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The Science Pawdcast
The Science Pawdcast breaks down the latest science happening in the human world AND the pet world.
Each episode will also bring you a guest to enthral you with their area of knowledge.
You'll learn, be captivated, and laugh along with host Jason Zackowski.
Pets and Science, it's the pawfect mix.
You'll also get episodes of PetChat which are the live shows from social audio.
PetChat is a live community gathering updates about the animals in our life, but also the animals in the wonderful community that supports us!
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The Science Pawdcast
Season 5 Episode 23: Ancient Burials, Dog Diabetes, and Primate Studies with Dr. Erin Kane
Brace yourselves for a thrilling ride as we journey into the past, exploring the enigmatic Homo Nelidi, a bygone relative of humans with an unusual ritual of burying their dead. As we meander through the eerie Rising Star Cave System, the final resting place of these intriguing beings, we also exchange thoughts with Dr. Erin Kane, an eminent primatologist with intriguing insights and - get ready for this - a good old science joke to share!
From ancient ancestors to our contemporary primate cousins, we shift gears to a riveting discussion about everything from fossil preparation to field studies on tamarind monkeys in the Amazon rainforest. Our guest expert describes the thrill and gratification of studying these mesmerizing creatures in their natural habitat, shedding light on their unique biology and the implications of siblings sharing genetic material during development. Be prepared to be surprised by our discussion on the dominance and behavior of Diana monkeys, and the rippling impact of their presence on other species sharing their habitat.
Buckle up as we transport you to the unpredictable terrains of Indonesia, home to the magnificent orangutans. Feel the thrill of learning about their resilience, survival strategies, and distinctive social structures. Listen to the challenges and rewards of observing these captivating creatures in the wild, and the priceless moments that researchers encounter. We then transition to a serious discussion on advancements in lung cancer diagnosis, exploring current methods and the exciting new research that could revolutionize the way we diagnose this lethal disease. Lastly, we share personal anecdotes of connecting with nature in the city, birding escapades and pet antics. You won't want to miss this captivating journey through the fascinating world of science and nature!
Dr. Kane's Links:
@Diana_monkey twitter: https://twitter.com/Diana_monkey
website: https://erinelizkane.net/
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Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zekowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy.
Speaker 2:Out there Is the summer almost half over Not really, but it's getting close. I always look at the halfway point and I'm like, oh man, the summer is almost half over. But while we haven't done a ton of like vacation-y stuff, it's been a very, very rewarding July with Beaker's dog diving and all of the projects that Chris and I have been working on that we're really excited to launch throughout August and early September. So it allows us probably to take most of August off except for the podcast, of course and enjoy the summer All right. Well, what's on the show this week In science news? I got hooked on this Netflix show called the Cave of Bones and I did a deep dive into it and I'm going to tell you about the Cave of Bones. It's wild and in pet science we're going to look at dog diabetes. I know a lot of people who follow us on social media. Their dogs have diabetes and I know that they get diabetes, but it's not something that I've experienced with many of our pets, so I thought I would talk a little bit about it. Our guest and ask an expert is Dr Erin Kane, who studies primates, which is a great tie-in for the Cave of Bones. It's an amazing chat talking about what she's. She got to work with orangutan. What? Okay, the bad joke. This one's terrible. What do you call an ape who works in a call center? Uh, who rang a tang? All right, on with the show, because there's no time like science time.
Speaker 2:This week in science news. This science news article, this science news story is inspired by me not being able to sleep and finding something on Netflix to watch In. On Netflix they have like new releases or trending, and there's this thing about Cave of Bones, and I know Chris doesn't really enjoy these shows, but I love the true crime shows and I was like, ooh, maybe it's like something grisly. You know Cave of Bones. So it was about a team of researchers studying a long extinct relative of humans that buried their dead. This hominid species is called Homo Nelidi and, throughout the documentary and as well, it was actually big news in June and I missed it. There are these two.
Speaker 2:Well, there's this big underground cave cave system that is very difficult to get to and in one of the underground cave chambers the researchers found the graves of many Homo Nelidis. Now, if you're wondering what did the Homo Nelidi look like? Well, one of the things that I guess when they found these graves that a lot of researchers around the world didn't believe, was that their brain wasn't very big. There was about the size of an orange. They have the skulls. They have like intact skeletons of this creature that lived like 300,000 years ago in Southern Africa. If you're wondering what Homo Nelidi looked like, homo Nelidi stood about four foot eight to five foot two. They had hands very much like a human hand, maybe slightly elongated fingers. Their mouth, like their teeth, were very similar to ours, but they had a big brow and a very, very smushed nose, kind of like a gorilla. They had long arms and they probably swayed their arms when they walked.
Speaker 2:The cave system's called the Rising Star Cave System and I won't do the documentary justice, but now that I read the paper and having watched the show, it makes their conclusion and what they're proposing so very wild. So this cave system requires there's a big opening area and then there's something called the Superman's Crawl, which is a long tunnel that you can only get through by crawling. Then there's another big opening area and something called the Dragon's Back, and the Dragon's Back is this very difficult to climb, like jagged, massive hill, internal hill, like a hill inside the caves. Then there is something they called the Shoot, and the Shoot is a 12 meter drop that only the slimmest people, or with great difficulty if you're a little bit more wide, like me, due to muscle and maybe a little bit of fat you had to shimmy this, shimmy down the shoot and then it opened up into this third chamber. So when this was discovered and they looked down at the bottom of the shoot, that's where they found the remains of the First Neladia and the first idea was this was a dumping ground for the dead. That alone is very amazing.
Speaker 2:There's no evidence that other organisms beyond humans bury their dead. Baring their dead is like a very final way to say goodbye. Dogs and cats and other animals on earth of course mourn the loss of a family member or friend, but we don't really see a ritual. So this was a big deal, that these creatures, these Neladia, were dumping their dead members down the shoot as like a way to say goodbye. But after they sent some folks down the shoot to look in this big opening chamber, that's when they found the graves of many, many Neladia and they were clearly buried. This is wild, and that's what was so gripping was. This is like conclusive evidence that another species, not human, like it's one of our ancestors, had some kind of ritual about death.
