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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 SciChat and PetChat which are the live shows from social audio.
SciChat has an interview and Q+A with a scientist, while PetChat is a live community gathering for games and stories about pets!
For Science, Empathy, and Cuteness!
The Science Pawdcast
Season 6 Episode 31: Hair-Tugging Pain, Liquid Cats and Hammerhead Sharks with Dr. Erin Spencer
Ever wondered why pulling a strand of hair can send a jolt faster than any other pain?
Join us as we uncover this surprising discovery, complete with humorous anecdotes from our own lives, like kitchen mishaps and martial arts blunders. We share the remarkable research from Sweden revealing hair-pulling pain as the speed demon of all pain signals, zooming through your nervous system at an astonishing 160 kilometers per hour. Our lively chat not only highlights this quirky facet of human biology but also offers a fresh lens on how we experience pain.
Curious about what cats and sharks might teach us about nature's quirks? We recount the whimsical world of feline experiments in Budapest, where cats tackle mazes with the enigmatic elegance only they can muster. Their unpredictable antics remind us of how bumblebees behave under scrutiny, underscoring the fun and challenges of studying animal behavior. Our clever cat Ginger might have danced through those tests, leaving fur and laughter in her wake.
Then, we shift our gaze to the ocean, introducing Dr. ERin Spencer who takes us on a thrilling journey with hammerhead sharks. From bio-loggers resembling Fitbits for fish to the grand oceanic dance influenced by climate change, her insights are as vast as the sea.
Amidst tales of tracking tagged sharks in the Gulf Stream, the episode takes an emotional turn with heartfelt stories, from a horse named King aiding veterinary science to the loveable Goose the burnadoodle, whose friendship with chickens Polly and Minnie warms the heart.
Whether it's the thrilling unpredictability of shark research or the simple joy of sharing animal tales, this episode is a testament to the wonder and complexity of the natural world.
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Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zukoski. 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 on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there.
Speaker 2:This is episode 31 of season six. The weather's getting colder, there's supposed to be snow this week and everybody is waiting with bated breath for how Bernoulli acts to his first snowfall. We're so excited as excited one can be when there's going to be snow. Actually, the first little bits of snow is kind of fun, all right. Well, what's on the show this week In science news?
Speaker 2:Chris and I are going to look at the fastest moving pain in the human body, and you'll probably be shocked as to what it is. In pet science, a follow-up to a fun physics paper looks at do cats move like liquids through your house? And our guest in Ask an Expert is Dr Aaron Spencer, who knows a thing or two about hammerhead sharks. It's a great interview. Check it out. Okay, the bad joke. Guess how good the hammerhead shark did on his test? Well, obviously he nailed it. Okay, that's a good one. All right, on with the show. There's no time like science time. All right on with the show. There's no time like Science Time. This week in Science News, chris and I are going to be talking about the fastest type of pain.
Speaker 3:Chris, have you been injured in your life? Yes, I definitely sliced my finger when I was cutting a croissant and you said to me oh, french food is stupid. Because I had to go to the walk-in clinic and get sutures or stitches to help me heal, and it didn't hurt until the doctor asked me to run it under cold water. He's just running under cold water. Then it hurt really badly.
Speaker 2:So it was not the cut, but putting it underwater hurt.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was terrible.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm trying to think of the worst time I've been hurt. I've been hurt a couple times in Kung Fu, when I used to do martial arts. I don't do that anymore, but I did that for what? Was it about a decade, maybe more. There are some submission moves in martial arts which are so incredibly painful that you can't think of anything but how painful they are. And if you watch MMA, it's like when they grab the person and make them tap out because it hurts so much you have to tap out or something's going to break or just you can't deal with the pain. There's a couple wrist locks in our martial arts which are extremely painful and debilitating and it's a way without you can get control of somebody without really having to like bruise them up. You can put them in a wrist lock and it doesn't hurt them long term, but in the short term those wrist locks absolutely hurt really bad.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's really interesting, so why would you subject yourself to that?
Speaker 2:Oh, in martial arts you have to have the move done to you so you know what it feels like if you're going to be doing it on somebody else, and a lot of wrist locks have a sweet spot, meaning that if you don't do it the right way, you're just shaking hands with the person who's very upset with you, and you don't want to be shaking hands with somebody who's very upset with you.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 2:So, chris, besides getting your hands sliced up by a knife when you're cutting up a croissant or getting into some kind of wrist lock nonsense, what have scientists discovered as the fastest moving pain signal?
Speaker 3:The fastest moving pain signal is when you get your hair pulled. Jason, did you grow up with a evil sister who would fight with you all the time and pull your hair?
Speaker 2:No, I was the oldest. I had my younger brother, cam Marina and Alana, my two sisters. I was not pulling their hair and I don't believe they were pulling mine.
Speaker 3:My sister pulled mine. That was her go-to finishing move. Actually it was her starting move, middle move and finishing move. So I just got used to just reefing my. I would hold my hair like in a ponytail, tried to get it above her grip and I would just reef my head away from her hand. So, this is a bit surprising for me that this is the fast moving pain mechanism.
Speaker 2:How fast does it move?
Speaker 3:160 kilometers an hour.
Speaker 2:Holy, that's about a hundred miles an hour. Holy, that's about 100 miles an hour.
Speaker 3:So researchers have identified the sensory mechanism that transmits that painful sensation of a hair pull. And if you've never had a hair pull, I don't really recommend it, because those pain signals cook along the nerve fibers, which makes it the fastest known pain signals.
Speaker 2:That's wild, because we get pain from any kind of physical injury, like getting cut, like your croissant getting pinched a cramp or somebody biting us like a puppy.
Speaker 3:My legs have been cramping and that's bad pain.
Speaker 2:Oh, sometimes I get a hamstring cramp after.
Speaker 3:I right in the hamstring. Yeah, and it's, and you want to crawl right out of your skin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I dropped to the ground and people think I'm having a heart attack, so that's bad.
Speaker 3:Oh, that was one of your most embarrassing moments because we were at dog training and you had to crawl down on the floor. You just got on the floor and then you continued to roll on the floor and we were like what is going on? Is this some sort of skit? No, you had her like crap.
Speaker 2:No, it was pretty embarrassing.
