones to the chytrid fungus. We're using them as the barometer to see if any of the other amphibians may be infected, because if the midwife toads aren't, then the others probably won't be.
And also comparing the genetics to see where these toads originated from and which populations are related, if at all.
That is so interesting.
Yeah, yeah. And so you're really, I guess, then you're studying fungal diseases in both amphibians and reptiles, because of phideomycosis is a fungal disease?
It is, yes.
Okay, just wanted to make sure. Okay, now we're going to start getting into, so that was some background on both of you two. Now we're going to get into more of the serious question.
Serious with air quotes. Josh, let's just start off strong.
What is the superior invertebrate?
Invertebrate is so huge. Can we keep it to arthropods, you think?
You're right. Let's narrow it down to arthropods.
Because I don't want to have to throw a coral into the mix.
You're right.
But yeah, arthropods, for those of you unfamiliar with the word, an arthropod is anything with a jointed exoskeleton. So this means insects, spiders, crustaceans, centipedes, millipedes, all those kinds of friends. And just from a numbers game, insects are by far the best class.
They have been extremely successful at colonizing pretty much every land environment, up to the top of Mount Everest, to the ice peaks of Antarctica, and just everywhere in between. You get giant termite colonies that literally shape new habitats by building these air-conditioned earth mounds that other animals will shelter and live their entire lives in, to just stupid specific parasitic wasps, which parasitize other parasites that are living inside other bugs. And then there are two-foot-long walking sticks who are pretty much impossible to spot in nature and have been found once.
And we're like, yeah, I don't know if this is the biggest one or if there are bigger ones out there instead.
Wow, I learned yesterday about a spider that lives in the Himalayan mountains and is probably the highest living animal on earth.
Yeah, it's nuts. And it's a spider. It's like, so this spider clearly eats something else, which must be up there.
But yeah, they just do it all. And we really couldn't live without insects. But I am going to give an honorable mention to crustaceans.
Laura and Kim are aware of my strange fondness for crabs. But they have the ocean under lock. They dominate the ocean.
And they give a strong land presence in some habitats. And they're just so cute and charming and chunky. And I love them.
Isn't there like an ongoing joke that everything is going to turn into a crab at some point?
There is. There's an evolutionary trend called carcinization, which is it's a little hard to look at as just a coincidence. The crab body plan is very successful.
And so there's a lot of animals that we call crabs, which are not true crabs, like horseshoe crabs and hermit crabs. And then there are very crab like insects and sea spiders and other things that, like they just figure out being shaped like this is a good shape.
I look forward to becoming a crab.
Crab people, crab people.
Our editor Kim, who is now a crab.
Jeez. Okay, Steve, which is superior? Reptiles or amphibians and why?
Reptiles are superior. They evolved the amniotic egg and broke that tie with water that amphibians still have from their fish ancestry. In my mind, of the reptiles, the snakes are the most superior ones.
Not just because I'm studying them, but because they're crazy diverse. And the fact they don't have any limbs, yet they're still able to catch and consume prey. They can still climb trees.
They can dig underground. They can swim. They can do all those bits and pieces that any other species can do without having any limbs, which is just insane.
And of course, the current standpoint is just maybe just under or just over 4,000 snake species. There's quite a few out there. And of those, about 600 are venomous.
And yeah, venom is a very interesting adaptation to have. Obviously, some of those snakes like Inland Taipans and Black Mambas are infamous for having extremely deadly venom.
Right.
But there are others out there which is less potent. And at the moment, there's a lot of research looking at finding novel pharmaceutical drugs within the venoms of different snakes and other venomous animals as well. Because they are just a natural pharmacopoeia of antimicrobial drugs, have targeted cell killing peptides and proteins and everything else.
Of course. And in our modern age where our antibiotics are slowly becoming less and less effective, it makes perfect sense to conserve these venomous species, because the next cure for cancer or an antimicrobial drug could be sitting there waiting in their venom glands, waiting for us to find out and put to use.
Yeah, no, that's awesome. And there's a lot of research too on what even is a venomous snake, right? Isn't there a debate on whether certain species of garter snakes are venomous?
There is a lot of research. So back in the early 2000s, there was the erection of this group called Toxocophora, which encompasses all of the squamates. So, well, not all of the squamates, most of the squamates and a few other lineages of reptiles, which basically proposes that at one point they were all venomous.
And since that point, some of them have lost the adaptation of venom. And that technically even large snakes such as pythons and boids could be venomous because venom is just a super crazy form of saliva, essentially. The venom glands evolve from saliva glands, and those snakes, whilst they may not be producing any proteins to help kill their prey or destroy their cells or immobilize them, because they tend to go for quite large prey, their saliva is more of a lubricant to help them to just tackle those larger prey species or use their arms or are able to grasp a knife and a fork.