Speaker 2:And they also found a tool in the hand of one of the skeletons, and that is another very puzzling find. Did they give the tool to the dead, like how we sometimes bury our dead with stuff? Will they think they would use it in the beyond, what they thought was the afterlife? Did they believe in an afterlife? Now, if all of this is blowing your mind a bit, the biggest part, the biggest thing, is how difficult it would be to get somebody who is dead down to this chamber. You wouldn't be able to do it yourself. You would probably. What they thought was it was a family or a close friend group would carry the dead through the caves Now that they're pitch black, so they would have to bring fire. There's no way they could navigate, like the shoot, safely and there's one spot where they had to jump across a chasm in the dragon's back. So this, it was wildly dangerous, so that Nalady chamber, where the dead were buried, had to have some kind of like enormous significance for their culture. And that's wild to say culture, that another organism had culture.
Speaker 2:Now, it's not in contention that the Nalady buried their dead, but what is in contention and is mentioned in the documentary and the study and I do have to say is there is some debate. If the markings that lead into the Nalady chamber were made by the Nalady, some researchers say that's way too early. Their brains were too small. It was probably made by some other organism that found the caves. You know, 100,000 years later, because you can't really tell when the markings were made. But to sum up this story and if you haven't seen the documentary, it is absolutely amazing. Another species was possibly thinking about life after death and a way to say goodbye to those that they loved, and that's science news for this week.
Speaker 2:This week in Pet Science we're going to look at dog diabetes, diabetes malitis In dogs. It's a relatively rare occurrence, but I guess, when you think about all the disorders that dogs could have, it's common among disorders, if that makes sense. The estimated prevalence of diabetes in dogs is about 0.3 to 0.4 percent. If you round a real quick recap about diabetes, it's a chronic metabolic disorder that affects your ability to control your blood sugar levels. There's type one diabetes that's when your immune system starts attacking your insulin producing cells. And then there's type two diabetes, where you start to become resistant to insulin, and that's usually linked to age, genetics and lifestyle factors. Most humans have diabetes type two. 90% of the cases in like five to 10% is type one diabetes. In 2019, about 463 million people were diagnosed with diabetes In dogs. Most diabetes is characterized by the loss of pancreatic islet cells. Now this leads to them not having enough insulin and then you start to get hyperglycemia. It's very serious and over time, it definitely can lead to the death of the dog, and the prevalence of diabetes malitis in dogs has been increasing. There's been almost an 80% increase since 2006. So one of the things that vets are looking at and researchers are looking at is like is there really an increase? Are we catching it better? Or diagnostic tools the better? Is it something we're feeding the dog? Or are we not giving the dogs enough exercise? Is it within genetic lines of dogs? So there's all of these questions about about diabetes.
Speaker 2:If you're wondering what are some factors that may be associated with DM, diabetes, malitis and dogs, genetics is the big one, age, obesity, and then there are some other ones that probably have some correlation, probably have some causation, what sex they are, what their neutering status was and if they have any other diseases. There's some diseases that actually go hand in hand with diabetes malitis. Most diagnosis of diabetes in dogs is when they're in their middle years to when they're older, typically over five years of age. There are some dogs that are very predispositioned to getting diabetes Samoids, miniature snauzers, yorkshire terriers while others are kind of not at risk at all. Those are German shepherds, golden retrievers and boxers. With treatment, dogs with diabetes can generally live about the same length of time that any other dog without diabetes would live. Most folks who have a dog with diabetes and you know in the comments I'd love to hear what you do if this is, of course, just from different vet sites.
Speaker 2:Most dogs with diabetes malitis require two insulin injections each day and their nutrition is kind of important to maintain their weight. If your dog's a little older and maybe one of those breeds that I mentioned, that may have a bit of an issue. Here are some things you could watch out for Increased thirst. Dogs with diabetes are probably going to be drinking more water. Due to their elevated blood glucose levels, dogs with diabetes will probably start urinating more from all that water that they're drinking. Some may get very, very hungry, called polyphagia. Despite eating more, some diabetic dogs may start to lose weight. You'd be like whoa, they're so hungry but they're losing weight and weight loss is another symptom. And then, as you know, as it gets a little bit more serious, they could become lethargic and that could be them starting to slip into a coma. Their breath may start to smell sweet. They have all of that sugar in their body and it's because of the presence of these chemicals called ketones. Over time, just like humans, eyesight may become a problem with dogs with diabetes. Of course, check with your vet. It's pretty easy for them to check your dog's blood and figure out if it's normal or abnormal for the blood glucose. So if you're wondering, or if you heard somebody say, hey, my dog has diabetes, and you're like, well, my grandpa has diabetes. That's weird. Here's a little bit more information for you in pet science.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, before we get to the interview section, here's a couple of ways you can help the science podcast out. Number one if you're on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating. Tell your friends and share it with people who love science and pets, like teachers. Number two think about signing up as a member of the Paw Pack. It allows you to connect with people who love our show and it's a way to keep the show free. Number three check out our merch store. We have the Bunsen stuffy 2.0. There's still some beaker stuffies left that they're adorable as well Warm, cuddly clothes and adorable drinkware. The link is in the show notes. Now on to the interview. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr Aaron Cain, scientific Program Manager, with me today. Aaron, how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Great. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:You're in Boston right now. You're calling in from Boston.
Speaker 3:Well, technically Cambridge, so right across the river.
Speaker 2:Have you lived in Boston for a while? Have you moved around due to education, work?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I grew up just up, I guess, up the state from Boston. I grew up in New Hampshire. I've lived in Boston for five years and before that I did graduate school in Ohio and I went to college in Missouri and I did some field work. So I've gotten to move around a whole bunch. But I'm back in New England now.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I introduced you as Dr Aaron Kane. What's your training in science?
Speaker 3:So I am a biological anthropologist by training. I got my undergraduate degree and my master's and my PhD all in anthropology, yeah. So anthropology is kind of a tricky field because it doesn't necessarily sound like a science. But there are a bunch of different ways to be an anthropologist and so my subdiscipline is biological anthropology, which sort of puts humans in a cross species perspective to understand the diversity and the evolution of modern humans by comparing them to our close kind of biological ancestor relatives and also looking across human evolution. So I'm a primatologist by training. I study monkeys.
Speaker 2:Okay, I can't wait to get into that with you, but before before we get there, when you were young, were you? Were you interested in things like ancient societies and cultures? Did you walk around with a whip and imagine, you know, you were in a tomb and you were like all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Indiana Jones was never who I imagined myself as. But when I was in like seventh grade my dad gave me Jane Goodall's book in the shadow of man to read and I read that and was like, oh okay, that's what I'm going to be when I grow up. So that's a book that she wrote about working in Tanzania, being one of the first people to study chimpanzees in the wild, sort of in their natural environment, and so that just kind of captured me and that was what I knew I was going to be when I grew up.