Speaker 3:You were embarrassed. So now the world knows because I told it on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Whoops. So this research comes from Sweden. Neuroscientist Emma Kinstrom conducted lab tests that showed that hair pulling is 10 times more painful than a pinprick. And that makes sense. Like they prick your finger to test for blood. And usually you don't even really feel that Kind of like getting a needle too. Generally you get your shot, it doesn't hurt that bad getting a needle too. Generally you get your shot, it doesn't hurt that bad, and the pain relies on a protein called the PIEZO2. So would that be the BESO2? Anyways, that's known for detecting mechanical force, so like light touches, but it wasn't previously linked to acute pain, so like sudden shocking pain. And when they looked at this protein with really powerful microscopes, it's a propeller shaped protein and that's essential for detecting hair pull pain. Guess what happens if you don't have the PZO2 protein?
Speaker 3:People lacking that protein do not experience pain from their hair pulls. So I'm wondering if maybe I lack that protein because it didn't hurt that bad when my sister pulled my hair. Maybe I just got used to it.
Speaker 2:Hair pull pain travels via an AB nerve fiber, that's a fast conducting, insulated conduit. Now, in contrast, other types of pain, like those from burns, travel slowly among many different nerve fibers, so it appears one's like a freeway and the other is like the back roads I was thinking like a high-speed train versus a other kind of trolley or something. Okay a trolley? Where in canada do we have trolleys? Quebec, maybe, british columbia and vancouver really vancouver has trolleys.
Speaker 3:Quebec, maybe British Columbia and Vancouver.
Speaker 2:Really Vancouver has trolleys, I guess, I'm sure they do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they do. You have to remember that I was born in Abbotsford and lived in Vancouver, or lived in Abbotsford and traveled to Vancouver when I was a child and then we moved here when I was 15. So since then, maybe the trolleys are all gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think Alberta's fresh out of trolleys, unless they bring it out for like pioneer days or something like that. Now we should note that people experience varying degrees of pain from hair pulls, and that's similar to how some people interact with hot water, some people in a hot shower. Some people interact with hot water Some people in a hot shower it's unbearable whereas other people can take like hot to the max and just stand there like getting cooked like a lobster. It doesn't change the fact, though, that hair pull pain seems to travel the fastest of any pain ever recorded.
Speaker 3:I was just reflecting on one of the researchers in this study and comparing and observing differences in her pet's reactions. So if we're talking about hair pulling, we can now maybe talk about fur pulling. Her Pomeranian is unfazed by brushing, but her Chihuahua tends to react strongly to the fur pulling from brushing and sometimes bites in response. And Bunsen has a response to brushing he sees the brush and he runs away. And Bernoulli sees the brush. He's like oh yeah, I like that. But the minute you start brushing he bites at the brush.
Speaker 2:Sorry, ginger, just walked on my soundboard.
Speaker 3:Oh whoops. Bernoulli bites at the brush playfully because he's like what's this, what's this? Do you want to play? Do you want to play with this brush? I want to play with this brush. And Beaker just stands there and loves getting her bird brushed. She's totally unfazed, Very similar to that Pomeranian.
Speaker 2:Also, Ginger loves getting brushed so much.
Speaker 3:Ginger loves it too. She's a good girl.
Speaker 2:She's a good girl getting her hair brushed. So there you go, everybody. The fastest moving type of pain is hair pulling. That's science news for this week. This weekend, pet Science Chris and I are going to talk about a continuation of a hilarious study that concluded that cats move like liquids. Does that mean they pour into things, Chris?
Speaker 3:I've seen it and I think I've used it in my science class, like not sure if solid or liquid, because the cat is in the bowl and looks very much like they fill and occupy the space of the bowl.
Speaker 2:Cats are so bendy, like Ginger can curl up into a little ball like Beaker, but Bernoulli and Bunsen especially now that Bernoulli's older, he has no bend to his body, he's like a brick.
Speaker 3:Whereas Ginger is very bendy and very sleek and can get in and out of places quickly, and she does take up the shape of a container.
Speaker 2:So where this is coming from is. There was a famous and hilarious theoretical physics paper in 2017 that proposed that cats act like liquids, and that was inspired by all of the cats on the internet squeezing into tight spaces like vases or crevices. Now a new researcher, peter Pongrass, has detested this idea by examining how cats move through space, determining whether they move through space like a liquid or a solid. I love this study.
Speaker 3:The study was published in iScience, and it focused on how those cats fluidly navigate through narrow spaces and their hesitation in approaching smaller holes.
Speaker 2:The research does suggest that cats are aware of their body size and they form mental images of themselves, helping them to decide when to squeeze through or avoid a tight space sometimes on tiktok, these caving videos come up where people are like squeezing like underground through tiny like the there's basically there's a, a slat and they're going through this slat and rock is above their head and they're like having to drag themselves along the floor with their head sideways and I'm like the best thing about caving is you just can decide not to do it, because I don't know if I'd put my body in a position like that deep inside a mountain.
Speaker 3:I think it's terrifying. That's one of. We did go caving in the cenotes, but that was a little different. We did go through some kind of tight spaces, but without knowing the terrain. And you think, man, I've seen people get stuck and I don't know. That's not. I think I'm content with my bucket list item of caving in the snow tase Check. I don't need to do it again.
Speaker 2:All right, let's talk. Let's bring this back to the cat study. It's really tough testing cats in lab settings We've mentioned this before because they're reclusive. They're not like dogs who are willing to please you. Cats do their own thing and they can get super stressed out in unfamiliar environments. I think Ginger's one of an odd duck for a cat, because didn't you guys take her to the vet's office and she was acting the exact same there as she did at home.
Speaker 3:She was yes and no. You could tell that she was a little bit stressed out and she definitely scoped out the joint. But she quickly realized oh, I'm in a safe space and I'm happy here. And then the vet came and got and did the examination and Ginger actually went into the treat bowl and ripped the lid off the treat bowl. So Ginger was feeling very much at home in the vet's office.
Speaker 2:So the researchers to accommodate not having stressed out cats and not having cats that wouldn't want to do what they were supposed to do they went to where cats live in their homes across Budapest. And here's the experiment. It's pretty adorable. They had two cardboard panels, each attached to a doorframe, and the panel had five holes of the same height but decreasing width Think of a big hole, medium hole, small hole, tiny hole, kind of thing. The other panel had five holes of the same width but decreasing height, so it was like they're getting squashed. And the cats were filmed as they tried to move from one side of the panel, where the experimenter was, to the other side, where their owner called for them, waited, called them with treats. Ginger generally comes for treats. I think she'd be a good candidate for this study.
Speaker 3:Yes, but cats are definitely harder to control than dogs, so getting them to follow these directions was difficult.