So yeah, there's the argument. And yeah, it's one of those things that is constantly changing. And sometimes it's hard to keep on top of, just like most fields of science.
It also tends to be fueled by people's egos and how much research they can command, how much funding they have and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, it's definitely interesting. And I think that as these techniques, the molecular techniques that we're using to look at the proteins and other bits and pieces within venoms become even more cheaper and really available, we're probably going to find out that technically, maybe some of the species that we thought were nonvenomous are venomous because we're able to detect those tiny traces of proteins in their saliva or whatnot, which at the moment, the technology just isn't sensitive enough to detect at the moment.
Right, right. Awesome. Okay, so insects, superior arthropod, and reptiles, superior to amphibians.
Okay, well, since we did talk a little bit about legs, Josh, is it better to have lots of legs or no legs at all?
This is such a great question. I think unless you're trying to do very specific things, like worm things, I would say legs. And personally, I think a lot of worms would probably benefit from legs of some sort too.
They just probably want to keep skipping leg day, don't want to bother evolving them.
Steve, do you have a rebuttal? Legs or no legs?
I'm going to say no legs. And again, it's the snakes that pin it down. But also, there are a number of species of lizards which are legless, that have lost the ability, well, just lost their legs altogether.
I was going to say, lost the ability to grow legs, but they just did it altogether. It's like they just left them on the side of the road and just slithered on down the path.
They really skipped leg day.
Oh yeah, maybe that's what happened. They just thought, no, I won't go today. I'll do it tomorrow, and I'll keep putting it off, and then they just don't ever go, and so their legs just actually can't get off.
Oh my gosh, that's the consequence of skipping leg day. You'll just lose your legs. You heard it first, listeners.
Do not skip leg day.
So yeah, there were lots of lizards, there were skinks and the anguards, the legless lizards that look like snakes, but they aren't. They've just converged on that legless form. And the easiest way to tell whether you're looking at a legless lizard or a true snake is to stare at it long enough that it blinks at you.
And if it blinks, it's a lizard, and if it doesn't, it's a snake. Obviously, if that's a potentially deadly snake species, then keep some distance from it. But don't give up on its face, because that probably won't end well.
Probably not. Kim, do you have an opinion? Legs or no legs?
I mean, my biased opinion is because I have legs that I enjoy them. But I also have four snakes in my living room that seem to be doing fine without.
Yeah, I'm not committing at all.
A true politician answer.
I'm practicing.
Perfect. Okay, let's go back. How about...
Okay. Steve, pick the most interesting creature in your specialty. Share it with us and give the three reasons why it's the coolest animal.
In my mind, the most interesting reptile is the Komodo dragon. You know, they're pretty large, they're pretty, you know, they are, you know, one of these species has undergone island gigantism as opposed to dwarfism, which seems to be the norm with bits and pieces. And so, for people that aren't familiar with those two concepts, when species tend to get marooned on islands, because there are less resources about, they tend to get smaller as a consequence, but also the opposite can be true as well, and they can get larger, which is just mental.
But with the little dragons, you know, they're over 3 meters long, they're venomous as well, just like a lot of snakes are. For a long time, saliva was thought to contain a lot of deadly bacteria, which then, you know, cause infection and kill their prey. But something that the bacterial infection doesn't do is lead to, you know, continuous bleeding, which was something that some scientists picked up on.
And then they thought, hang on a second, this looks like some sort of, you know, hemotoxic venom. So they went and, you know, captured some dragons, took some of their saliva, took it back to the lab and managed to extract some venom from it, which is pretty weird, and caught at the same time. I think the craziest thing about comedy dragons is the fact that they don't rely on the same sex chromosomes that we do.
They don't have XX and XY, but they have ZW and ZZ chromosome systems, which means that when females colonize New Islands, they can produce offspring pathogenically, but they're all male because of the quirk in their genetics. And then a few years down the line, once those males become sexually mature, which are clones of her, but, you know, males to the female, she can then breed with them and then, you know, start to, you know, create new individuals to come along and yeah, no, it's proper...
Tag on!
That's wild.
There needs to be like a reality TV show about Komodo's dragon life because that is messed up.
It is, yeah. I can mention it now, just a family of Komodo dragons and Jerry Springer.
Who's the father?
Man, I also just want to be a Komodo dragon scientist so that I can say I went out and caught dragons today. That's pretty cool too. And milk them for venom.