Speaker 2:After that point were you like, voraciously consuming national geographic stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty much. I think I read every book in the library in the like. You know, everything about evolution, everything about Charles Darwin, everything that was like tangentially related to monkeys or primates of any description. You know I think every like book report I did from then on was about primates, all the things.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's get into it. You, as you said, you study monkeys, so I think you can walk us through some of the things that you you have done or are doing, like maybe let's just look at what you have done already, yeah sounds good.
Speaker 3:So as an undergraduate student because I came in knowing that I really wanted to study primates I got to do a couple of really cool things. I had a work study job to help paper college and as part of that work study I was working in a professor's lab helping him clean and prepare fossils. So he was looking for these like early primates and other animals that were existing in the same environment as them, to try to understand the ecology, and so I was helping clean them and, you know, measure their teeth and things like that. And the only thing I got to do in college was I like knew that I wanted to work in Africa and I had studied French in high school and middle school and so I thought maybe if I studied Swahili I would be able to kind of travel around Africa. I spoke English, I spoke French. Swahili would sort of give me that central Africa, east Africa, you know, ability to move around. And so I studied Swahili all through college.
Speaker 2:Goodness.
Speaker 3:And it turned out that the professor I was working for had a grant to go do paleontology in Kenya, and he was like well, erin already knows more or less how to prepare fossils and she speaks Swahili, so if she comes I can have her do all of the logistics. I don't have to do anything but find fossils. And so he actually took me with him to Kenya, and so I got to wander around in the desert in Northwestern Kenya looking for a 26 million year old fossil material, and that was really, really cool.
Speaker 2:Okay, so how hard was it to learn Swahili?
Speaker 3:Swahili is actually a really sensible language. Compared to English, it makes a lot of sense grammatically. Things sort of follow rules in a way that English doesn't necessarily. They're really complicated, you mean like moose and moose.
Speaker 2:Like that doesn't happen in Swahili.
Speaker 3:So they have this thing called noun classes, which I think there are some like. I think maybe German has noun classes. They're sort of like genders, but basically there are five different ways that you can be a noun and then become a plural noun, and so once you memorize that, everything else sort of falls into place.
Speaker 2:Good deal. Did you find any fossils in Kenya?
Speaker 3:So I it turns out I'm not very good at finding fossils I found, I think, maybe a mouse or like a rodent jawbone, and that was about the most exciting thing that I found.
Speaker 2:But it was exciting to be there.
Speaker 3:It was, it was, but I decided that maybe paleontology was not going to be for me. Oh, that's a long term career.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we got back to the United States and you know I was telling this professor I don't think that I want to go. You know, study fossils forever. I think I really want to be studying living primates, with the first still on, and he happened to have a graduate student who was looking for a research assistant to help her with her dissertation research, and so I got to go spend six months with her in Peru studying population genetics of these little tiny monkeys called tamarinds, which live deep, deep in the Amazon, and they're pretty crazy because they actually habitually have twins, which is really unique among primates.
Speaker 3:And what's even crazier about them is not only do they always have twins, but the twins actually share a placenta, and so during development, while there is like blood and nutrients flowing through the placenta between the female and the fetus is in utero, they're also sharing stem cells, sometimes between the two twins, and so what can end up happening is you have bits of your siblings genetics that get pulled into your body during development, and so you can end up with like genes from your brother that make up part of your heart or that make up your egg cells, and so you end up with kind of weird potential implications for being a population, right? If you, you aren't necessarily only comprised of your own genes, you also have kind of the genetic makeup of your siblings with you.
Speaker 2:So you're not like, not just from the two parents, mom, dad, you have a hodgepodge from anybody else that was hanging out with you in utero.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:My goodness, how complicated would that be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was, it's so. So humans can occasionally have this happen. Cows can have this happen. It's called chimerism after the like. You know the myth about chimerism that are like amalgamations of different animals, yeah, so yeah, I spent six months chomping around the Amazon with these teeny, tiny monkeys and decided that was pretty cool and it was indeed what I wanted to do. So I got to go to grad school where I was working primarily in West Africa, studying Diana monkeys, which is a group of monkeys that live in a really isolated part of the world, only in Kota Voar and Liberia and Ghana and Sierra Leone, and so I was trying to understand how changes in their environment influence and a feeding ecology and also the health and reproductive hormones and sort of energy balance of females in these groups.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, from one jungle to another, entirely different ecosystem.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah, it's still a rainforest, but it's extremely different than the Amazon. The rivers aren't quite as dramatic and imposing and there are elephants and things which you don't get in the Amazon All sorts of excitement, Okay.
Speaker 2:I have to ask a question because I've been to Costa Rica, yes, so how bad were the bugs?
Speaker 3:Oh man.
Speaker 2:That's like the common. They weren't terrible in Costa Rica, but I've heard from many a researcher that have gone to the Amazon. They're like, oh boy, watch out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the really nasty bugs. In the Amazon you get lots of army ants that can pack. They are not pleasant when they attack, but the really bad ones are bullet ants.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:So I managed to avoid bullet ants the whole time that I was in Peru, which I was very proud of. But in Cote d'Ivoire I did get swarmed by army ants a couple of times, and then I also had three different bot flies. No, no way.
Speaker 2:Erin. Yeah, I literally two weeks ago we were talking in my class. I teach, you know, I teach high school parasitism. And brought up, the bot fly. And these are kids like from you know, middle of Alberta, Canada. They just could not wrap their heads around.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely not my favorite of the parasites. That was really unpleasant.
Speaker 2:How did you did the? Okay? I've never talked to somebody who has had a bot fly. And that's not what this conversation is about, but this is just like gross curiosity. How did you know you had a bot fly in you?
Speaker 3:So the bot flies that I had ended up on both of my elbows and one in my armpit and I thought, like on my elbow it kind of felt, you know, like when you whack your funny bone and you feel the tingling from your nerves.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so the there's not a whole lot of flesh on your elbow, and so the bot fly larva was actually laid close enough to my nerve on my elbow that it was like kind of constantly pinging the elbow nerve, that older nerve. And then I realized it looked like I had a pimple on my elbow but there was a hole in the middle of the pimple and that's like where the butterfly, you know, keeps a hole open so that it can breathe. And so pretty soon I realized that was what it was.