Speaker 2:We're trying to shoot video of Ginger. It's like if it works, great, and if it doesn't, you're not getting her to do the shot. It's just not going to work for you.
Speaker 3:And you have to be Johnny on the spot because we don't get two or three takes like we do with the dogs.
Speaker 2:No, you get one.
Speaker 3:One, and then you try again and you're like I guess that first one is the one I have and it might not be stellar, but it's the one that we're going to use.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So once a cat squeezed through a hole, the owners had to catch them and hand them back to the researcher. But some cats resisted handling and evaded capture.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's funny.
Speaker 3:Survival of the fittest man.
Speaker 2:All right. So what were the results of the experiment? We had some dropouts in the study, chris. Eight cats didn't complete the experiment, so 30 out of the 38 cats did, 22 out of the 30 hesitated when faced with the shortest holes, while only eight cats paused before attempting to squeeze through the narrowest gap. So it looks like they don't like when it's not very high, but when it's a smaller hole, they're okay to go through that. Most cats attempted to flow through the narrow openings without hesitation, employing a trial and error approach, regardless of whether they fit or not Like that. Regardless of whether they fit or not, they're like oh dang, that didn't work.
Speaker 3:The head researcher suggests that the cat's hesitation to pass through the short holes may be a survival instinct. Entering into small spaces could make them vulnerable to threats if they cannot see what's on the other side, Even in the safety of their homes, because the researchers did bring this lab to their homes. This hesitation indicates that cats rely on mental representations of their body size to decide whether they can pass through certain spaces. To decide whether they can pass through certain spaces.
Speaker 2:And it's funny because they found similar body awareness experimentation with bumblebees. So they've done a similar experiment with bees, because bumblebees obviously don't want to get their big fuzzy butt stuck trying to get in a hole.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because if you can't get out, I can just be like that caver with my head squashed to the side and not getting out.
Speaker 2:It's terrifying. I have anxiety. And if you watch one TikTok's like, oh you like cave caver man having a rough go, here's 60 more videos of caving disasters. Thanks, tiktok.
Speaker 3:But having said that, from the original experiment, the head researcher enjoyed observing not only the cats but also their owners. Some believe their cats were brilliant much like we do about ginger only to see them struggle, while others underestimated their cats, only to be surprised and delighted when the felines completed the task with ease I like that.
Speaker 2:You're like my cat's an idiot and then it does everything perfectly and the researchers are like your cat's pretty amazing, that would be funny actually.
Speaker 3:That would be funny. I love that. It's like a twist of events. It's like irony in its finest.
Speaker 2:I think we should try to do this test with Ginger, which she does.
Speaker 3:We could. What do you think? Are you on the side where she's brilliant and she'll get through it easily, or that she is not going to do it, but that she'll complete it with ease? Which team are you on?
Speaker 2:We've already put her through some things versus Bunsen and Beaker. Do you remember going through the maze and jumping over the tape and the cups?
Speaker 3:Yeah, she just outsmarts everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she outsmarts the experimenter. She's just like, oh, I'm not going to go this way. You guys are morons, and she just went an easy way because her body can go that way. And I'm like, oh man, I didn't even think of that. I think she would. If, faced with the challenge, she would just decide not because there'd be an easier way for her somewhere else.
Speaker 3:True, but we stay tuned. We might try it out, and then you'll see how Ginger fares on that trial.
Speaker 2:I like that. All right, that's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the ginger stuffy. That's right, Ginger, the science cat, has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr Erin Spencer, marine ecologist and science writer, with us today. Doc, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great, Excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me and I'm super ready to talk about sharks.
Speaker 2:Yay, I always ask guests where they're calling in from. Where are you in the world?
Speaker 1:I'm calling from Miami, florida and it is nighttime here and it's very hot.
Speaker 2:I introduced you. You have a doctorate. What's going on with your education?
Speaker 1:I do. Yeah, that's actually relatively new. I just finished my PhD earlier this year.
Speaker 2:Congratulations.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. I'm still getting used to that doctor title, but it does feel good. I will say I did. My doctorate is in biology and specifically my research was looking at the movement and behavior of great hammerhead sharks. Yes, twist my arm. I got the opportunity to study one of the coolest animals on the planet. But the PhD was definitely not easy. It is what brought me down here to Miami, because we're fortunate here, it's pretty sharky. It's good for me Some people don't like to hear that it is pretty sharky.
Speaker 1:It's pretty sharky, so it's a good place to study sharks.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I've never heard that before. I'm going to steal that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and listen, this is sometimes when I say it's pretty sharky down here. People get nervous, but I think it's actually it should make you feel better, because there are a lot of sharks down here, but there are so many people that enter the water every single day and you never really hear about the sharks around here, so it's a good sign.
Speaker 2:That's right. They've been scared off by Florida man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:When you were little, were you into marine stuff? Were you a science kid?
Speaker 1:I totally was, and sometimes I don't know whether it was nature or nurture. Was I born loving science or did I just have Einstein the video game and trees the matching card game? I think I was really fortunate that I grew up in a family that just loved learning and loved nature, so I got to be out in the woods a lot as a kid. We used to go to the Jersey Shore every summer and now I'm so spoiled. I'm used to really warm water, but when I was a kid I would just spend all day out in that chilly, dark New Jersey water and I just loved it. So yeah, I've always been a huge fan of nature and animals.
Speaker 2:So you weren't. You didn't grow up landlocked, you were close to an ocean, hey.
Speaker 1:I grew up north of Baltimore, maryland, so I was a couple of hours from the ocean. I was right near the Chesapeake Bay. Yeah, so the Chesapeake Bay was a really cool watershed to learn about growing up because I knew they had little signs in the drains near my house that, like all this water goes to the Chesapeake Bay and the connection there growing up, for example, eating blue crabs, which are that come from the Chesapeake Bay, and they're a really big part of the kind of cultural identity around there. So I do miss it. I've lived in Maryland in many years but I always feel nostalgia for it, especially when I think about, in the summer, a good crab feast.
Speaker 2:There's something about the ocean that is just so powerful for kids.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:For everyone.
Speaker 1:There's a reason why people picture a sandy beach and lapping waves when they're trying to fall asleep and trying to relax or meditate. And then there's also a reason why people look to the ocean for ideas for monsters and alien movies. It's just so powerful in so many ways and you can tell, because for as long as humans have been writing stories, they have been writing stories about the ocean.