No big deal, no big deal. Uh, dang, that is an arguably amazing animal. Josh, can you top it?
What is the most interesting creature in your specialty?
So, I was in physical pain trying to choose this for a while. But what's really funny is that we both picked something that shows island gigantism.
Whoa, your head is so weird.
Yeah, what a coincidence. I ended up going with the robber crab, or the coconut crab. This is the largest terrestrial invertebrate.
It's basically a supersized hermit crab that outgrows all of its shells. And they can get a leg span of about three feet long. They have just insane levels of strength.
It's a nine pound animal, which can pinch with a force stronger than a mastiff's bite. About 750 pounds per square inch. So if you make a big one mad, you're losing a finger or more.
Just poke that crab and blast mistake you'll over make.
Yeah, they've been reported to also be able to carry up to 60 pounds just dragging it with them.
Of what?
Well, carcasses. And also pretty much everything else.
They are theorized to have eaten Amelia Earhart's body after she crashed.
Oh my gosh, that is so cool.
But they're really strikingly colorful. They come in a bright orange and bright blue form, two different forms. Just not sure why, but they're all over the place with colors.
They're pretty intelligent for crabs. Hermit crabs in general have been known to be able to plan for the future. They're able to assess their rivals and even remember the faces of other crustaceans they meet.
Yeah, and they're usually one of the most dominant organisms on these super remote islands.
I would think so, as a nine pound giant crab that carries around carcasses. I'm just picturing a scientist landing on an island and seeing this crab just casually looking over its shoulder with its creepy eye stalks carrying a dead body.
Yeah, that's a horror movie right there. But what I think is also extremely interesting about these guys is that not only do they live on all these remote islands where they're the biggest thing on land, but they get there because their babies are tiny floating plankton. And so when the females release all their eggs into the ocean, some of them will end up floating to a new island all the way across the ocean or even into another ocean and then coming on to land when they're ready and trying to grow up there.
Dang! They're both amazing! Kim, you got any opinions?
I, well... Can commotive dragons kill me? Very much so, yes.
Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whereas the coconut crab, I'll just lose a finger. Like, yeah.
But you'd have to allow it to kill you.
I'd have to make the foolish choice to be 2% less intelligent than the crab. Yeah.
I think either way, it would look amazing on a tombstone.
Death by commotive dragon, badass. Eaten after death by a robber crab, still cool.
Crab took my carcass.
It's a fun way to go.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Oh, man. Okay. Let's move on.
Here's another opinion piece. Josh, you get to go first this time. Which adaptation do you think is the mother of all adaptations?
At least regarding your animals.
Yeah. I'm going to go with something pretty specific to insects here. Besides naked mole rats, we forget about them for this time.
But I'm going to say eusociality, which is the extreme form of family structure in ants and termites and many bees and wasps, where there's one individual, the queen, that produces an enormous amount of eggs, which hatch out into siblings, who then become a lot more like the cells of an animal, and the colony is the whole animal. Yeah. They're all super successful.
They tend to be pretty major forces in their environments, just tilling amounts of soil, eating ridiculous numbers of other organisms and seeds, and they just kind of engineer their own areas. They're also really good at living around humans, where there are super colonies of ants that live in some cities. I think Tokyo has one, where the entire city has one colony of ants, basically, that spread around it.
And they even can divide up the different areas into multiple queens. They're related to each other.
The underground city, that should also be like a comic.
It would make a great graphic novel.
Yes, like a gritty one.
Imagine the ant Yakuza and some other ants are trying to get in on that territory. Anyway, they just behave so in sync, making bridges out of each other and teaming up to sacrifice themselves to take on giant enemies. Like the fact that all of these family members can basically become like a giant animal together.
I think it's just, it's insane.
Yeah.
And I don't even bother to study them much because everyone else wants to. Like I don't want to get in on all these wasp scientists. You can have that.
I'll stay with my mantises and roaches. But tell me about your stuff more because it's cool.
Yeah, definitely. I love watching ants just the way they do things. I remember as a kid getting takeout once, and I didn't want to eat half of what was in it.
So I was just throwing it to the ants and then waiting. And then there was different species of ants coming and fighting over it. I had started a whole war, but it was so interesting.
Hopefully I don't cause too much conflict.
You've imbalanced the resource yield of the environment.
They really wanted those bean sprouts. But I did not.
They now worship you years later. Oh, my God.
All right, Steve, what about you? What is the mother of all adaptations for reptiles or amphibians?