Speaker 2:But the research must be done right.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, the monkeys make it all worth it.
Speaker 2:So from that, from your time, the second time in Africa, what did you, what did that study find? I'm curious. What did you? Did you answer any questions or did you come up with more mysteries?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think a combination thereof, so I was really interested in understanding. So so the cool thing about Diana monkeys in the forest where I was working is that it's actually really really rich. There are eight different primate species all in the same forest, including four really closely related monkeys, and they, the monkeys, will all travel around in the forest together. They stay in, you know, individual groups, but with multiple species in a group, and we think you know there's been some really cool research done that shows they use each other for predation avoidance, and so Diana monkeys are really good at picking up on eagle or on eagles, and so whenever they see an eagle, they vocalize and then all of the other monkey species will react and you know, if there's an eagle they'll all go into the lower part of the canopy, so the eagle can't get them.
Speaker 2:They're like the tell tales.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and so it's really great for all of the other monkeys, but because they're all really closely related and then they're all doing pretty similar things ecologically they're all trying to eat as much ripe fruit as possible it seems like it should impose a cost on the other monkeys and on Diana monkeys when they're in these big groups with lots of individuals, and so what I wanted to understand is whether being in these groups at different times of the year, when there's more or less food available, is costly for the monkeys, and the way that I was measuring if it was costly or not was by looking at fecal glucocorticoids, which is basically the metabolites of cortisol, the stress hormone that comes out and is measurable in monkey poop. So what I was, what I basically determined, though, is that the Diana monkeys are never particularly stressed, even at times when there's not a lot of food available. Relative to other times of the year, they seem like they're doing OK. They never have really elevated cortisol levels, and, upon reflection, I think that it's probably because they are the biggest of these monkeys. They sort of are the ones that control movement and so like.
Speaker 3:When the Diana monkeys decide to move, the whole group moves. It's not like a different monkey species will will make that determination the Diana monkeys follow, and so I think that the Diana monkeys are actually getting kind of first dibs on whatever is in the environment, and so they're able to eat a pretty high quality diet. Other people who've looked at the other monkeys that they regularly are in association with have shown that, like when the Campbell's monkeys are with Diana monkeys, they eat a lot less fruit, and when they're on their own they eat a lot more fruit. And so for these other monkeys it's costly to spend time with Diana monkeys, but Diana monkeys seem like they're they're dominant, they're always on top, they're always OK, and so it was a little bit. You know, I was hoping to find something really dramatic in the cortisol, but it seems like there's really nothing super dramatic happening to the monkeys. They're always doing all right.
Speaker 2:So it's time to move in. The Dianas monkeys move first, like is it? The early bird gets the worm as they move. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they sort of. They can basically go anywhere in the tree canopy where they would like to. They're able to. You know, if they start walking, the other monkeys will get out of their way. A lot of the times, you know, there might not be like a fight, but if there's like a Campbell's monkey sitting in in a patch of fruit and a Diana monkey comes up, it's more often than not the Campbell's monkey that will leave and the Diana monkey will sit and eat whatever fruit is there.
Speaker 2:Are they the biggest one, like what are? Do they just like train in secrets, like they know? Why are they just way bigger, or yeah?
Speaker 3:of the four. They're not hugely bigger comparatively, but they're definitely bigger than the other closely related monkeys and they also have really big canines comparatively.
Speaker 4:They're bitey yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think that they're just. They're also in bigger groups than the other monkeys, and so it seems like they're just kind of able to control things.
Speaker 2:OK, where? Where are you when this is happening? Are you watching into this through a webcam? Are you like dressed up as a bush in the middle of all of this?
Speaker 3:Usually what happens is I am on the ground underneath them while all this drama is playing out in the trees when I work in Cote d'Ivoire, we. So there is a lot of hunting pressure because monkeys are a solid protein source if you don't have access to protein. So there's a lot of hunting in parts of the National Park, and so we don't want the monkeys to get used to any random human, because that would make them pretty vulnerable. So what we do is we always wear the same kinds of clothes we always wear there's like a sky blue shirt that everybody wears when they're out with the monkeys, and they're basically used to having us around. So at this point in time they ignore us. Sometimes the babies aren't quite used to it and so they'll like stare at you, but in general they'll totally ignore you. And so the Diana monkeys are usually up maybe 15 to 20 feet in the trees. They'll go up higher if the trees are taller and is freed up there, but you're usually standing below them with binoculars watching what's going on.
Speaker 2:What fruit is it? What is this Like? Is it? What kind of fruit?
Speaker 3:So their absolute favorite fruit is called Sacaglottis gabonensis, which is it's sort of like like a peach in its consistency.
Speaker 2:So like a human could eat this thing, or is it just for them?
Speaker 3:I think that local communities do eat this fruit. Usually I only find them on the ground with like bites from monkeys taken out of them, so I've never actually tried it, but I think it would probably be pretty good. I think it's just a sweet stone fruit. The Diana monkeys eat all the flesh off of it and then they leave the pits to fall on the ground.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay, do you do they ever? Okay, so they ignore you. But do you ever get weirded out or like scared? They could like come down and have monkey business with you. Like, how big are they relative to a human? Like, are they up to your knees, are they half your size?
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're probably about up to their, up to your knees. They're about the size of a very well fed cat. Oh, they're just little things Okay.
Speaker 3:They're not big so but they're in the same forest with there are some larger monkeys, there are Manga bees, which are probably more like I don't know, a small black lab or something like that. They're pretty substantial. And then there are also chimpanzees in the forest, and you know, I try to avoid the chimps, both because you don't want to transmit disease between human populations and the chimpanzees in particular are really susceptible to things like colds and respiratory infections but also because they can be aggressive and they don't habituate in the same way that the monkeys that we study do, and so it's just best not to startle them. But yeah, the monkeys are pretty low key and I think you'd have to try pretty hard to get a Diana monkey to do serious damage.
Speaker 2:Wow, I'm that's so cool. I imagine you do. You take like tons of photos and videos.
Speaker 3:So many pictures they're also. They are, I think personally, and I think other people would agree they're just the most beautiful monkeys. They're like they've got black backs and then they have a big like a white kind of arc that goes down one of their legs and they have bright, red and burgundy butts and they have this long, luxurious tail. They're just, they're. They're very, very beautiful. And so, yeah, hard drives full of pictures of them.
