1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:18,280 Today, I get to welcome into the warm glow of this zoologist's campfire a medical entomologist 2 00:00:18,280 --> 00:00:23,120 and public health biologist called Marietta Braks. 3 00:00:23,120 --> 00:00:27,280 She is a researcher at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the 4 00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:30,440 RIVM in the Netherlands in Utrecht. 5 00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:36,840 She has many, many scientific papers that are mostly on insects as disease vectors. 6 00:00:36,840 --> 00:00:43,160 And they range from what type of sweat mosquitoes like the most, how mosquitoes can take a plane 7 00:00:43,160 --> 00:00:49,320 to get somewhere, and how to map mosquitoes in other disease-garing arthropods in something 8 00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:51,720 called VectorNet. 9 00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:53,560 She's written books about the subject as well. 10 00:00:53,560 --> 00:01:00,720 I think about Lyman about mosquitoes, and she did her PhD at Wageningen University in 11 00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:06,680 exactly the same years that I did my masters there, but we never met. 12 00:01:06,680 --> 00:01:13,800 So she is here today because of her fantastic stories, but also to defend the honor of mosquito 13 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:19,760 chasers worldwide after the throwaway comment last week by Ruhl Walters that mosquito field 14 00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:22,440 work might not be all that exciting. 15 00:01:22,440 --> 00:01:27,080 Well, let's prove Ruhl wrong today. 16 00:01:27,080 --> 00:01:28,080 Marietta, welcome. 17 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:30,040 I take up the challenge. 18 00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:31,040 Thank you. 19 00:01:31,040 --> 00:01:37,560 Well, first of all, just to respond to that, snake chasers, they get all the glory, but 20 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:42,880 you actually chase the most dangerous creatures on Earth by body count, at least. 21 00:01:42,880 --> 00:01:43,880 Isn't that right? 22 00:01:43,880 --> 00:01:49,200 That's the popular saying, but actually, entomologists always say it's not the mosquito 23 00:01:49,200 --> 00:01:53,040 that is to blame, but it's the viruses it transmits. 24 00:01:53,040 --> 00:02:00,280 So actually, we are really very often very willing to not take that credit, although 25 00:02:00,280 --> 00:02:02,960 a lot of people want to be the most dangerous and stuff like that. 26 00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:05,960 But for whatever reason, we get that name very often. 27 00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:12,720 And it's more often that medical entomologists, at least that I'm a favor of, are in the business 28 00:02:12,720 --> 00:02:18,720 of not raising the crisis, but to calm people down because a lot of things are much more 29 00:02:18,720 --> 00:02:19,720 credited to insects. 30 00:02:19,720 --> 00:02:26,320 So I would like to give a little bit of the floor to the nice fieldwork and definitely 31 00:02:26,320 --> 00:02:34,920 exciting, maybe as exciting as a snake investigations and fieldwork, but also to enlighten a little 32 00:02:34,920 --> 00:02:41,840 bit on the fantastic work of a world of insects and not only nasty critters. 33 00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:43,440 Oh, no, no, no. 34 00:02:43,440 --> 00:02:45,440 I'd be the last to say that I love insects. 35 00:02:45,440 --> 00:02:50,280 Actually, if you could see around my room here, I have lots of living bugs. 36 00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:55,040 And I think you're one of those people who are really going for one type of animal. 37 00:02:55,040 --> 00:02:56,680 How did you get into biology? 38 00:02:56,680 --> 00:02:59,840 How did you get into chasing mosquitoes in the first place? 39 00:02:59,840 --> 00:03:05,200 Well, I got this invitation last week and I was thinking, strangely, a lot of people 40 00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:08,720 will not see me as a field biologist. 41 00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:11,000 I'm not a typical field biologist. 42 00:03:11,000 --> 00:03:17,560 And I was looking into why that is because recently I do a lot of field biology and I 43 00:03:17,560 --> 00:03:21,760 did a little bit throughout my career of 25, 30 years. 44 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:26,240 But I think it started with my dad and it happens to be his birthday or it should be 45 00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:27,240 his birthday. 46 00:03:27,240 --> 00:03:34,040 He would have been 87 this year today, but he already passed away in 87 by chance that 47 00:03:34,040 --> 00:03:35,520 is the similar date. 48 00:03:35,520 --> 00:03:37,360 And I was 17 so way too early. 49 00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:38,360 He was 50. 50 00:03:38,360 --> 00:03:39,360 But he was a farmer. 51 00:03:39,360 --> 00:03:45,400 He's a big farmer and I'm a daughter of him and together with my two brothers and two 52 00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:47,840 sisters, so a big family. 53 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:49,520 And we all are into biologists. 54 00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:51,880 So my brother took over the farm. 55 00:03:51,880 --> 00:03:54,760 My other brother was doing veterinary science. 56 00:03:54,760 --> 00:04:00,640 And my oldest sister is a biologist and my other sister is a molecular biologist by 57 00:04:00,640 --> 00:04:01,640 training. 58 00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:06,080 So the bug has been put there very early in life. 59 00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:12,240 And I think when I, so my dad took us, we lived in the countryside and it was not an 60 00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:17,360 ecological science or biology view to it, but it was just surrounding us. 61 00:04:17,360 --> 00:04:19,120 So I lived in the countryside. 62 00:04:19,120 --> 00:04:25,520 We would go on Sundays probably to have the wild kids out of the house. 