In my mind, it comes down to reptiles again, and it's the fact that they evolved a twin pair of adaptations. The first one is that they evolved a keratinized skin structure, which helps protect them from the environment and keep their water in. Amphibians are extremely prone to desiccation in warm environments, and they need to keep their skin moist most of the time so they can perform cutaneous gas exchange, which is where they literally brew for their skin.
So reptiles cut that tire from water, which allowed them to exploit a whole host of different ecological niches.
Look at the difference between amphibians and reptiles in the areas where they exist. Unfortunately, there's no amphibians that live in the ocean because they're just... Osmosis would take all their water out of them immediately, and they'd just shrivel up like a prune.
Whereas, frankly, there are turtles, there are sea snakes, saltwater crocodiles, those guys all can deal with the ocean, as can marine iguanas, of course, as well. So, yeah, that's one of the adaptations. But the second one is already one I've alluded to, which is the amniotic egg, and further cutting that tie with water and protecting your egg with a shell so they can be laid on land somewhere, buried in a nest or underground or somewhere else where the temperature is going to be relatively stable so that you can then go off and do something else or with crocodilians and king cobras, they build nests and sit there and guard them until the eggs hatch, which is pretty cool.
I'm pretty sure everyone's familiar with the really old sequences of Steve Irwin trying to disturb a crocodile that was nesting and getting chased away as soon as he got within a few meters of it. They are super good moms, and they are really angry when it comes to you disturbing their nest. As one would.
Of course, it makes perfect sense. But yeah, I think those two adaptations have really helped them spread globally and pretty much every continent apart, except for Antarctica, because you need to be proper hardy to eke out a living down there. Sea snakes are found all throughout the oceans.
Sea turtles are found all throughout the oceans. Lizards and snakes are on every continent, except Antarctica. It's weird that they're missing from some of the islands.
Iceland is easy to understand because it's relatively volcanic and isolated. But snakes are missing from places like Ireland and New Zealand.
I never thought about New Zealand. I didn't know that.
They have plenty of lizard species as well as tuatara as well. See, they have a few hundred species of skinks and geckos. But yeah, no snakes.
Yeah, I think it's one of those things that is evident in biogeography. Because they're so far away from anywhere else, there isn't really an easy colonization route from somewhere like Australia or one of the Polynesian islands where there are snakes to be able to colonize New Zealand effectively without being sucked into the Southern Ocean and being in that raft just spinning around Antarctica for eternity and then freezing to death.
We just need a really enterprising sea snake, one who's like, you know what? I've had it with the ocean. I am taking New Zealand.
Well, we do, but we need one that can tolerate some cooler temperatures. You know what? Just fill up this tropic stuff, guys.
It's great, but it's too warm. I can't deal with it, and I need somewhere where the temperature is a bit cooler and the humidity isn't crazy high.
That would be me if I were you.
New Zealand must have this many legs to enter.
Yeah, their border force is just like, no, guys, no. You haven't got enough legs. Get back on the plane and fly back where you came from.
Also, can we get an alligator mom shirt for Laura or crocodile mom?
Absolutely 100%. That's on you, Josh. Well, I was going to say it.
Oh, you're right.
OK, moving on from adaptations. Oh, I like this next question. Let's go with Steve.
What's the worst thing that can happen to you when you're studying species in your field? You can take this however you want.
This is an interesting one. Personally, with my study species, like many snake species and other reptiles, that they tend to produce a very foul-smelling musk when you handle them as an empty predatory behavior. It smells bad, it tastes bad.
Do you know from personal experience?
Oh, definitely. There have been times when snakes have been musking and helicoptered their town.
It wasn't pleasant, but it's got to the point now where I've caught so many grass snakes, I can no longer smell grass snake musk. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I'd go straight to the pub after a day in the field just to have a quick pint before going home, having a shower, cracking on with the rest of my day. And there were times when I'd go into the pub and everybody would turn around because they could obviously smell the musk on my clothes that I couldn't.
And I'd be like, oh yeah, I need to go home and shower first because I'm covered in grass snake grass. I think it's one of those things that if you're exposed to something for long enough, it just becomes normal to you. And to me, I don't know what's going on.
I just went into this village pub and got all these eyes staring back at me. Because there's me thinking they could be xenophobic or something, and then all of a sudden it dawns on me, I'm covered in yellow grass snake musk. That's exactly what it must be.
Went home, came back half an hour later, and everything was fine. So that's one of the risks. I think the other risk is that you can get carried away a bit too much.
I'm sure this is the same for Josh. Obviously, fieldwork has all of the risks. You have to try to minimize those as best you can.
But there are some times when I've been out and about doing things and trying to find a species, and I don't care what the weather is like outside. It could be hanging down with rain. If the temperature is right, I'm going to be out and try to find something.