Speaker 2:You have as many monkey pictures as I have of Bunsen and beaker, probably.
Speaker 3:Probably.
Speaker 2:So, doc, was this the the last big hurrah with monkeys, or have you still been working on stuff since this point with so?
Speaker 3:I got to do a postdoc after I finished grad school, before I started doing the scientific program management I'm doing now, and so that was working with orangutans in no way. Yep.
Speaker 2:I love. They're my favorite ones.
Speaker 1:Oh cool.
Speaker 2:What did you do with them?
Speaker 3:So it was sort of a similar kind of question that I was interested in understanding to thinking about the Diana monkeys. So orangutans live in a really unpredictable environment. In Indonesia. I was working with Cheryl Knot, who's been at this particular field site on the island of Borneo since the early 90s and so she's got this long term study of these habituated orangutans and basically what they figured out over this long research time is that the environment is not predictable from year to year. It's not like forests for use to in North America or even most other tropical rainforests, where there's like an annual fruiting pattern. You know, every October we know there's going to be apples or something. Instead, all of the trees what's called mast produce, and so a whole bunch of trees produce fruit for like a month and then maybe for 17 months none of those trees will produce any fruit.
Speaker 3:And then all of the trees produce fruit, and then maybe for three years there won't be any more fruit. Oh no, and so what do they do? Yeah, that's kind of the big question is how do they survive these periods of time when there isn't any food available or when there isn't delicious fruit available, and so what it seems like they do is they eat bark and they eat pith, and they eat termites and leaves, but they eat things that are really hard to digest, that take a lot of effort and a lot of energy and a lot of skill to be able to access and eat, and then you have to be able to physically digest them. So the question that we are trying to understand is how do baby orangutans manage this really challenging environment? If you, you know you want to nurse, but maybe your mother isn't taking enough calories to be able to support lactation, you're not big enough to be able to digest bark and get any calories out of it, what do orangutans do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do they do?
Speaker 3:So it turns out.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I have just, I have no idea.
Speaker 3:No, no, it's a great question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, like I'd be, I'd be just totally screwed if I decided to go have a diet of lignin or whatever bark is made of where they live.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly Right, it's stuff that it just like they have really long gut passage times because it just has to kind of sit in their gut and ferment and just like hang out to be able to get any sort of nutrients out of it. Yeah, but it turns out. So this is also this is my like exciting fact that always blows people's minds. So orangutans have a really unique social structure. They're totally solitary. So individual adult females move around the forest by themselves, usually with their dependent offspring, and adult males move around the forest by themselves and maybe they'll intersect, like once every couple of days, but they don't travel together, they don't feed together, they don't nest together. So it's just a mother and her baby moving around the forest and started this really elusive food, and orangutans actually stay with their mother and will even continue nursing for up to eight years. Wow, and so you can imagine, in an environment that's pretty marginal, being able to support your baby nursing for eight years is a huge energetic investment. Yeah, and so what it looks like they've figured out how to do is, when there's a lot of food available, fruit available, they gorge themselves. They just like stuff as many fruit related calories into their system as they possibly can.
Speaker 3:My favorite picture I took of an orangutan was a female that we call Valima.
Speaker 3:She has, I think, four fruit in her mouth.
Speaker 3:She's holding two in each foot, and then she's got another fruit in her hand and they just sit and will Stuff their faces for hours until they deplete a tree, these big fat stores.
Speaker 3:And then, during the lean times, you know you have to be energetically, so you have to have enough energy to support a pregnancy, to get pregnant right, and so the females have to have a kind of a good enough body condition to allow them to get pregnant.
Speaker 3:And Then the babies are able to basically buffer themselves when there isn't a lot of food, by living off of their mothers, you know, by by nursing for such a long period of time, and they start to incorporate other foods and they start to learn how to you know how do you go about eating bark and how do you figure out which leaves actually have any nutritional value, and so they have this like Eight-year period of time when they're able to learn about this complicated Environment that they're in and figure out how you buffer or how you you go about eating these complicated foods, and when they're not able to do it well enough. They can fall back on their moms and nurse and use that as a buffer. So we think that that is how orangutans have been able to, you know, develop into being such a gigantic, large animal with a slow, slow life In this really complicated environment.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cuz they're not small. Orangutans are big.
Speaker 3:They are. The adult males are like Probably 400 to 500 pounds. Some of them are too big to travel through the trees. They have to come down to the ground to move between trees if the canopy is too tall.
Speaker 2:Wow. So when you were studying them, was it the same deal you wore? You're like, hey, I'm a researcher outfit and then stayed away, or like yeah, pretty much, and the orangutans are.
Speaker 3:Because they're solitary it's a lot harder to find them than it is to find monkeys. If you think about a group of monkeys, there's like constant vocalization, individuals jumping between trees and stuff. Like it's pretty easy to find, but if you just start looking for one orangutan in an entire rainforest, it's like it sounds really silly but they're really hard to find. The number of times I was like, ah ha, I've got an orangutan, I swear. And then I, you know, I finally find it and it's actually a squirrel that was, you know, wrestling the branches. So depressing my goodness.
Speaker 3:But basically so we the the project that I work for employs a huge group of really well-trained, really excellent Research assistants who basically their job is to be out with the orangutans all day, and they are really good at finding them. They're really good at sticking with them for the entire day. So usually we get out to their sleeping site before they wake up. So usually we would leave the camp around 3 30 in the morning and get to their nest around 4 30 and then they wake up with the sunrise and then you stay with them for the whole day Until they build their nest and fall asleep at night and then you get to walk back to camp in the dark.
Speaker 2:That is dedication.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's the guys that we work in, the women. The Indonesian researchers that we work with are amazing. They do it even so, like during Ramadan, when people are fasting, you know, people aren't eating or drinking at during the day, they're still out with the orangutans all day. It's just, it's incredible. They're extremely dedicated, and so what that means for researchers like me in the United States is that when I was able to go out to the the forest, it was amazing. But even when I wasn't able to go out to the forest, like, for example, during COVID, we had this amazing Indonesian research team that was still out there collecting all of this data.
Speaker 2:Oh sweet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It was really really excellent.