63 00:04:25,520 --> 00:04:28,600 My dad took us for a walk just in the fields. 64 00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:31,640 There was nothing, no mountains, no nothing, a little bit of forest. 65 00:04:31,640 --> 00:04:36,800 And then we would pick flowers and we would see, you know, the Dutch flowers by the Dutch 66 00:04:36,800 --> 00:04:37,880 name. 67 00:04:37,880 --> 00:04:42,440 And then we looked in the booklet, but that was my memory since I'm five till 15 or something. 68 00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:45,680 And we did that a few times a year probably. 69 00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:49,880 We would go to the forest nearby because my grandma lived there. 70 00:04:49,880 --> 00:04:54,400 And I think when I went to the city to study, that was more to do city stuff. 71 00:04:54,400 --> 00:04:58,780 So I left the fields away. 72 00:04:58,780 --> 00:05:03,880 So I was not so used to go to Misiya and doing history and all kinds of things. 73 00:05:03,880 --> 00:05:10,120 And so when I went to go to college, I was much more interested in, I studied biology, 74 00:05:10,120 --> 00:05:16,960 but not to do fieldwork, but to do molecular stuff or do my old masses is in century ecology. 75 00:05:16,960 --> 00:05:22,960 So it's more into neurology, but from animal point of view. 76 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:29,600 So I was fascinated by the senses that animals had and that humans didn't have. 77 00:05:29,600 --> 00:05:36,640 I started my first year in human nutrition and then I found out that I didn't really 78 00:05:36,640 --> 00:05:38,360 was interested in humans at all. 79 00:05:38,360 --> 00:05:43,280 And I was much more interested in animals, not so much in plants my whole life. 80 00:05:43,280 --> 00:05:45,800 Plants is only now arriving. 81 00:05:45,800 --> 00:05:51,040 But well, judging from your background, you've gotten a little bit of love for plants as well. 82 00:05:51,040 --> 00:05:53,400 Yeah, everything comes a little bit in the slipstream. 83 00:05:53,400 --> 00:05:58,280 It's not I'm definitely not a taxonist. 84 00:05:58,280 --> 00:06:04,560 So I don't know things by name, but I appreciate the nature myself. 85 00:06:04,560 --> 00:06:08,960 So it's a little bit from that background that I thought when I went to study that I 86 00:06:08,960 --> 00:06:10,360 was already from the countryside. 87 00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:15,040 So I thought scouting as such was a little bit for urban kids and not from people from 88 00:06:15,040 --> 00:06:22,240 So I never considered my real biologists never did to work, but much more something that 89 00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:25,600 is there always like a normal thing. 90 00:06:25,600 --> 00:06:31,400 And now later in life, I appreciate it so much more that I found when I go into the 91 00:06:31,400 --> 00:06:37,160 fields that I reconnect with actually the normal that I really, really appreciate. 92 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:43,480 So I built it in and I got away from the policymaking and I'm actually now much more involved 93 00:06:43,480 --> 00:06:48,040 in arranging fieldwork also in the Netherlands and in the Caribbean. 94 00:06:48,040 --> 00:06:51,720 And so it's so that's the main places you go to for fieldwork at the Netherlands in the 95 00:06:51,720 --> 00:06:54,160 Caribbean or at this moment? 96 00:06:54,160 --> 00:06:55,160 Yes. 97 00:06:55,160 --> 00:06:56,160 Hmm. 98 00:06:56,160 --> 00:07:04,800 This since 2017, I have a project called mobilecom and that is short for capacity building for 99 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:10,280 mosquito borne disease control through sustainable mosquito management. 100 00:07:10,280 --> 00:07:11,280 Okay. 101 00:07:11,280 --> 00:07:18,760 And that is the Dutch, the kingdom of the Netherlands have six overseas territories in 102 00:07:18,760 --> 00:07:27,080 the Caribbean, which three are their own countries and three are special communities within the 103 00:07:27,080 --> 00:07:28,480 kingdom. 104 00:07:28,480 --> 00:07:31,600 And I imagine the fieldwork there is quite nice. 105 00:07:31,600 --> 00:07:33,600 I mean, definitely destination. 106 00:07:33,600 --> 00:07:34,600 Yeah. 107 00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:39,600 But the interesting part is that I like that much. 108 00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:41,120 We do it together with public health. 109 00:07:41,120 --> 00:07:46,480 That means it's very much connected to public health issues and it's not so much that we 110 00:07:46,480 --> 00:07:55,200 go alone in the fields, not to comment on, but there's a lot of work in the tropics where 111 00:07:55,200 --> 00:08:00,800 Western people go there, go into the fields, have maybe two field assistants and then take 112 00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:07,400 their data back and there's not a lot of connection with the local people. 113 00:08:07,400 --> 00:08:12,320 This is together with the local vector control and the public health department. 114 00:08:12,320 --> 00:08:16,560 And I work predominantly on the yellow fever mosquitoes there. 115 00:08:16,560 --> 00:08:18,680 So it's an urban mosquito. 116 00:08:18,680 --> 00:08:20,360 So you come to people's homes. 117 00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:26,800 So my fieldwork is actually in the Caribbean when we are doing a gypti work together with 118 00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:30,920 the vector control unit is to visit people at home. 119 00:08:30,920 --> 00:08:32,640 What is very interesting. 120 00:08:32,640 --> 00:08:38,000 So you're very involved in the culture and you have to adapt and see how it goes. 121 00:08:38,000 --> 00:08:46,440 And that's a wonderful way of doing fieldwork, I think, because I depend on local teams and 122 00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:50,000 they invite me to go with them, but I go with them. 123 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:53,720 And so you're very ingrained in the culture. 124 00:08:53,720 --> 00:08:58,840 And that's very similar to what we did for fieldwork where we were doing my work for 125 00:08:58,840 --> 00:09:00,080 POSOC in Florida. 126 00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:02,360 We went to Brazil. 