And so you keep on going until you do, just to make it worth it, because quitting and not finding anything is worse than just finding one of whatever it is you're looking for. And so there have been times when I've been out in torrential rain from 9 o'clock in the evening to about 6 a.m. in the morning, trying to find toads, to no avail.
But I wasn't committed to give up and say there's none here. I needed to find at least one to make that journey worth it and to just be happy that I was out there. So yeah, potentially give yourself hyperthermia and whatever else in the process of doing that.
I can't imagine your poor parents.
This was when I was at university, so they were hundreds of miles away.
I can just imagine parents being like, here, catch your death cold out there. At least that's what they would say here.
Yeah, so yeah, you've got to have some level of self-restraint and know when to call it quits.
Josh, can you relate? What's the worst thing that can happen to you?
I tend not to tell my parents when I'm going on my insect expeditions, but I'll tell them after I get back. So there are very, very few arthropods which can kill people. Everyone is all hyped up about the tiny number of ones that can.
Yeah, exactly. I have cared for a few of the lethal species before, and it's not any harder than a safe one as long as you use common sense. So there's really not much risk of getting killed, even if you have a deadly scorpion, if you are smart about it, you're going to be okay.
I love how you're selling this. I'm just imagining parents out there being like, mmmm, but you're trying to be like, listen, Mom, caring for a deadly scorpion is no big deal.
I just have to be smarter than the scorpion.
The only problem is that for me anyway, it's boring because you can't interact with that animal. Like, I only keep safe stuff because I want to take it out, I want to show it to people, and if it can kill you, you can't really do that.
We can, but not for long.
Yeah, everyone will yell at you for making it so much worse for the people who keep safe stuff because you were irresponsible with a dangerous one. But probably greater than any personal health risk is the risk of introducing an invasive species if things escape or if you're a dork and let it go. This is personally overstated as well.
I have a big rant on bug law and how draconian it is that I could get into, but I won't. But the facts are that if something does become invasive, it can be a really bad tragedy for the local ecosystem. And since a lot of insects are good at surviving in a variety of environments and are very fertile, it does just take one person letting some stuff out into their backyard for a new invasive species to be all over the state in a few more years.
I had a terrible... I'm sure that I didn't, but at the Nature Center, we feed our reptiles super worms. And I found a beetle in the building, and I don't kill insects, so I just let them go outside.
And then later, I looked up, and I was like, oh my gosh, that was a darkling beetle, like one of the super worms. They're not native to here. What if I just...
And I had this horrible thought that I just introduced super worms to the ecosystem, but it was just one.
We do have some super similar-looking darkling beetles in the Alabaides genus that it could have been. But even if it was a super worm, they're introduced in a lot of places already. I'm sure.
But yeah, that's something that I have to battle because it is a legitimate risk in a lot of cases. If you live in Iowa where there's winter, nothing exotic is going to make it through that. But in Texas, I actually do have to make sure that my mantises, my roaches, my grasshoppers, everything is contained because I don't want it getting out and potentially spreading.
Do you have flappies on your door, like those little, like in a butterfly house?
I don't currently because I'm in an apartment, but when I get a house someday, I would love to be able to set up a chamber like that.
That would be really cool.
Yeah.
Josh, if you had to take one species with you on a spaceship leaving a dying earth, what would you take?
People are going to hate this answer. I would take some kind, I don't know which one yet, but some kind of roach.
Of course.
And yeah, here's the reasons. Number one, Wally. We saw how great it went for Wally with his roach buddy.
But they are really good survivors themselves. They can survive on low nutrient foods. They can survive on bacterial film.
Like they're great at living. Many of them produce their own antibiotics, which like Steve mentioned earlier with pharmacology and animals, this can have human use if we can figure out how to milk roaches for their antibiotics. Yeah.
And they're also really nutritious. They're super good for other animals to eat, and they can be prepared for humans too. And so we wouldn't like it at first, but they could really help us survive over the long run as livestock, medicine, companions, all sorts of stuff.
That's a legitimate answer for taking some things. Steve, what about you? What would you take from a dying earth?
I'd probably grab a giant tortoise of some description. Grub a young one, so they've still got plenty of years ahead of them, because I imagine that the space flight is going to be, you know, a long journey. And yeah, just to have, you know, a lifelong companion that's potentially going to outlive you whilst you're fleeing to another planet, just like the final countdown from Europe.
But yes, yeah, unfortunately, you're going to have to try to get them used to the zero gravity unless there's artificial gravity by that point. And trying to feed and water a giant tortoise is going to be a bit tricky in those conditions.