Speaker 2:That is so true. You're correct, it's for everybody. I'm my day job, I teach high school chemistry and pre COVID I took kids to the Banfield Marine Biology Center, which is on. Vancouver Island and these kids and myself we live in landlocked, landlocked Alberta. The nearest ocean is like a 25 hour drive straight.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the kids it was their first time seeing an ocean great, oh wow. So a lot of the kids it was their first time seeing an ocean. Wow, canada's so big you take you forever to get to one. Alberta is kind of beautiful. We've got the Rocky Mountains, so there's lots of stuff to do in our home province. So, yeah, like when those kids some of the kids saw the ocean for the first time, they were like it was switch went on and they were. They became a lot more connected with marine biology for sure.
Speaker 1:That is such a special experience and I think that is something that I live by the ocean now. I'm there all the time and I still don't take for granted because you're reminded constantly about the power of the ocean what we still have to learn about the ocean, and I think there's so many ways to be connected to the ocean, no matter where you live, because all of our actions affect our ocean and we depend on it, no matter where we live. But there truly is something almost spiritual about getting to stand at the edge of something so big and powerful.
Speaker 2:I absolutely adore going to the ocean and it's just, it's not a it's not an every year thing for us, because we're so fun. Yeah, but I do feel that when I'm on the edge with the dogs or doing some very terrible surfing off of Tofino, it's also funny, because that's how I feel about mountains.
Speaker 1:I didn't grow up going to the mountains, it was not I don't live near the mountains and every not every year, but maybe every other year when I get lucky and can take the time I go out to the Rocky Mountains and we ski, and it's a similar feeling when you're at the very top of a run and it's so quiet it's the quietest I've ever heard anything and you're looking out and you're so far up from the ground and it's that's also really hum anything and you're looking out and you're so far up from the ground and that's also really humbling.
Speaker 1:Anytime you can be immersed in nature in that way, there's literally scientific studies talking about how important it is for human health to be able to experience nature. How did we get here Now I'm all inspired to go out and take a hike or something.
Speaker 2:We just came back from one in the mountains, so it's a bit ironic, or maybe I don't know what Alanis Morset would say, but speaking of nature and the ocean, you studied, you did a bunch of study with sharks, yeah, could you tell us a little bit about your research? Like you mentioned their movement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. My PhD was looking at the movement and behavior of great hammerhead sharks, and what's interesting about that is great hammerheads are one of the most recognizable sharks in the ocean. You say you work with students. I have the pleasure of getting to speak to lots of different classrooms of folks of different ages and the youngest kids, the kids that are just entering kindergarten. Like they can tell you, they can point out a great hammerhead shark, right, everyone knows them and they are really top predators in the ocean, but they are really difficult to study. Actually, despite how recognizable they are, there's a lot we still don't know about great hammerheads and really some fundamental things about their biology and behavior, and part of that is because when we're doing research on animals in the ocean right, obviously, we can't observe them in quite the same way we could observe a deer in the forest right, we are limited by biology because we can't breathe underwater. So there's and also, yeah, that old thing. And then even with scuba, for example, you can only stay down for so long and with an animal like great hammerheads they can swim so far and so fast. We call them highly mobile, right, they can just move quite a lot. They're really difficult to study.
Speaker 1:We in the last couple of decades there've been huge advancements in different types of technology that allow us to study these animals in the wild right. There's some other species that we learned so much, for example, from aquariums for certain species, ones that we can keep in captivity and learn about and see what they eat and things like that. But great hammerheads are so big and they're actually quite sensitive. Their physiology, like their actual physiology, is sensitive, so we don't even have the advantage of being able to study them closely in aquariums. But we can take these pieces of technology and what I use is something called bio-loggers and essentially put them on the sharks, let them collect data for us and then we can learn so much about their day-to-day movement in the wild.
Speaker 1:And you can picture a biologger like a Fitbit for a shark. The one that I'm using is like a biologger is anything that collects data that goes on an animal, and it's so cool. There's so many different types of biologgers. They can put them now on animals as small as hummingbirds, but they obviously are different than the ones I'm putting on the great hammerhead shark, but they can answer all kinds of different questions for us. So the ones that I used were like Fitbits and they measured acceleration, speed, temperature, depth, and then call it triaxial acceleration and magnetism, which is essentially acceleration and magnetism on this X, y, z axis, and from that I can do all kinds of different things, which I can take up this whole podcast talking about all of the different questions we could answer with that.
Speaker 2:I have a couple follow-up ones. It never occurred to me until you just mentioned that it's probably a bad idea unless you're a supervillain to keep a hammerhead shark like in a big tank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there was like one of the Despicable Me's. Maybe they had a hammerhead, maybe a Bond movie, but for most of us it's not a good idea.
Speaker 2:Austin Powers. Dr Evil did have lasers with sharks laser sharks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's going to be for my next PhD.
Speaker 2:Okay, so a couple things. Where does the Fitbit go on the shark? Because they don't have arms.
Speaker 1:They do not have arms, so it's not totally like our Fitbits, but so great hammerheads are really special. They've got this big dorsal fin. So the dorsal fin is the fin that's on their backs, right, the classic Jaws fin that pokes out of the water, right? Yeah, so they have a really sturdy dorsal fin. So we can actually attach this BioLogger with a clamp. And the BioLogger package has a bunch of different things in it, right, because we're collecting a ton of data and we actually have to deploy this tag and then get it back to look at the data, right? So we put it on the shark, it swims off and we have to have a way to get it back. So the package itself has the different sensors. It's got the biologger. Sometimes we put a video camera in there. That's really small.
Speaker 2:Like a mini GoPro. Yeah, yeah, we literally get a shark's eye view.
Speaker 1:No, it's well. The ones that we use are much smaller, even than a gopro, because you also really want to make sure that what you're putting on the shark isn't going to affect their ability to swim. So we put we try to make everything as small as possible, and then the the tag is attached via a clamp, that is. Then it's all wrapped up with this little metal piece that's called a galvanic release, and it's made of this metal that starts to dissolve as soon as it hits the saltwater. So they can last for different amounts of time. The ones that I were using lasted for about 24 to 48 hours. So as soon as the shark swims off, that little metal piece, almost like a little clasp starts dissolving and then it's cool, right.
Speaker 2:It goes through like a rusting reaction, like a little oxidation.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly. And then, after that thing dissolves, the whole tag package will pop off and float to the surface. So picture it, think of it as like the size of a soda can, but like a little longer, and within that it's got our speed sensor, our video camera. And then on the other side it has two little pieces with antenna and one. As soon as that antenna hits the surface, it sends a satellite signal, and then I get a text to my phone with coordinates of where this tag is in the middle of the ocean.