Speaker 2:So I'm just, I'm just thinking like if they're solitary and you're looking for one, has it? Have you like turned a corner and you're like, oh no, it's an orangutan. You know like, because they're kind of like ninja, silent and not really making a bunch of sound.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I I'm kind of, I think, the first orangutan that I ever saw in the wild. I was not expecting her to appear above me when she did and that was really cool, but For the most part they're so good at hiding that like especially. If so, so Because they're hard to find and they're solitary. We don't always see the same individual Really frequently, so maybe it'll be like six months between when I followed, you know, bb the orangutan, for example, and so between times she might have sort of forgotten about the fact that there are, like humans, that aren't Terrible to have follow you around, and so they can be a little bit nervous for a little while, and so you often are. If you surprise them, you often either will never know that they were there, because they'll see you and run in the opposite direction very quietly right or yeah, you'll just, you'll notice, because they do this.
Speaker 3:Um, they're sort of alarm call that they make. It's called a kiss squeak, which sounds basically I'm doing it by like kissing the palm of my hand, but it sounds like this. So you hear that out in the forest and you're like, oh, you know, stressed out an orangutan somewhere, and that's how you're able to find them.
Speaker 2:Usually that's so wild, is it? Do you miss it? Like you, you're living in civilization right now. I've heard that from researchers I've interviewed before that they've been to these, these wonderful exotic places. Does part of you miss it or are you okay, no having?
Speaker 3:Really, I really miss it a lot. Fieldwork is by far my favorite part of my research. Writing papers is fine, doing data analysis, doing lab work is fine, but like spending the full day out in the forest following around in orangutan like it really doesn't get that much better. Okay, so monkeys, apes, papers data analysis.
Speaker 2:You know are working on cancer, what. What's going on there? That's so interesting. Switch. Yeah, it's been a big transition.
Speaker 3:So when I envisioned myself growing up to be Jane Goodall. I envisioned myself as a faculty member at a university, and I did not understand the kind of the ways that academia is structured in North America and Europe, and so what that means is there are very few permanent jobs and there's a lot of competition for all of those permanent jobs, and so when I finished at my PhD, I decided that I would have five years to try to get an academic job and be a professor, and if I didn't get a job by the end of the semester, I would have to go to a university job by the end of those five years. Like there were things that I could do with my life and my background that were more interesting than just trying to Kind of string together temporary positions, and it would also let me sort of settle and build a life in the United States and yeah. So what that meant is I had to think of other ways to use my scientific background, and one of the things that I learned as a postdoctoral researcher having a little bit more of a Kind of a big picture view of the science that I was working on and looking at jobs for scientists outside of academia is that Science does not just happen because you have one brilliant professor who has big ideas.
Speaker 3:There are huge teams that come together to make scientific progress happen, and it doesn't always mean, you know, scientific progress doesn't only happen because you have people who are Sitting in a lab doing analyses or who are out in the forest doing analyses. You need people who are keeping track of details and keeping kind of the the big picture moving forward, and so what I ended up being able to do is I'm now a scientific program manager for a lab that's working on understanding how lung cancer develops and how you can Identify, kind of before it develops, what is going to turn into cancer and what you can just leave alone. So it's really different Than being out in the forest with orangutans, but it turns out Science is is really cool, kind of no matter what the context, um, and the, the research that I'm helping with now is having really significant impacts, I think, for for patients who have lung cancer or who might develop lung cancer in the future.
Speaker 2:So like, look at the thing is, it sells probably. And you're like, oh, this will, this is bad uh. Or yeah, it's like a red flag on on the diagnosis? I'm not sure. I yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, basically so.
Speaker 3:So what happens is if you are somebody who is in a population that might end up with lung cancer so you are somebody who smoked, or you, you know, worked in a coal mine or you had um, you know there are a bunch of other sort of exposures that would make you more susceptible to having lung cancer Then by the time you get into your 50s or so, you're probably getting um Excuse me, you're probably getting either a bronchoscopy, which is like a, an image of your um, they like send a microscope basically down your um, your airways, or you're getting a CT scan and they can take biopsies during bronchoscopies, um, and pull out cells if there are parts of your airway that look like things might be Moving towards cancer they're lesions that look strange and then on CT scans you see these nodules or these masses, and it turns out that, of especially looking at the nodules, only about a quarter of the nodules that people identify actually go on to become lung cancer, um, and about three quarters of them just sort of Stay the same or they might even regress and stop showing up.
Speaker 3:They might get smaller um, and so basically, what you can do at this point in time if you have a nodule that shows up on your CT scan, is you just wait and do it again next year and see if it looks bigger or smaller? And if it looks bigger, then maybe it's big enough that you should have surgery and remove it, and if it doesn't look bigger, then you watch and wait and see what happens next year? Um, and so the the scientists that I work for are working on ways to um diagnose the particular lesions or nodules that are going to develop into lung cancer Without having to wait and see what happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be stressful. And then it's super invasive if you didn't need it to be removed Exactly. Hmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and especially in the United States, healthcare is so expensive and you know, figuring out ways to lessen the burden for patients and and kind of direct healthcare resources to places where they're gonna do the most good is really important.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a fascinating turn from what you were working on. Science is science and science is cool, so I agree with you there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, they're doing. They're doing just the most amazing things. Like did you know? So you can take a biopsy from inside somebody's lung and then you can Basically take the biopsy, which maybe is like five centimeters Well, that's probably big Maybe it's like five millimeters Square, and then you can individually sequence every single cell and you can pull out the DNA and the RNA of every Individual cell in that biopsy and you can look at the kinds of cells that are there and you can look at the mutations across those cells and see how it all interacts with each other. And then you can use that. And it's just like it blows my mind when I think too hard about it, cuz the fact that you can sequence, you can see what proteins individual cells in your lungs were making, and it just, yeah, I it's hard to like fathom that that's what we're able to do, but it's really cool.
Speaker 2:Um, the other standard question we ask is for our guests to share a pet story. Uh, Aaron, do you have a pet story you could share with us?
Speaker 3:Sure, so I have um the best cat in the entire world. Her name is triceratops.
Speaker 2:Look at this.
Speaker 3:And she currently lives with my parents.
Speaker 3:They have temporary custody because, um, my, my lease doesn't allow pets right now, um, but I inadvertently taught her how to play fetch when she was a very small kitten, um, because so she had this like dingley octopus toy that she really loved.