But, you know, can you just imagine a tortoise just like floating through your spacecraft?
But also like it would be really dangerous.
Just have this huge heavy animal just flying around, you know.
Oh, and they poop a lot too.
Yeah.
I never did do anything because it was easy. So, you know, I like a bit of a challenge, you know. No, that's perfect.
I love that, Josh, you can bring the practical insect that will give us nutrition and antibiotics, and Steve will make sure that we have the correct social companion.
Exactly.
A tortoise would be a great companion on a space flight because I feel like they have very non-judgmental faces, and you could have a long conversation with a tortoise before it got tired of you.
And I think that they do good with, well, I guess if they're a tropical species, but being cryogenically, if you needed to go into deep freeze for a while, reptiles are pretty used to that.
Exactly. They've got everything there you need to make your journey fun and exciting, and when you do come out of cryo-freeze, to have that to look forward to.
All right. Lightning round. Okay.
Josh. What's the best? These are all going to be questions for creatures in your specialty.
Josh, what's the best defense against predators?
Social wasps.
And why?
Ah, and why. They have great intimidation, so they usually can avoid a fight, but if they need to, they bite, they sting, and they recruit a hundred of their sisters to come and fight with them.
Oh, geez. Best defense against predators.
Well, yeah, I think the best thing is, with reptiles and amphibians, they have a wide range of toxins, either poisons or venoms that they use to deter predators. And yeah, just use them for those sort of methods. You know, lots of poison dark frogs are brightly colored to warn predators that, hey, I'm toxic, don't eat me.
And they have their respective mimics as well. But yeah, there are some snakes which, you know, don't have that warning calibration, but they're still crazy deadly anyway. So, you know, it's a bit of a mixed bank.
But yeah, chemical weapons are the way forward, it seems.
Ooh, I like, yeah, chemical weapons. I like that. Okay, Josh, what creature in your specialty has the best mating display or ritual?
The scorpion fly, where the male will catch prey or steal it from another carnivore, wrap it up in a ball of nutrient-packed saliva, and then give it to the female that he's trying to court.
Oh, that's sweet. This little nutrient ball of death. All right, Steve, what creature of yours has the best mating display or ritual?
I'd say, hopefully, one of the European mute species. They have a number of secondary sexual characteristics which help attract the ladies, and they go through a whole ritualized dance in order to try to entice the females to accept a spermatophore before they go off and fertilize their eggs and lay them in the plants. And yeah, the males like to...
They wear pheromones with their tails, they have crests and other adornments which show how sexy they are. Sort of like a peacock but in newt form.
Which seems way cuter for some reason.
Oh no, it definitely is. And yeah, because of that, they have these very elaborate displays that were so elaborate that we didn't crack what they meant or how they worked until the 70s. Despite the fact that people have been keeping these in captivity for hundreds of years at that point.
Although I feel like of course it was the 70s, because that's when dance got really big, right? Like disco and everything. They were like, I know what that newt's doing.
That's dancing.
Oh yeah, maybe someone was just playing some Bee Gees in the background. The dance was imperfect beat to the music.
Little newt broke it down. Okay, we'll go back to you Steve. What creature has the best camouflage of yours?
So my personal favorite for this is not chameleons, as most people would think, because they can't change color to match the background. Yes, I have a beef with that. To tell other chameleons their mood and that sort of stuff.
But there's a species of viper, the spider-tailed viper, which is camouflaged into rocks where it lives. At the end of its tail, it has what looks like a spider. It has some elongated scales that mimic spider legs.
And it wafts that around, and when a bird comes along, it just strikes out of nowhere, grabs the bird and eats its meal. And I remember a couple of years ago, in one of the recent David Atbrough series that's come out in the past couple of years, there is some footage of this in it. And I knew what was coming as soon as I saw the sequence.
My friend said, look at that cool spider, this bird comes down to grab it, and this snake head comes out of nowhere. If you know what you're looking for, you can see it, but it just comes out of nowhere, and everybody just jumps back in their seats.
And it is pretty metal. And I imagine that that's one of the reasons why we're always finding new species is because they're just so well hidden into the backgrounds that unless you're able to hone in on some of that behavior, you're never going to be able to find them in an environment.
I remember I did my internship in Costa Rica, and I twice almost ran into a venomous snake. Once I stepped over a fur deliance because I didn't see it. It was so still.
And then the second one was there was just eyelash vipers everywhere, and they were so camouflaged on the trees, I almost leaned against one because I just didn't see it. But yeah, they have incredible camouflage. And I remember our mimicry episode, Katie brought up the viper, the spider tail viper, and I had never even heard of it, looked up the video, and it is so cool.