Speaker 2:You're like we got to go get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that, trust me, is the most stressful part. There's so many things that have to go right. You have to get a hammerhead shark, which, again these are critically endangered animals.
Speaker 2:You got to catch them right.
Speaker 1:We got to catch them.
Speaker 3:It's not easy.
Speaker 2:I was just like, oh yeah, you just put a clamp on the shark and I'm like what the hell you got to get the shark?
Speaker 1:first. That's the biggest part. Yeah, actually, anyone that has experience with boats will tell you the first victory is even just getting out at sea. The weather has to line up. You have to. We work in teams because we're handling sharks. You get a lot of people. We work in teams of about four give or take, and then you got to get a hammerhead. And of course we can't just pick a hammerhead out of the crowd, right, like we collect all we fish and we get all kinds of different sharks. Like I've had days where all I do is get bull sharks and I'm like I love bull sharks but I'm only interested in hammerheads. Yeah, but the good news on that side is I am my whole lab is. Everyone studies different things about sharks. So you're out with a team and even if you don't get a great hammerhead, my friend was studying bull sharks and so then we collect samples for her.
Speaker 2:Like Nazi.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, exactly, and sometimes I felt like I was trying to get a large straight. It was hard, like it was always like the left, but anyway. So yeah, then we have to go out and get it and the satellite will only signal, will only get you. It's not exact, right, so it'll only get you within a mile, half a mile, oh my God, that is sorry.
Speaker 2:go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, go ahead. It's very validating. It is hard, it's a needle in a haystack, but except it's the ocean, it's totally. It's exactly what it's like and that you just see this tiny little thing poking above the the water. So we also have a little radio tag that's in there that I can listen. It's called a vhf tag and I can program this antenna and listen for this radio frequency and get close so you can be right on top of the tag. And it's still hard to see because the ocean gets choppy. It's really hard. But with each data set that we get, because there's still so much that we don't know about hammerheads and this data is so difficult to get we just learn so much with every successful deployment.
Speaker 2:I could talk to you forever about this, the whole process, but that would derail our entire conversation.
Speaker 1:That's okay, it interesting process I like my background.
Speaker 2:I'm a chemist in my background and I'm thinking about the chemical reaction, but that's neither here nor there like to corrode the little metal for me that's. I'm like, hey, that's something I know oh, I'll send you.
Speaker 1:I'll send you some, I'll mail you some. You can look at it sweet's awesome.
Speaker 2:Could turn that into a unit. Final question for my chemistry.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. And brainstorm how you could use this and see if someone says on a shark.
Speaker 2:There you go. Let's talk about some of the data maybe you get from the little Coke bottle thing, Coke can thing. This could be a three-hour conversation. What are some of the things you found out? Like that stick out to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't take it lightly that I'm working on a critically endangered species, right, like the data that we're collecting here. It's very important to me that it's being able to then apply, be applied to furthering understanding to help protect this animal, right? If I'm gonna ask this animal to collect data for me, then we should be using this data in return to help them. So the main question that I was looking at was how many calories do great hammerheads have to eat? And you might be thinking how do you get that from speed? But it's super cool.
Speaker 1:We are actually, because movement is the biggest part of their energy budget. If you think of a pie chart of how energy is distributed through their body in any given day. For ectotherms, meaning, their body temperature matches what's around them, unlike us endotherms, where we are the same temperature all the time Movement is the largest part of their energy budget. So when I get that speed data, which is taken every single second as they're moving around, I actually have a ton of mathematical models based on the shape of the shark, the lift and drag Think of the hydrodynamic forces acting on the animal and then I can plug in speed and temperature and a number of other things and run a whole bunch of code and then it spits out how many calories do they probably have to use in a day, and then from there I can start to make estimates of okay, then how often will they have to eat?
Speaker 1:Is it better for them to snack all day on smaller fish? Is it better for them to wait and eat a bigger shark? Because great hammerheads are one of the few sharks that will actually eat other sharks. So that's also a fun fact about hammerheads, but it surprises a lot of people because for the most part the animals that I tagged, they need to consume far fewer calories than we do because we have to use so much energy to keep our bodies the same temperature. A seven-foot or, let's see, two to three-meter hammerhead could maybe only have to eat about 1,200 calories in order to sustain themselves.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's hardly anything.
Speaker 1:I know and that's just an estimate there's so many other factors that go into it, right With temperature and speed and all kinds of things. But the point is almost all of the sharks that I tagged need to eat fewer calories than I do in a day.
Speaker 2:That is bananas.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're probably traveling like what? Like a hundred kilometers in a day.
Speaker 1:You know, it really depends and that's one of the downsides also of the tags that I was using. I don't have it like geospatially referenced, meaning I can't say, oh, it started at this latitude and longitude and ended here, there's other studies that have done that, that especially look at their migration over time. But off the top of my head I can't tell you an average of what they travel in a day. But the point is, if they wanted to haul themselves fast they could totally do that. But that cost, that has an energetic cost.
Speaker 2:Wow, I did not know that. That is a very cool piece of. Were you surprised? I'm stammering here, but were you surprised by that?
Speaker 1:Were you surprised? I'm stammering here, but were you surprised by that? Oh, totally. I was like I must have done something incorrectly, which, when you're messing around with code, is always my first thought. I never trust anything that comes out at first. When you think about the actual physiology of it, no, that makes sense, and of course, this is how it applies to conservation. Back to my initial point too. Part of what is interesting about this is not just how much they need to eat, but how might that change in future climate conditions? Because as temperatures increase, the hammerheads need to eat more because they're burning more calories. Now, this was the other part of my dissertation was looking at their we call it thermal tolerance, which is essentially what is the range of temperatures where they can live, and then what is the range of temperatures where they're most comfortable, because those are two things. Right, like I can technically stay alive if it's 100 degrees every day, but that doesn't mean I'm comfortable. Or what is 100 degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius? I don't know off the top of my head but 37.
Speaker 1:Hot, that is very hot.
Speaker 2:That is uncomfortable, that I do not want to go in that heat. I was right. That was a good guess by me, oh good.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's 38 degrees. I was off by one.