127 00:09:02,360 --> 00:09:07,560 So a lot of this agency gypti work has been done in urban fieldwork. 128 00:09:07,560 --> 00:09:09,520 Oh, well, that's fieldwork too. 129 00:09:09,520 --> 00:09:12,200 And as you said, you go into people's houses. 130 00:09:12,200 --> 00:09:18,480 I imagine you really get to know a country if you get that intimate with how people live. 131 00:09:18,480 --> 00:09:19,480 Right? 132 00:09:19,480 --> 00:09:21,960 Yeah, they can also not open the door. 133 00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:27,720 So do you knock on the door and you say, I want to catch your mosquitoes or what happens? 134 00:09:27,720 --> 00:09:30,280 It depends a little bit on the project. 135 00:09:30,280 --> 00:09:36,760 So after I did what you mentioned, did my PhD in Wageningen, I went to United States 136 00:09:36,760 --> 00:09:39,120 and I was in Florida for a while. 137 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:45,120 And for Florida, I was doing a project together with Brazil because I was working on invasion 138 00:09:45,120 --> 00:09:50,360 biology from the Jalafuzian mosquito and the Tiger mosquito. 139 00:09:50,360 --> 00:09:52,360 It's an item that is a theme. 140 00:09:52,360 --> 00:09:56,360 If you stay long in the topic, everything comes back again. 141 00:09:56,360 --> 00:10:01,240 It's a theme very current in Europe because it's Egypt. 142 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:04,240 I is encroaching on European continent too. 143 00:10:04,240 --> 00:10:09,480 But at that time, it just arrived in Florida, but also in Brazil. 144 00:10:09,480 --> 00:10:17,840 So we were doing an investigation how the Egypt and the Tiger mosquito would meet and 145 00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:19,760 who would be the best competitor. 146 00:10:19,760 --> 00:10:22,560 And we found out that that is very context dependent. 147 00:10:22,560 --> 00:10:28,160 So it's different whether you are in an urban or very slum area or you're in the forest. 148 00:10:28,160 --> 00:10:35,280 And it was actually, we did this project in two cities in Florida, West Palm Beach and 149 00:10:35,280 --> 00:10:39,760 two sites in West Palm Beach and in Rio de Janeiro. 150 00:10:39,760 --> 00:10:47,120 And we had the transects going from favela, so from the slums to the forest. 151 00:10:47,120 --> 00:10:50,560 But Florida doesn't have a real slum area, not a real forest area. 152 00:10:50,560 --> 00:10:56,920 We only did the tree in between that will say that it's rural, suburbia and urban. 153 00:10:56,920 --> 00:11:01,760 And so just for context, the transect is a line you draw on a map that you want to pretty 154 00:11:01,760 --> 00:11:04,320 much sample all across that line, right? 155 00:11:04,320 --> 00:11:06,920 Yeah, we actually had only five points. 156 00:11:06,920 --> 00:11:08,480 So it's not exactly like that. 157 00:11:08,480 --> 00:11:12,680 But in Brazil, we had five points in two different cities. 158 00:11:12,680 --> 00:11:23,640 And the five points was from slum area, suburbia, urban rule and I'm sorry, I'm going the wrong 159 00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:24,640 direct exit. 160 00:11:24,640 --> 00:11:27,520 So forest rule, suburbia, urban slum area. 161 00:11:27,520 --> 00:11:28,520 Wow. 162 00:11:28,520 --> 00:11:29,520 Okay. 163 00:11:29,520 --> 00:11:33,840 And then you go and knock on doors and say, yeah, so you cannot do that as a Dutch citizen 164 00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:39,480 working in Florida and go in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and think that will go fine. 165 00:11:39,480 --> 00:11:43,080 So we go with the local team and that was great. 166 00:11:43,080 --> 00:11:53,080 So yeah, it is actually one time talking about not very campfire like but very exciting. 167 00:11:53,080 --> 00:12:00,400 We had this of course planned in Rio de Janeiro with my local scientists and some team and 168 00:12:00,400 --> 00:12:02,400 the local vector control team. 169 00:12:02,400 --> 00:12:05,560 And we put OV traps in people's home. 170 00:12:05,560 --> 00:12:07,280 That's what our investigation was. 171 00:12:07,280 --> 00:12:11,120 So you need that close to the home. 172 00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:14,920 And in this case, we would put traps there and then we collect them the next week. 173 00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:17,440 And you need approval obviously. 174 00:12:17,440 --> 00:12:24,160 And at one time we could not come because there was a riot and the police effort in the Rosinha. 175 00:12:24,160 --> 00:12:28,000 Rosinha is one of the biggest favelas of Rio de Janeiro. 176 00:12:28,000 --> 00:12:30,400 And then we went the next day. 177 00:12:30,400 --> 00:12:33,360 Like nothing happened. 178 00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:39,200 It's such an intricate thing of a society there that the next day you can come there 179 00:12:39,200 --> 00:12:40,640 and all the fear is gone. 180 00:12:40,640 --> 00:12:43,200 And you are there with people and they know where to go. 181 00:12:43,200 --> 00:12:45,880 So it was actually, you don't have to decide. 182 00:12:45,880 --> 00:12:47,360 You just tangle along. 183 00:12:47,360 --> 00:12:54,000 But then you see people's home, you know how they live. 184 00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:57,520 My Portuguese is not so good that you can have long conversations. 185 00:12:57,520 --> 00:13:01,000 I could only talk mosquitoes. 186 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:06,720 I have a pretty good vocabulary for mosquito Portuguese. 187 00:13:06,720 --> 00:13:08,440 Not so much for other things. 188 00:13:08,440 --> 00:13:12,320 And then you don't ask too many questions and people open the door for you and you see 189 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:18,000 in the house and you try to be as calm and as you can be and do your work. 190 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:24,480 And then you see obviously, especially when this trend is from the favela to the urban 191 00:13:24,480 --> 00:13:28,160 area that is quite a stretch of society. 