Speaker 3:And, um, when she was a very small kitten and she was like still uncertain about, um, you know, existence as a cat in somebody's home, um, she would try to take the octopus and, like run and hide, and as she would run past me, I would snag it from her and then throw it into the other room. And so she would go and catch it and then try to run Past me to hide, and I would take it from her and throw it. And so we eventually got used to playing fetch. But then she discovered that bottle caps are really, really good for playing fetch with, and you can hear wherever they land. Um, and so now, whenever I go back to my parents house, triceratops will wake me up in the middle of the night dropping bottle caps on my pillow. Um, for me to wake up and like roll over on top of and realize there's a bottle cap that she wants me to throw.
Speaker 2:Sweet.
Speaker 3:She's a good cat.
Speaker 2:Was it miss like, how did it just happen organically that Triceratops learned fetch, or is it something that you rewarded? And? And I'm just curious because, like some, yeah, I think it was just organic.
Speaker 3:It was just the process of like she kept trying to get past me and I would snag the thing and throw it that she Figured out that maybe this was a game. I'm not entirely sure. But yeah, I wish that I had like purposely trained her, um, because I I feel like I would be very proud of myself if I was able to train a cat. But I think she was self taught there you go.
Speaker 2:Well, we've got ginger, our cat, to sit and pose. Oh, I know so. People are always so impressed by all of our videos and photos of our cat. But it's like super easy, you just have a treat, and. But they only work for a very short period of time, unlike yes unlike Bunsen and beaker, who will work until you, they eat all of the treats. Ginger has a five minute Union plan.
Speaker 3:You know once, that's that's a cat do seem to be more unionized than dogs. Sometimes Is she motivated by a particular kind of food.
Speaker 2:Uh no, just little cat treats yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anything really works.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's a great pet story. Thank you for sharing.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:So the the last question we have, the last question of the science podcast, for a guess, is To get to know them a little bit beyond their, their research. And we, like I, like to ask guests about their hobbies or their, their, their causes that are near to deer into them. And you have a couple hobbies, and one is birding and the other is weightlifting. Um, what's going on there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, now that I am not spending my days following monkeys around, I end up really missing taking my binoculars out and seeing what I can find in the trees Right, um, and so I've gotten really into birding and it turns out that even in this city there's a lot of cool birds that you can run into. So I've been having a lot of fun seeing who I can spot in Boston. Um and um, just like really love figuring out the kind of the urban ecology Of the place where I'm living. It's nice to still be connected to to nature, even if it's not in the same way.
Speaker 2:Are you good at looking at a bird and knowing what it is? Because when I look, I'm not. We have so many birds because we live in the middle of the country, like we live in the country, but I just haven't taken the time to know what they are. I'm just like, oh, it's, it's the bird. Oh it's, it's a yellow bird. Well, I know there's there type of finch I think. Um, oh, it's a raw. I know what a robin is. I guess I know what some birds are. But if it's like some brown bird, I'm like, oh, it's brown birds.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's definitely a lot of just like well, that is a bird, um, but um. So there's. The carnell ornithology lab has a really awesome app called merlin, oh.
Speaker 2:I've heard of this. You're not going to tell me about this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so it like you can basically say like I saw a blue bird about the size of a sparrow that was waiting and this is my location, and it will be like it was probably one of these four birds, um, and so Like I look like I know a lot more about birds because I usually have like a pretty reasonable idea after going through merlin.
Speaker 2:It's a tech system or does it analyze a photo?
Speaker 3:It can. It can analyze a photo. Um, you can also do it by, like they have kind of a q and a that you can go through.
Speaker 2:Oh choose your own adventure.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And the other thing that they've just started is, um, they have an algorithm that I think recognizes vocalizations, and so you can just be like out in the middle of a park or something and turn on your, your audio and it will ping every time that here's a bird that it recognizes and tell you like that was a blue day, that was a northern perula, that was a black and white warbler, um, and so it's. Yeah, it's really fun to kind of Explore the world in that way.
Speaker 2:That's like shazam for birds.
Speaker 3:Exactly no, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then with weightlifting. Is that just part of your fitness regime or are you secretly fighting crime at night?
Speaker 3:um. So my ultimate goal is to be um able to lift as many different kinds of bears as I possibly can. Oh that's great. So right now I can like pretty confidently deadlift um like an american black bear, Um, and so I'm. I'm shooting for I've gotten past the like Malayan sun bear. Those guys are pretty small. I could I could even bench press a Malayan sun bear Um, but I'm working my way up through increasingly large bears.
Speaker 2:Just in case you're in some kind of like game of thrones deathmatch and you have to like lift the bear above your head.
Speaker 3:Well, I like to think that the bears and I will be in agreement about the situation, um, but it's just a good benchmark to have.
Speaker 2:It's great that's so unique and creative. I love it.
Speaker 3:It has been an amusing way to uh, keep myself going.
Speaker 2:You know I'll have to. I'll have to use something like that for my deadlifts. No need to be, like you know, satchels of blueberries or something like that.
Speaker 3:Okay, but Malayan sunders are pretty small I bet. I bet most people with a little bit of of time would be able to deadlift a Malayan sun bear.
Speaker 2:I'll Well, I'll work my way up to a polar bear, that's.
Speaker 3:that's the goal, that's the dream.
Speaker 2:They're over a thousand pounds, aren't they?
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, you'll be in the olympics. I don't know if that's realistic.
Speaker 2:What's the max weight somebody has ever deadlifted?
Speaker 3:Oh man, I think I know somebody was like squatting 700 pounds, but they were a very large, I think, icelandic man, so I don't know that I have that in me necessarily.
Speaker 2:Um, I'm just googling it right now record deadlift. Record deadlift is oh, 1113 pounds.
Speaker 3:Oh wow, you see, a polar bear is nothing.
Speaker 2:There we go for that one person. They could, yes, the one person in the world. Okay, well, everybody, you can up your fitness goals. Now, if it's not bears, come up with different things, you know, like dog breeds or there you go or uh types of squid or whatever barrels of blueberries. That's. That's what I'm going to be using blueberries are a noble goal.
Speaker 2:Well, aaron, we're at the end of our chat. Thank you so much for being a guest today on the science podcast and talking about your research with monkeys, the new stuff with cancer, and then, of course, your, your triceratops cat, and I actually I've been sneaking through your twitter feed and it is a you know you, there's quite a few pictures of this cat, everybody, um.