Speaker 1:That's pretty good, Hammerheads and all other animals right, they have a temperature range at which they can live and what they're most comfortable. And when I say most comfortable, that's essentially how they can most successfully live, how they can eat and reproduce and do all the things they're supposed to do. And part of the study was looking at what is that temperature that hammerheads are most comfortable? And then they're actually predicting, based on our climate models, part of their current range. Is it going to get too hot for them? And then we can see already in other species of, for example, fish, that we're already seeing some poleward range shifts. As things get warmer, they're moving to temperatures where they're more comfortable. And if that's the case, we have to think about how we're managing the species. Are they, for example, maybe some of their preferred prey is going to go further north and that's going to make the hammerheads go further north? There's all sorts of questions conservation questions we can start to think about once we have that basic biology nailed down.
Speaker 2:Wild.
Speaker 1:I had no idea.
Speaker 2:This is where this conversation would go. I am just blown away.
Speaker 1:If it makes you feel better. It's not where I thought my dissertation was going to go either, but I love it.
Speaker 2:That is so cool.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Can I ask one more question about the Coke bottle tag thing? Totally Is it like the bat signal. When you get that text message You're like all right, alfred, time to fire up the like you're just got to get out there, right away.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, let me say this I've lost years of my life worth of worrying about these tags because, to give you a sense, each one of these tags, all the equipment I described, depending on what's in there, it can be upwards of $15,000 worth of equipment in each one of these tags.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:And I have. This project was funded with some really awesome funders, including Georgia Aquarium, that are really amazing at sponsoring research that's applied to conservation, and National Geographic and a bunch of other partners, and I still feel every time I watch a shark swim away with all of that equipment, I'm like God, I hope I get that back Right. It's just like a. So yeah, I just then. I'm pretty much useless for the rest of the day. I am so anxious about hearing from the tag and where I.
Speaker 1:I've tagged in a couple of different places. But if you're tagging off of where I live, one of the reasons why it's sharky and a good place to be is because we have the Gulf Stream that comes right north with all of this delicious prey food, right. But the Gulf Stream also moves really fast and so if one of the sharks that we tagged swims into the Gulf Stream and it pops off and I don't get the signal right away, it can be so far away like too far away before I even have the chance to get it back. So that's part of the reason why we only do one day deployments, because we just can't let the shark swim around for that long. They could go really far.
Speaker 2:You give it like a month and then it's impossibly far to wait. Oh yeah, Forget it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So it is definitely like the bad signal and I've had a couple of stressful nights where the tag comes off early and we can't go out and look for it when it's dark because we won't be able to see it. So then I'm just watching, as every time I get a signal or a transmission come through which can be every hour or even sooner I'm like how far has it gone? I'm really unpleasant to be around when that happens. I'm just a nervous Nelly.
Speaker 2:It sounds like when, when, like there's a I've talked to a couple astrophysicists or that are people that work with nasa and the same thing happens when stuff comes down from space oh my gosh, I can't even imagine yeah, yeah, it's the same thing like in the ocean and land somewhere out there and it pings the one, oh yeah this was on working on some dark matter thing. It was actually in the news and it landed in uh, the south american jungle, oh my gosh. And a jaguar took it yeah, oh my gosh, look it up a tree.
Speaker 2:And they're like they couldn't find the thing and they were like it's got to be here somewhere. And it was way up a tree. Oh, my gosh, jaguar took it. Yeah, I guess the same thing could happen with you. Some whale comes along, oh, and that's the end it.
Speaker 1:So I'm fortunate that I work on animals that don't really get eaten by other animals. But I have a friend that was working on much smaller fish and he was looking at their home range and he had this little tag on a fish and they don't move more than like a couple hundred meters a day. And then he checked his data and all of a sudden this fish was in like another country. I think this fish got eaten and I'm never getting that tag back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it got picked up and it's like in some dentist's office. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Like finding Nemo. Yeah, there's so many special and brilliant and inspiring parts about doing field work, but I have to be honest, this is part of it. There were times during my PhD that I was like why did I pick working on a critically endangered, hard to access animal that has really. And then we have finicky technology, Some of the tags we were using, everything would go right and we'd get it back and for some reason it just stopped recording and I'm like, with no explanation. It's so much of science and so much of science is just persisting through failure and you just have to be stubborn.
Speaker 1:You just have to be stubborn. And I, before I started working on sharks I had never worked on sharks and I went. My boss hired me for this and I started my PhD and I was like, are you sure? I've never handled anything larger than a dead snapper. But the skill set that is most important is a willingness to learn and being like self-sufficient. I read so many instruction manuals just front to back, trying to figure out some of this technology and then being like working in a team that's so important and, yeah, just being persistent.
Speaker 2:You're not alone. I've talked to so many scientists on my podcast and the ones that study animals. One of the things that they have like come to, as my wife would say, a come to Jesus moment is they're like why did I pick this animal? Dr Daniel Rivett comes to mind. She's studying polar bears.
Speaker 1:So cool.
Speaker 2:She's like why did I pick polar bears? They're smart enough to rip the thing off of it and destroy it. They're like what is this thing? Die whatever, or they leave them things out there to look at them and the polar bears like what's that? No, and you just destroy it and that's it for your technology. So exactly.
Speaker 1:But then it's also I'm sure I'm not alone in this experience either like I work with sharks all the time and I still, when I see them, it's just, it's so cool, right like the sheen. The excitement doesn't wear off, like the excitement of the job wears off because it's a job, right. You're like you're out on the boat and you're hot and you're tired or whatever, but actually it is. It's such a special and it's one that you definitely don't take for granted, to be able to see these animals up close, and it's a responsibility Like it's I think anyone would agree with this working on animals. When you're working with animals, there is there's so many like moral and ethical responsibilities of what you're asking something of them to try and get this data. And this is where, for example, it's really important that we're publishing this research, right, like we need to publish it and peer review it so it can be used for other people to build upon and expand on and then hopefully further the conservation of the species.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it eventually might become policy in the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hopefully.
Speaker 2:So very cool. And speaking of seeing them up close, do you dive with the sharks Are you like? Is that something that you do? Or you catch them in nets and look at them from that way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we so. To do this particular sort of work, we use a scientific fishing method that's like specifically permitted, and there's all sorts of ways that we fish for them that actually make it harder to catch them but make it safer for the animals If we do catch them, like using specific type of hooks and using the they're called drum lines what we use and it has a swivel at the bottom so if an animal bites into it they can just keep swimming in a huge circle so they can continue to breathe and not stay stressed. So that's what I do for these bio logging tags. But I do dive with sharks.