192 00:13:28,160 --> 00:13:31,480 And I think that's what I found that I like. 193 00:13:31,480 --> 00:13:37,160 I like science, but as a real scientist, I don't really care too much of what the question 194 00:13:37,160 --> 00:13:38,160 is. 195 00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:41,280 Any question is interesting, but I like the work. 196 00:13:41,280 --> 00:13:42,280 I see. 197 00:13:42,280 --> 00:13:43,280 Yeah. 198 00:13:43,280 --> 00:13:47,240 And that I think holds for a lot of things. 199 00:13:47,240 --> 00:13:50,120 And maybe that's why I'm not so much an academic anymore. 200 00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:53,280 I'm a scientist, but I'm not an academia anymore. 201 00:13:53,280 --> 00:13:54,280 Right. 202 00:13:54,280 --> 00:13:57,680 Well, no, and doing very useful work. 203 00:13:57,680 --> 00:14:01,880 So did you ever get any strange responses from people when you go in there and say, 204 00:14:01,880 --> 00:14:06,760 I want to put this thing here so the mosquito can lay their eggs or? 205 00:14:06,760 --> 00:14:13,320 Well, interestingly, I did is that I was in, we did this also in Florida and we were in 206 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:15,400 West Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. 207 00:14:15,400 --> 00:14:26,840 It was about two days after the scare of the toxins that was the anthrax scare in Florida. 208 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:31,400 And of course, that's not a very good point to knock on people's door and put something 209 00:14:31,400 --> 00:14:32,600 outside their door. 210 00:14:32,600 --> 00:14:36,760 So there was a lot of fear that they. 211 00:14:36,760 --> 00:14:37,760 So we got rejected. 212 00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:41,200 And I was doing it together with my Brazilian colleagues. 213 00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:48,360 So you can imagine that you're in West Palm Beach with two ladies who speak funky English, 214 00:14:48,360 --> 00:14:52,200 putting a pot outside when there was a scare that there was anthrax attack. 215 00:14:52,200 --> 00:14:57,680 So that was an interesting time and then that is what we till work and urban areas. 216 00:14:57,680 --> 00:15:01,400 Then people would say, don't enter. 217 00:15:01,400 --> 00:15:06,720 And we always found out that suburbia is the worst to work at. 218 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:07,720 Really? 219 00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:08,720 Oh, urban areas. 220 00:15:08,720 --> 00:15:09,720 It's nice. 221 00:15:09,720 --> 00:15:11,720 People are welcoming, especially slum areas. 222 00:15:11,720 --> 00:15:14,680 They're super happy rural areas also. 223 00:15:14,680 --> 00:15:19,280 Suburbia, they like to keep the door closed for air conditioning air come out, straight 224 00:15:19,280 --> 00:15:20,520 people coming in. 225 00:15:20,520 --> 00:15:24,960 So we would get water through the door and then never invited in. 226 00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:25,960 It's interesting. 227 00:15:25,960 --> 00:15:26,960 Okay. 228 00:15:26,960 --> 00:15:31,360 Well, and is that the same in Brazil as in Florida? 229 00:15:31,360 --> 00:15:36,360 Yeah, I think it does, of course, a little bit of difference in that. 230 00:15:36,360 --> 00:15:40,000 That there's a little bit more human interaction. 231 00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:43,120 It's a little bit of warm South American attitudes. 232 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:48,200 So in general, Brazil is a little bit more exciting to work in than in suburbia, Florida. 233 00:15:48,200 --> 00:15:49,200 Yeah. 234 00:15:49,200 --> 00:15:51,920 More riots, I imagine, at least back in the day. 235 00:15:51,920 --> 00:15:58,200 No, no, no, but also welcoming people interested in what you do. 236 00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:09,400 But also in Florida, we had, for example, in Florida, we came one time in the urban slum 237 00:16:09,400 --> 00:16:10,400 area. 238 00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:14,480 It was a neighborhood in West Palm Beach and we entered there and I see that one of the 239 00:16:14,480 --> 00:16:18,160 guys have a ankle band. 240 00:16:18,160 --> 00:16:22,040 And my Brazilian colleague says, like, oh, that's very fashionable. 241 00:16:22,040 --> 00:16:23,040 What is that? 242 00:16:23,040 --> 00:16:27,080 I'm like, well, it's Traca. 243 00:16:27,080 --> 00:16:31,840 So I had to tell her that I'm never afraid for that. 244 00:16:31,840 --> 00:16:33,360 But of course, nothing is going to happen there. 245 00:16:33,360 --> 00:16:35,360 But that's something you run into in. 246 00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:39,480 It's not a very campfire kind of story, but that happens all the time. 247 00:16:39,480 --> 00:16:46,160 If you visit 15 houses a day behind every house is a new story. 248 00:16:46,160 --> 00:16:48,720 So yeah, that's very interesting. 249 00:16:48,720 --> 00:16:50,680 You must have met a lot of people. 250 00:16:50,680 --> 00:16:56,640 Well before we get into the campfire stories, as you say, I have to ask because I don't 251 00:16:56,640 --> 00:17:00,440 speak to many mosquito experts. 252 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:07,560 And so as one of the greatest mosquito experts, what do you do to avoid getting stung by mosquitoes? 253 00:17:07,560 --> 00:17:13,160 I've heard stories, people eating a lot of garlic, people spraying all sorts of things 254 00:17:13,160 --> 00:17:16,960 on themselves, washing, not washing. 255 00:17:16,960 --> 00:17:17,960 What's the trick? 256 00:17:17,960 --> 00:17:19,840 First of all, they don't sting, eh? 257 00:17:19,840 --> 00:17:25,640 They bite just for a little, since you asked me. 258 00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:28,640 That's what we say. 259 00:17:28,640 --> 00:17:33,840 I think one of the reasons I'm still in mosquito science is because mosquitoes don't bug me 260 00:17:33,840 --> 00:17:34,840 that much. 261 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:38,200 So I don't get big bites. 262 00:17:38,200 --> 00:17:46,640 During my PhD, I have, I wanted to be tough and I fed my own mosquito colony one time 263 00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:52,520 because our lab personnel did that and you want to be blood brothers with your personnel. 264 00:17:52,520 --> 00:17:54,320 So I thought I will do it myself. 