It is. If you haven't seen it at home, guys, I recommend you look it up because it is, yeah, insane and metal.
It looks just like a spider.
It's 100% convincing.
Yeah. Josh, I know there are probably insane camouflage insects, which is the best one?
Well, I had a different answer, but after Steve brought up the spider tail viper, I'm going to change my answer to that sphinx moth caterpillar, which mimics a snake. Some of you may have seen pictures of this one around too, but they have these shiny black eye spots that they can expand. They're on their belly, and when they stretch their body and arch it backwards, those eye spots expand.
They tuck their legs into little slots on the underside of the thorax that makes them look like nostrils, and they wiggle back and forth and try to look like a defensive snake raising up its head.
Is it the front end or back end?
It's the front end. There are a few different species that have adapted to this, but the Sphinx moth version is, I think, the best one. So if the best camouflage for a reptile is going to be to look like an arthropod, then the best arthropod camouflage is going to be to look like a reptile.
That's awesome.
I like that logic.
Yes. Taking the best of both worlds. Okay, Josh, which creature of yours has the most innovative way to acquire food?
So web building spiders. Everybody knows that their webs have sticky glue on them, but it's only recently been discovered that the webs are also electrically charged. The way the spiders weave them together builds up static electricity.
And so the strands of silk will actually move electrostatically toward insects that fly nearby. You can see a little bug try to dodge through the web, and the strands of silk will snap toward it and catch it. So they can try their best, but if they get close, the web will move to get them.
Whoa. All right, Steve, most innovative way to find food.
Well, similar to Josh. Yeah, they're just going to say chameleons in their rocket tongue that they have. Obviously, everyone knows that they're weird little turret eyes.
But yeah, they have amazing 3D depth perception, and that tongue just shoots out of their mouth at the speed of light. Well, not literally, but close enough. And yeah, if you're an unsuspecting locust or catered or anything else in the area, you're going to be on the menu for lunch before you even realize it.
Tag on. Okay. Steve, which animal of yours has the coolest parenting hack?
Parenting hack? Well, there's a few. It's mostly vipers and reptiles that live in temperate areas.
And what they tend to do is, like us, they tend to give birth to live young.
Yes.
So they can be viviparous, but also oviviparous, where the eggs develop internally and then hatch out. And essentially, it's a way to protect the eggs from... If you're in a temperate area where the temperature fluctuates quite wildly, then leaving your eggs out in the open in the environment is risky because it may get too cold, too warm, and they may die.
But if you keep the eggs internally or the young internally, you can behaviourally modulate your temperature to suit their development. And then when they're ready, they can pop out and go do their own thing whenever they want to. So yeah, just the ability for them to do that is, I think, is that hack in a nutshell.
Yeah, because I bet most people do not think of reptiles as having more of a mammal trait like that. Exactly, yeah. Josh, coolest parenting hack for yours?
Also a mammal imitation here. The pill cockroach, where the mom is armored and curls up into a ball like a roly-poly, and her babies cling to her belly, and they plug their mouths into these little glands on her underside and drink milk basically out of that. And so she can just shuttle them around, and whenever she gets in danger, then she wraps up in a ball, and the predators don't even know that she's got babies tucked inside there too.
Dang, so you can milk a cockroach.
You actually can, yeah. It gives them every nutrient they need to be able to molt and grow their own hard shell later.
I wonder how many cockroaches it would take to milk, to make a glass, to be able to drink.
What would it taste like?
Josh, what is the rarest, most sought after creature that you have?
Oh, that I have?
Well, of your sort, I'll tell you.
I've got a friend with these. It's the Malaysian dragon mantis in the genus Toxodora. They are rare to find in the wild, even though they're about seven inches long.
They're tough to keep alive, and they're practically mythical to breed. I know just one guy who's managed to do it more than once, and he lives in Malaysia himself.
Steve, what about you? What's the rarest or most sought after animal in your specialty?
There's a number of species out there which probably only have a single individual left because of the huge number of friends that amphibians especially face. So in 2016, we lost Tuffy, the last rab's fringe limb tree frog.
Tuffy?
Yeah, he was given a name because he was the last one. And he was housed at Zura Lanta Gardens and passed away in September 2016. But I'd say one of the rarest is probably the St. Lucia racer.
There's only 13 snakes known to exist. So yeah, they are on the edge of extinction. And yeah, because of that, of course, rarity commands commodity.
And so I imagine that there's a number of people out there that want one in their collection to say, there's only 13 of these guys left, but I've got one of them, which to me is pointless because at least I have two so you can breed them.