Speaker 1:I've been on a number of shark dives, for my own, for helping on research teams and then also for fun. Yeah, for fun, I did one. There's a really cool one. It's one of the largest uncaged shark dives and it's in Fiji. I was there doing research on invasive species years and years ago nothing to do with sharks, and that was super cool. But we, the Bahamas I've a lot of colleagues that work in the Bahamas, so I've been over there. There's some hammerheads that are residents in the wintertime, so we've been there a number of times to see them and they're big hammerheads, so that's always really special.
Speaker 2:Wow, you're braver than me.
Speaker 1:They're not interested in us, especially with all the dive gear on.
Speaker 3:I always feel good about that Like you got a big old tank on your back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess that do. Sharks get a bad rap for being scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they do get a bad rap and I think that really the root of it is just all animals deserve respect and space and, at the end of the day, the ocean is their home and when I'm entering their ocean, I'm entering their home and I need to show respect. And part of that means not harassing the animals in the water and giving them space, and I've never felt unsafe in the water with them and I've never felt unsafe on the boat handling them either. I think that's another important thing. Everything that goes into this research.
Speaker 1:The most important thing is the safety of the crew and the safety of the sharks. So we do so much training and have so many safety measures in place to make sure that happens and, for example, there's protocols of we do health checks on the sharks as soon as we bring them up and if the shark is too stressed out, we just let it go. You don't try to collect any data, because the point's to help the sharks, so you don't want to overly stress them. But honestly, the most dangerous part of my work sometimes people ask about that is just getting dehydrated and being out on boats all day long and keeping an eye on weather, especially in the summer, it can change so fast. So that's the only time I've ever been really spooked on a boat was because the weather turned and we had to really get ourselves out of a sticky situation.
Speaker 2:I guess that goes the same for where I live, because there's bears everywhere and I never think about how dangerous a grizzly bear is. I just they're just out there and you just got to treat them with respect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:In fairness to if you are, you do are in a grizzly bear encounter. You just don't have. You just have to be faster than the slowest person that you just got to. So I guess you just have to be faster than the slow swimmer in your case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's ever. If you ever have a shark in a situation where you are actually having a negative interaction with a shark, you're supposed to hit it on the nose or try to hit it in the eyes. But that is a extreme. I mean, it is the odds of having anything like that are so slim and I've never felt and this is. I'm also a recreational beach user. I'm at the beach all the time. I'm in the water. I'm a recreational scuba diver as well. I do it on vacation and I've never had a negative interaction.
Speaker 2:It's quite similar to everybody that uses the back country with bears too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, seriously, it's very, yeah, the same thing Treating them with respect and also making sure that what are some of the signs to look for? And if you need to, maybe get yourself out of a situation with bears, or so I'm told. I don't really know very much about bears. I'd have to read up on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it depends on the bear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't have grizzlies in Miami.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if the bear has white fur, just kiss your butt. Goodbye. That's how you do it, because it's a polar bear and you're done.
Speaker 1:And you're tech.
Speaker 2:Goodbye as well. They have no chill. Yeah, just moving on to a little bit, something a little different. Doc, could you talk to us about your book?
Speaker 1:Yes, I would love to. So this is my other life. When you're in graduate school or any kind of job, it's an important thing to have balance, and especially during COVID and things were shut down and my fieldwork was shut down, one of the ways that I you know a hobby of mine was writing and I've always enjoyed writing. I used to do it for my job and specifically writing about weird and wonderful ocean animals. I've just I was really fortunate that one of my previous jobs I got to write a lot of blogs and the answer was I got to write a lot of blogs about, and the answer was I got to write a lot of blogs about the ocean. And I just got to think, okay, what is something I want to learn more about, or what's a question that I have, and then research it for myself and write about it, and that actually turned into writing a little bit more longer form and it turned into a book.
Speaker 1:I have two books. My first one was the World of Coral Reefs, which I wrote mostly in COVID, and it's a nonfiction book for kids, mostly targeting age seven to 10. And it's all about the biology, ecology and conservation of coral reefs. So yeah, there's a lot of good, especially story books about the ocean, and there's a lot of good, especially story books about the ocean. And there's a lot of good like reference books, the encyclopedia feel or the eyewitness book feel, but I wanted to find something that was right in the middle. That this one's illustrated. It's gorgeous, there's an amazing illustrator that I worked with, and but it's still all nonfiction and all of the facts in it are from peer reviewed journal articles and I loved writing it. And then I loved writing it so much and thankfully the publisher liked it too that then I did a second book on octopuses called the Incredible Octopus, and that octopuses have always they've always been my favorite animals in the ocean. No offense to the sharks.
Speaker 2:They're neat.
Speaker 1:They're so interesting.
Speaker 2:Do you read the books to kids? Have you ever done that before?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I've read them. I go to libraries and schools and all kinds of things and typically the kids that I've worked with the best part of it. They can read the book themselves or we can read it together, but mostly what they want to do is read a little bit and then ask a ton of questions, which I love, and I think that's something I'm really proud of, that I get to bring as a writer and a scientist that they ask me about, they read, they ask me some of the stuff about the book or about something else in the ocean, or I have the fun experience of they ask me something I have no idea about and then we get to research it together and learn something new. So it's been really special that's so sweet about.
Speaker 2:like, the age group you that you're looking at aren't the little ones. Yeah, but I think it's by the time the kids get to me in high school. I try to keep that curiosity going because it gets kicked out of kids as they age a bit, which is unfortunate. But yeah, whenever we've taken Bunsen and Beaker to schools, especially the little kids have just such fun questions about that. Or sometimes they just have statements. They're not even a question. Your dog has a large tongue, I'm like is that a question? Yes, he does, that's true, very good.
Speaker 1:It is true, and even though my book targets seven to 10, I've gotten to present to all kinds of different audiences. So, for example, once I was at a library and I thought it was going to be middle schoolers and there wasn't one single kid in there that was over six. They were all little littles and I prepared this presentation. I was like this is these kids are going to need a number of more years before I think this is going to work. And it turned out that I just asked people their favorite ocean animal and then in the Coral Reef book fortunately, a lot of the things that they said whether that was a turtle or a crab I got to turn to a part of the book and say, oh, here's a turtle.
Speaker 1:I do also have Nemo in there, so that was a crowd pleaser. And then we got to learn about that together. And I think something that never ceases to humble me is how much information even young kids have already absorbed about the ocean right and the facts that they've learned. Especially. You've got a lot of shark enthusiasts out there that really know the facts, and that's always really fun for me because I get to essentially nerd out with other people that really enjoy the ocean as much as I do.