265 00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:55,640 So hold on. 266 00:17:55,640 --> 00:17:58,160 Feeding means giving your own blood, right? 267 00:17:58,160 --> 00:17:59,160 By the arm. 268 00:17:59,160 --> 00:18:00,160 Okay. 269 00:18:00,160 --> 00:18:02,880 So you stick your arm into a cage full of mosquitoes. 270 00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:03,880 Okay. 271 00:18:03,880 --> 00:18:08,040 So we did, in Wageningen University, we did olfaction. 272 00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:11,280 We studied olfaction by mosquitoes. 273 00:18:11,280 --> 00:18:18,840 So you can also blood feed mosquitoes with man brains and stuff like that. 274 00:18:18,840 --> 00:18:23,320 But of course, there's a little bit, a bottleneck in which of the mosquitoes can do that or 275 00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:24,320 not. 276 00:18:24,320 --> 00:18:28,760 Well, if you feed them the normal way, there's no selection in whether they can find you 277 00:18:28,760 --> 00:18:32,520 or if they can pierce through a membrane. 278 00:18:32,520 --> 00:18:38,600 So the Wageningen University fades all their breeding. 279 00:18:38,600 --> 00:18:44,080 They breed mosquitoes by feeding them on human blood unless they do virus experiments. 280 00:18:44,080 --> 00:18:50,040 At least that was in the time that I was studying there between 95 and 99. 281 00:18:50,040 --> 00:18:53,360 I did it once and then the next day I had no problem. 282 00:18:53,360 --> 00:18:57,680 But the day after, there were like 30 mosquitoes bites and it became one big heart. 283 00:18:57,680 --> 00:18:58,680 Oh. 284 00:18:58,680 --> 00:19:05,000 So I was a little bit too enthusiastic about it, but it might be possible that I did something 285 00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:10,920 with my system because after that, my body doesn't even make bombs or even doesn't 286 00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:11,920 reach anything. 287 00:19:11,920 --> 00:19:12,920 Really? 288 00:19:12,920 --> 00:19:13,920 Yeah. 289 00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:15,640 So I don't do anything. 290 00:19:15,640 --> 00:19:19,840 So that's the trick then to get stung a lot and then after that, hopefully your body is 291 00:19:19,840 --> 00:19:20,840 used a lot. 292 00:19:20,840 --> 00:19:21,840 Bitten a lot? 293 00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:22,840 Ah, bitten a lot. 294 00:19:22,840 --> 00:19:24,600 Well, they do inject something. 295 00:19:24,600 --> 00:19:33,240 So what we say in Dutch, it rhymes in Dutch, but not in English, is that you sting with 296 00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:37,120 your butt and you bite with your mouth. 297 00:19:37,120 --> 00:19:38,120 And that's the difference. 298 00:19:38,120 --> 00:19:39,120 Yeah. 299 00:19:39,120 --> 00:19:40,120 It is. 300 00:19:40,120 --> 00:19:42,400 It's not what comes out, but it's actually what you take in. 301 00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:44,880 And when you sting, you usually don't take anything. 302 00:19:44,880 --> 00:19:47,080 No, that's right. 303 00:19:47,080 --> 00:19:48,080 That's right. 304 00:19:48,080 --> 00:19:49,080 So it's feeding. 305 00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:50,080 I see. 306 00:19:50,080 --> 00:19:53,440 Anyway, that's different. 307 00:19:53,440 --> 00:19:58,920 We did it in Florida again and I did an experiment, what the difference between chicken blood 308 00:19:58,920 --> 00:20:04,760 and human blood is for the progeny of Ades Egypti and Ades Albopictus, the yellow fever 309 00:20:04,760 --> 00:20:08,200 mosquito and the tiger mosquito. 310 00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:11,280 And I did it a little bit more controlled. 311 00:20:11,280 --> 00:20:18,920 So I had mosquitoes in a small tube and I would feed them and I would count how often 312 00:20:18,920 --> 00:20:23,480 they fed and how many eggs they laid and if there is at the end at a lifetime, whether 313 00:20:23,480 --> 00:20:24,720 they die early or not. 314 00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:30,960 So again, this is feeding with your own blood or I put my arm on the tube where there's 315 00:20:30,960 --> 00:20:32,680 mesh and they bite. 316 00:20:32,680 --> 00:20:34,560 Yeah, not for the faint of heart. 317 00:20:34,560 --> 00:20:35,560 All right. 318 00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:41,280 Well, I had one of my students breathing headlights on their arms for about two months. 319 00:20:41,280 --> 00:20:42,280 Really? 320 00:20:42,280 --> 00:20:43,280 Yeah. 321 00:20:43,280 --> 00:20:44,280 How do you do that? 322 00:20:44,280 --> 00:20:48,400 Do you have to walk around with a box all the time or really? 323 00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:49,720 No, another box. 324 00:20:49,720 --> 00:20:58,840 We made it under a bandage where I put a little arena from bombing paper, just like a thick 325 00:20:58,840 --> 00:20:59,840 piece of paper. 326 00:20:59,840 --> 00:21:05,160 I put an arena and then I put it on so it was not a box. 327 00:21:05,160 --> 00:21:12,560 And then with a tuft of hair and then we had one, two, three, four, five, six lights in 328 00:21:12,560 --> 00:21:13,560 there. 329 00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:18,120 I always tell my students that to know something about your animal, you have to spend some 330 00:21:18,120 --> 00:21:19,600 time with your animal. 331 00:21:19,600 --> 00:21:20,600 Absolutely. 332 00:21:20,600 --> 00:21:25,880 And I think that's for anything, but with, of course, blood feeding insects, they're 333 00:21:25,880 --> 00:21:32,240 notoriously hard to breed on something else because they need, I mean, you can feed them 334 00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:34,320 sugar, but they have to reproduce. 335 00:21:34,320 --> 00:21:35,320 Yeah. 336 00:21:35,320 --> 00:21:42,400 The point why they are blood feeding is because they use, obviously, the protein to make eggs. 337 00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:43,400 Okay. 338 00:21:43,400 --> 00:21:44,400 So they need it. 339 00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:45,400 Yes. 340 00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:49,160 They're very hard to have a colony and no blood feeding for blood feeding insects. 