Yeah. Steve, what's the best story or folklore that you have about one of your creatures?
There's a few stories, but I think one of my favorites is that back in ye olde times, thanks to Pliny the Elder and Aristotle, is that people used to believe that fire salamanders found throughout northwest Europe used to consume and eat fire. And the reason being is that... It is really cool.
The reason being is that back in ye olde days, people would go to the woodlands, cut down some forest to find some dead wood, take it back home, stick it in the fire to cook dinner, to heat the house, whatever else. And in the process, especially this time of year, they'd come across these logs with salamanders hibernating inside them, people wouldn't realize that the salamanders are there. So when they've put the log on the fire, it's warmed up, the salamander's going, ah, get out of here.
Seemingly walked out of the fire. And so it was also thought that fires used to generate salamanders as well, and all that sort of crazy stuff. But yeah, with the Greek philosophers being the people that they were, they were like, there's got to be some crazy metaphysical property behind this, as opposed to just coincidence.
So yeah, people used to think that fire salamanders actually ate fire or were generated by it.
Which would be adorable. Little tiny little dragons.
It would be great to start a fire and get a free salamander, you know?
By the way, yeah.
If you had pyromaniac, great, you'd have a load of salamanders.
Firewood sold at the gas station, free salamanders.
They don't even sell lighters anymore, you just have to buy a salamander. Or a new. All right, Josh, what's your favorite folklore story?
I'm just going to list A Bug's Life, the Pixar movie. It's so quality, it's pretty inaccurate. They have four legs and the main character is a male ant.
But I can forgive it because it's got great lessons and it's hilarious and I love it.
That's adorable. Okay, all right, guys, last question, most controversial one yet. Steve, which is better.
And why?
I'm going to say herbs. Wait, what? But just like Josh said, plants are just food for insects, inverts are just food for most herbs.
All right, Josh, rebuttal, why are inverts better than herbs?
Well, I think the question is misleading. Inverts are better than everything, not just herbs. There are a hundred of them for every niche.
They're the only non-human animals who can do the large-scale pollination and waste removal and stuff. And they look absolutely crazy, so they inspire all the artists and engineers and movie monsters that you could want.
All right, listeners, well, you heard it here. We've got the herpetologist versus the entomologist. Which is better?
I don't know. They both sound like they have amazing times. I want to go out with both of you in the field because I think it would be so fun.
That'd be a real treat.
All of us.
That's just the takeaway from this, is that we just need to go exploring with one another.
If you guys are ever in the UK, let me know and we'll...
That'd be awesome.
I'll book a flight now.
And we do have some UK listeners, so if anybody wants to hit you up, Steve, is there a way? How can people find more about you and your work?
You can go to my website, steveallain.co.uk, or find me on all of the socials at steveallain.co.uk. Hopefully, you guys can provide a link or at least some spelling for those guys, because my surname isn't the easiest for people to instinctively know how to spell off.
Believe me. My last name is Fox, but spelled like the British kind of way, so I have to spell it all the time. Okay, so if they want to come here to the United States and hang out in Texas with you, Josh, is there any way that they can find more information about you?
Yeah, so my Animal Encounter gig, where I do Zoom and in-person animal educational experiences, is a Facebook page called Ask the Animals, colon up close encounters. And then you can find me on Instagram at joshbyrne underscore ask the animals.
All right, which we will definitely put both of your stuff in our description, and then we'll put on our own socials and link to you guys. Because I know Josh, you also do art and things like that people can contact you about. But this was amazing!
This was everything I hoped. No conclusive answers. I just really wanted to see you guys duke it out, and I'm not disappointed.
I was like, I need to find two really big nerds. Coming from, with all respect, because Kim, I, and Katie are all giant nerds.
But I have three snakes in a gecko in my apartment as well, so I can't say anything too bad about reptiles. Oh, I know.
I was just going to say, yeah, I'm sure. I feel like there's so much crossover between you both anyway. Yeah, because I know, Josh, that you also like herbs.
So I just had to make you choose your love today.
We can just trash on fish together or something like that. Trash on fish!
That's amazing. So if there is any... What's the...
Oh, my gosh, I'm losing the word for it. Ichthyologists! If there's any Ichthyologists out there that want to defend themselves, contact For the Love of Nature, we can set up another specialist battle.
Yes, fish versus mammals.
Yes, yes. All right, everybody. Well, thanks so much for listening.
Check out all of our social stuff as usual at For the Love of Nature FTLON podcast. And we have more great episodes coming up. Again, thank you, Steve, and thank you, Josh, for joining us.
And we will talk to you listeners next week. Bye, everybody!