Speaker 2:Paleontologists say that as well how much they go to talk to little kids. They're like boy, they know a lot about dinosaurs.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, you know what? I actually, in one of my talks about sharks, had a kid ask me about dinosaurs and I was like we'll have to look that up together Because I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's so cute. Where can people find your book if they want to pick it up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, so you can find it on Amazon.
Speaker 2:Amazon Okay.
Speaker 1:You can also find it. It's under Hachette Publishing. So if you go there, if you search my name and you search coral reefs or octopus, it should show up. But Amazon or online at Barnes and Noble or Target or anything like that.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, so we'll have a. We'll have some links in the show notes. Everybody, thank you. We have a couple of standard questions we ask our guests about. One is a pet story, where we like to get to know the scientists a little bit more, and I was wondering if you could share a story about a pet from your life.
Speaker 1:That is such a good question. So I actually have a pet story that happened relatively recently and I have always been a huge animal lover. I grew up with animals and I grew up in a kind of a rural area and I rode horses all through my childhood and had my horse, King, who was a big gray horse and he was one of my just best friends all through my teenage years and he came to college with me. He came to graduate school with me. He's very he's a very well-educated horse and my most recent pet story is one that has a happy ending, Don't worry, but ties into science and he is an old man now and had a scary health issue that came up.
Speaker 1:That can happen sometimes in gray horses. It's essentially these tumors and it was not looking very good. But then they did an experimental treatment on him that they typically use on dogs and King was part of a clinical trial and it fixed all of it like healed all his tumors, and they were so shocked it's like he had such a good positive response to it and so now he's actually part of a veterinary study and he's going to help, you know, save other horses in the future. So I it was really special to me, because obviously I love him so much and also he is a scientist himself all of this.
Speaker 1:They went into remission or something yeah, they just, they like disappeared, they just disappeared. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:I can also give you a more upbeat one sure go ahead yeah, okay, so I do have a pet story and it's actually currently unfolding as we speak, because I have my dog, goose, here and Goose is super friendly and he always wants to make friends. And then, as of a week ago, we have two chickens named Polly and Minnie, and Goose is obsessed with the chickens. The only thing he wants to do is hang out with the chickens. He begs at the back door all day. He just wants to go out and stare at them and it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. They don't really want to be friends with him, but he is obsessed with them. He is on a one, he's got a one track mind. He's going to try to make these chickens his friend.
Speaker 2:Aw, that's great. We have chickens and our golden retriever wants to murder them oh really, yeah, two sides of two, it's the same point.
Speaker 1:I think the chickens think goose wants to murder them. Yeah, their survival instincts kick in. But I love the chickens, like they're just. They're so fun to watch and they're really sweet. And we have two indoor cats and an outdoor cat who adopted us, that just showed up on our porch one day and she'll also just sit there and watch the chickens. But I'm not sure that Carmela has the positive intent that Goose has.
Speaker 2:Thanks for sharing your pet story with us. That's awesome and we were chatting before. Goose has some burner in him, I believe.
Speaker 1:Goose yes. Like part burner, all burner burner he's part burner, he's a burnadoodle, so he's part burner, part poodle and he's the he just he's never met someone that he doesn't love. He loves everyone, including these chickens, but he it sometimes hurts my feelings because I think he'll meet someone and I think they could just take him home and he'd be perfectly happy because he just loves people so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, please don't go with the new people, stay with me yeah, exactly Stranger danger. Very sweet. And as we close, doc, we challenge all of our guests to share a super fact with us, something that you know, that when you tell people, it blows their mind a bit, and my mind, as always, has been blown many times talking to the guests this interview. But do you have any in the tank for us?
Speaker 1:I do have one, so great hammerheads are really top predators. People think about sharks as all being top predators, but that's not really true. There's lots of sharks that kind of sit right in the middle of the food chain. But big adult great hammerheads are true top predators and part of what makes them such good predators is because of how fast they can turn and they can really maneuver around prey and they actually use their hammer head or their cephalofoil to pin down prey like stingrays in order to eat them. So it really does come in handy.
Speaker 2:Oh my, like a battering ram.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just pin it down. Think of like pinning it down against the sea floor, so then you can take a big bite.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I bet you, the people in the Olympics right now in judo, would have liked to have a body type like that.
Speaker 1:Exactly, oh my gosh. Yeah, they are really evolutionarily designed to be top predators and they can go so fast. They can cut through the ocean. They're really hydrodynamic, so they are they're definitely at the top of the food chain.
Speaker 2:I did not know that about the hammerhead shark, so that is a very super fact. Thank you for sharing it, of course, as we wrap stuff up, doc, thank you so much for being a guest on our show today. Can people connect with you or follow you on social media? Do you have any social media handles?
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course, and I'm always really happy to connect. Thank you so so much for having me on today. If you want to follow up or have if anyone has questions about the sharks or the book or anything, I am on Twitter at ET Spencer. You can also find me on Instagram at Erin T Spencer, and I do have a website as well which includes links to the book, and that's also erintspencercom.
Speaker 2:There you are. I found you on Instagram. The Bunsen and Beaker account just followed you.
Speaker 1:Awesome, thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool. There's a picture of your book the Incredible Octopus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. It just came out this year. So I'm really lucky that I've gotten to share a lot and I've got some upcoming events down here in South Florida where I'll get to share it more with my local community.
Speaker 2:We will have links to Dr Spencer's handles, probably just the Twitter and the website, but you can find her on Instagram as well. So in our show notes One more time thanks, doc, for being a guest today. It was a treat, so very interesting and exciting to talk about sharks, and thank you for giving up your time to chat with us.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me and say hello to all the dogs. For me, but this was really so much fun.
Speaker 2:That's it for this week's show. Adam is in the middle of some pretty intense studying for his biochemistry degree, so, again, no family section this week. We'll get you caught up sooner or later. Special thanks to Dr Aaron Spencer, who talked to us about sharks, and a big thank you to the Paw Pack, the top tier, the top dogs and the teen dog tier. Thank you for supporting us. You get your name shouted out in the podcast. If you want to hear your name, sign up to be a member of the Paw Pack. The link is in our show notes. Take it away, chris.
Speaker 3:Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingue, susan Wagner, andrew Lin, helen Chin, Tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, holly Burge, brenda Clark, Anne Uchida, peggy McKeel, terry Adam, debbie Anderson, sandy Brimer, tracy Leinbaugh, marianne McNally and Ben Rathart.
Speaker 2:For science, empathy and cuteness.