341 00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:51,360 So there's always an issue. 342 00:21:51,360 --> 00:21:55,000 And very often these vectors are very host specific. 343 00:21:55,000 --> 00:21:57,160 So they like you, like catalyze. 344 00:21:57,160 --> 00:21:58,920 You cannot put it on a rabbit. 345 00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:01,120 No, I see. 346 00:22:01,120 --> 00:22:02,120 So you have to walk around. 347 00:22:02,120 --> 00:22:03,120 It is Egypt. 348 00:22:03,120 --> 00:22:06,120 I doesn't feed on chicken either, preferentially. 349 00:22:06,120 --> 00:22:07,120 Okay. 350 00:22:07,120 --> 00:22:10,520 So you really have to use humans, I guess. 351 00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:15,640 I was keeping land leeches for fun. 352 00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:16,640 Yes. 353 00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,080 And they didn't want to feed on me for some reason. 354 00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:20,080 I don't know why. 355 00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:26,160 And so I fed them goat's blood that I got from a befriended vet. 356 00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:27,160 Yeah. 357 00:22:27,160 --> 00:22:31,080 But it contained heparin and they all died. 358 00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:39,080 Blood feeding is, you can imagine that the digestion is, preference is just a co-evolution. 359 00:22:39,080 --> 00:22:43,280 The co-evolve together. 360 00:22:43,280 --> 00:22:45,600 So you cannot be good in everything. 361 00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:46,960 So you are specialized. 362 00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:52,920 So this was the experiment also about because the yellow fever mosquito prefers humans above 363 00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:59,320 anything and the target mosquito is a little bit considered as overfield, meaning that 364 00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:06,680 it also bites other mammals than only humans. 365 00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:12,160 And there is of course a different cow blood and human blood is not the same. 366 00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:19,080 And the enzymes to digest it is not as efficient than for your preferred host. 367 00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:25,400 So you can imagine that your progeny is the amount of eggs you can lay or the quality 368 00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:29,000 of eggs is different, which blood you take. 369 00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,960 Very often they can, but it's not as efficient. 370 00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:38,840 And yeah, if they're hungry, they will take something less tasty than what they really 371 00:23:38,840 --> 00:23:39,840 like. 372 00:23:39,840 --> 00:23:40,840 Well, some don't. 373 00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:41,840 Some will refuse. 374 00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:48,960 So the specialists, the 3500 plus species of mosquitoes in the world, so they have their 375 00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:49,960 own thing. 376 00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:52,280 So some will eat anything. 377 00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:53,400 Some are very specific. 378 00:23:53,400 --> 00:23:55,520 Some probably can't. 379 00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:56,520 But there's a difference. 380 00:23:56,520 --> 00:23:57,520 Yeah. 381 00:23:57,520 --> 00:23:59,600 That's what I can just imagine. 382 00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:04,920 So these technicians that you mentioned in the lab, so they feed the mosquitoes every 383 00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:07,680 week or so by putting their arm in there. 384 00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:12,560 Yeah, we had, I think that was a schedule maybe twice a week and it was hundreds. 385 00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:14,760 Oh, so that's dedication. 386 00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:17,520 We really appreciated them. 387 00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:18,520 Yes. 388 00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:19,520 Ah, wow. 389 00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:20,520 I can not imagine. 390 00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,480 But I imagine they don't get any more bumps, right? 391 00:24:23,480 --> 00:24:24,480 Their body. 392 00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:25,480 No, no, no. 393 00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:28,400 Their body is, some people obviously can't. 394 00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:34,840 So you will not do that when you will have like this big histamine outbreak the whole 395 00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:35,840 time. 396 00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:38,000 So yeah, it's amazing. 397 00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:42,160 So that's what we do, dedication for our science, right? 398 00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:43,160 Definitely. 399 00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:47,240 Does anything ever go wrong in the lab, like escapes or? 400 00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:50,720 Well, these were non-infected. 401 00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:55,960 When I was working there, we were much more interested in the insects themselves because 402 00:24:55,960 --> 00:24:59,760 it was all faction, we didn't do infected mosquitoes. 403 00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,440 Now I left there in 1999. 404 00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:08,440 So now they have whole Beasel 3 lab where they do infection experiments and then it's 405 00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:12,600 important that they don't escape. 406 00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:15,240 Usually the mosquitoes we worked on are tropical mosquitoes. 