Speaker 3:That leads me to ask can people follow you on social?
Speaker 2:media. What's your? What's your tags?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, um. I am on twitter at Diana underscore monkey. Um, and you can find me pretty, pretty easily on instagram also. I think it's just my full name. It's Aaron Liz Kane. All right, okay.
Speaker 2:We'll make sure those links are in our show notes. Um, awesome Thanks again, doc. This was. This was so enjoyable and educational and fun. I really appreciate talking to us.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for having me it was great to get to chat with you.
Speaker 2:We are proud to have bark and beyond supplycom now as an official sponsor of the science podcast. Bark and beyond. Supplycom is a small family owned company that started off making joint supplements for dogs, but now they sell toys and treats and a whole bunch of other goodies. Skip the big box stores and check out the amazing deals and awesome stuff at bark and beyond Supply comm. You'll see a link in our show notes and use the coupon code Bunsen B-u-n-s-e-n for 10 off at bark and beyond supply comm. Click the link. Skip the big box stores. How about the little guy? Okay, it is time for a story time with me.
Speaker 1:Adam, if you don't know what story time is, story time is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past One or two weeks. Dad, do you have a story? I have a few stories.
Speaker 2:So we've still been taking beaker dock diving the last couple days and the big sticking point for her is jumping into open air and we tried putting a little life jacket on her and she got a lot better. She's so close, she's such a good little swimmer and if she never, I guess you know what, if she's not Actually does the big jump. If she just loves swimming, that's great, because where she gets to swim is clean and she has so much fun and it's such good exercise for her. So that's, I guess that's story part one, and Story part two has to do with the hail. So earlier this week it hailed like bananas hard and Chris actually slept through most of it. Adam, you're at the farm, I think you're in your, in papa's house, yeah, and his house is older and isn't as well insulated, but it sounded like the end of the world in our house, so I can't imagine how loud it was at the farm, crazy.
Speaker 1:Like that house was falling down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was actually quite extreme, like I was worried about tornadoes. So so much hail fell, the ground had the appearance of snow, like the first snow that we might get in september, that sticks, or october, and I think bunson thought it was winter again. He was so happy he was zooming around, he was eating it, but then of course it's july so it was gone by the next day. It's probably gone in a couple hours. So those are my two stories of the week.
Speaker 1:I have a story Um, I I forgot when my story was, so I'll just say I'll just say this story Um, over the past few days I don't know what is going on, but I am really popular with all of the animals. I'll sit down on the couch and Beaker will sleep on the couch with me. I will sit down on the couch and Bunsen will sit in front of me and then Ginger will sit on the other side of me. I'll have all three animals sit on the couch with me and I don't know why. They're just so. They're so lovey right now and it's crazy because Beaker will always sit on the couch with me if I'm sitting on the couch Most of the time.
Speaker 1:Bunsen sometimes will come up on the couch and sit down with me and sleep on the couch when I'm sleeping on the couch, and Ginger will just do whatever she wants and sometimes she comes and sees me and sometimes she doesn't. But yeah, I've become really popular with the animals and Beaker has been sleeping and napping with me on the couch, which I think is really cute. But yeah, that's my story. Like, I come home and they're there and they're so happy that I'm home, which didn't happen during the school year.
Speaker 2:You got to be in the middle of couch wars today. I did and Ginger eventually won couch wars.
Speaker 1:Ginger did eventually win couch wars. Beaker was sitting in the corner and Ginger jumped up and was loving me, and then she walked over to Beaker and Beaker was not happy with Ginger trying to steal her spot. And then Ginger stole her spot. But yeah, that's my story. Mom, do you have a story?
Speaker 4:I sure do have a story. My story has to do with conditioning Beaker so she can actually jump from the dock at dock diving, and what was suggested to us was that she jumped for her treats and I was thinking, okay, or she jumps for her toys. And I was thinking, what could this look like? What does she know that would enable her to condition for being able to pop or jump into the water? And one thing I thought of was pause up. Bunsen loves pause up. And when I got the stool, both of them came what's going on? What's going on, what's happening? And I said, pause up. And Bunsen was, oh yeah, kool-aid man, oh yeah, pause up.
Speaker 4:And I didn't know if Beaker was gonna do it with Bunsen's presence. It's better to train one on one. But I thought I'll just do this quickly. But Beaker did. She did pause up on the stool, so I'm proud of her. Another thing that I thought might be helpful is we did like a teddy bear kind of trick big bear, little bear. That might be something to help Beaker, I guess, increase her core strength, which will be beneficial for her run, jumping and playing, but then also for swimming. And that's my story. Was that better, jason?
Speaker 1:Okay, that's it for story time. Thank you all so much for listening to my section of the podcast and listening to this week's podcast episode. I will see you all in the next episode in my section. Bye-bye.
Speaker 1:No you won't, no, you won't, no. Oh right, yeah, I'm gone. I will not see everybody in my mom won't even see anybody. No, it'll just be me, it'll just be you. Next week's episode of the podcast is gonna be barren no family section next week. No family section. Next week we're in the Maritimes, but there will be tons of stories when we get back from the Maritimes, so look forward to that, maybe even about dogs and cats and stuff. Maybe I will see y'all when I see y'all.
Speaker 2:Bye-bye. That's it for another week show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the science podcast. Special thanks to Dr Aaron Kane, who talked to us about orangutans, amongst many other wild things, and a special shout out to the top tier of the Paw Pack. That's our paid community. If you love our show and you wanna keep it free, we'd love your support with the Paw Pack and there's a link in the show notes. Take it away, chris. Let's hear those names.
Speaker 4:Alicia Stanley the Heard, wendy Diane Mason and Luke Linda Sherry, tracy Halberg, carol MacDonald, Helen Chin, elizabeth Bougiois, peggy McKeel, mary LaMagna Reiter, holly Birch, Sandy Brimer, brenda Clark, andrew Lynn, marianne McNally, catherine G, jordan, tracy Domingu, diane Allen, julie Smith, terry Adam Shelly Smith, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, tracy Linebaugh, courtney Proven Fun, lisa Breanne Haas, bianca Hyde, debbie Anderson and Yuchita Donna Craig, amy C, susan Wagner, kathy Zercher, liz Button and Ben Raffert.
Speaker 2:For science, empathy and cuteness Woo.
Speaker 3:Woo Woo, we'll be right back.