407 00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:21,000 We tried not that they're the escape, but they are not going to survive. 408 00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:26,320 In Florida, both the Tiger mosquito and the Yellow Fever mosquito were present. 409 00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:31,880 And so it's also not so important that you just worked with a local mosquito species. 410 00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:37,120 So it becomes very important when it's an invaded mosquito that is not there or it's 411 00:25:37,120 --> 00:25:38,480 an infected mosquito. 412 00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:40,600 You definitely should not want to lose them. 413 00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:46,080 No, but it's not like when you're in the lab or in the cafeteria near the lab, you're 414 00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:48,200 suddenly attacked by some exotic mosquitoes. 415 00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:52,800 Oh, I will not guarantee that there might be more mosquitoes at the entomology lab, but 416 00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:53,880 that's not the intention. 417 00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:58,600 So you keep them in the cage and they're fine. 418 00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:04,600 Well, you know, thinking about my lab, we've had a few scorpion breakouts here and there. 419 00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:05,800 And they're a lot bigger. 420 00:26:05,800 --> 00:26:09,200 So I imagine flying things that are really small like that. 421 00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,440 Yeah, you don't become very popular. 422 00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:20,440 So you mentioned before we start recording whether we can find someone or trap someone 423 00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:22,240 in the mosquito cage. 424 00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:29,360 Actually when we were in Florida, we were with four ladies from Europe and we were just 425 00:26:29,360 --> 00:26:33,400 starting our early 30s, but we were 30 year old. 426 00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:39,400 And Florida at that time, it was before 9-11, there were a lot of flight schools there. 427 00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:40,400 Sure. 428 00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:45,680 And flight schools are generally inhabited by 21 year old guys who are sent there by 429 00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:48,240 their parents to have a career. 430 00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:52,720 After 9-11, that whole plummeted, but at the time that I was there in 2000, that was all 431 00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:53,720 up and running. 432 00:26:53,720 --> 00:27:01,840 And so we, this was two Belgian ladies, one, two students from Belgium, me and an English 433 00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:08,920 lady who was working there, was run with these young guys because that's the only, because 434 00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:13,440 Florida is known for being a retired state, except when you have a field station. 435 00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:21,800 So we were about the only 30 year old ladies from abroad and then 200 pilots. 436 00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:26,040 And Sabine was, I was not hanging too much with pilots, but Sabine, my colleague was 437 00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:32,240 and at the moment, they had practical jokes at some point, she had this huge velvet box 438 00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:39,920 and she gave it to someone and we just put hundreds of mosquitoes in there. 439 00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:45,040 And so he opened the box and thinking we had a present and that his whole house was full 440 00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:48,400 with hungry female mosquitoes. 441 00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:53,040 So if you, it's a very good, they were bugging her for a long time for just having practical 442 00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:54,040 pranks. 443 00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:55,040 I can imagine. 444 00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:56,040 Yeah. 445 00:27:56,040 --> 00:28:01,640 Anybody will want to do, I think everybody can imagine somebody, they would want to send 446 00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:03,000 a box like that. 447 00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:04,000 Yeah. 448 00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:06,600 So and you cannot get them back in the box. 449 00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:13,840 So he probably was really bugged with that for considerable time. 450 00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:18,120 How long would they survive if you have a hungry mosquito in your house? 451 00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:19,120 How long do they live? 452 00:28:19,120 --> 00:28:23,760 Oh, in general, these mosquitoes, they probably on average live three weeks. 453 00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:24,760 Okay. 454 00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:25,760 That's a terribly long time. 455 00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:33,240 If they feed on you, then you have your surrounding invested with newborn mosquitoes too because 456 00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:36,320 they take anything, they love it around your house. 457 00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:43,760 So now that, that they probably bombed it in the sense like they just bought probably 458 00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:50,360 some closed doors and went to the grocery store and got some inside. 459 00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:52,240 I would not do that, but probably they did. 460 00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:53,240 Sector side bombs. 461 00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:54,240 Yes. 462 00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:56,240 I would do that. 463 00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:57,240 Yeah. 464 00:28:57,240 --> 00:28:58,240 Exactly. 465 00:28:58,240 --> 00:28:59,240 Oh, wow. 466 00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:04,440 That's, that's a terrible practical joke, but yeah, it's a good one. 467 00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:10,040 She came home one time and the whole house was covered in cell phone. 468 00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:12,240 So now it was totally accurate. 469 00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:13,240 Oh, right. 470 00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,800 So it was going over and back with the practical jokes. 471 00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:21,720 This was definitely defense. 472 00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:22,720 Very good one. 473 00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:23,720 Very good one. 474 00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:24,720 Absolutely. 475 00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:38,400 And in the field, well, you say you are in exotic places, Brazil, the Caribbean. 476 00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:47,200 What have you encountered there that was funny, dangerous, maybe scary? 477 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:48,480 It started a little bit. 478 00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:54,280 I got actually a lab job for my post-op, for my PhD, but during my interview, they asked 479 00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:58,960 me, would you mind going to Tanzania, Africa to do some fieldwork? 480 00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,400 Yeah, that was my reaction too. 481 00:30:01,400 --> 00:30:07,000 And I came from, I had never been with my family on travels. 482 00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:12,280 We were a farmer family, so we would stay in house and not in the area, not go on flight, 483 00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:13,800 holidays or to Spain. 484 00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:17,960 And I always had this really big urge, but till I was 18, I never traveled abroad. 485 00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:18,960 Okay. 486 00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:23,360 By that time, I had been twice or three times with friends in Europe. 487 00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:27,480 So when they asked me if I wanted to go to Africa, that was when I applied for the job 488 00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:32,800 after my masses, it was like, oh, great. 489 00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:35,680 And only fair enough because you cannot get a PhD in malaria mosquitoes. 490 00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,160 I never have seen a real malaria mosquito, right? 491 00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:42,080 I thought I would just not be honored. 492 00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:43,080 That would be ridiculous. 493 00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:48,720 So they gave me the opportunity and I went to Tanzania and that was, I think I was, that 494 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:52,720 was in 97, I think. 495 00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:56,960 And I was 25, 26. 496 00:30:56,960 --> 00:31:01,240 And all by myself and that was quite interesting. 497 00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:08,240 I only stayed there for two months, but in the two months I had, first of all, the child 498 00:31:08,240 --> 00:31:10,680 of my supervisor passed away from malaria. 499 00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:11,680 Oh, for pneumonia. 500 00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:16,840 Ponemonia, he already lost a child of malaria. 501 00:31:16,840 --> 00:31:29,240 So this is an educated person who even in Africa cannot manage to keep your child safe. 502 00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:34,600 That was quite a wake up call because he was a vet. 503 00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:39,800 He was a personal vet, but worked in factor control, factor stuff. 504 00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:41,800 So that was very intense. 505 00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:49,600 I went to the funeral in Tanzania and that was obviously an intense thing. 506 00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:56,280 And I had to travel from that place with my electric nets in the bus to go, I think 700 507 00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:59,440 kilometers to the other side of the country because I was going to go with him. 508 00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:03,600 I was going to pick him up and then we would travel together to the southern part of Tanzania. 509 00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:04,600 Okay. 510 00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:08,080 Actually, he could not do that because he had a morning period and had to stay in to 511 00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:09,080 his family. 512 00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:18,160 So I had to go to the other side of the country by bus train and I arrived there and people 513 00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:19,160 asked me so. 514 00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:21,840 But it was in the middle of the night. 515 00:32:21,840 --> 00:32:27,080 I had been there two months before, but that was during daylight and now I can go there. 516 00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:35,800 So I arrived there, pitch black train station and people came to me and I said, who are 517 00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:36,800 you? 518 00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:43,080 I'm your doctor and I thought I was picked up so I go into their car and I was brought 519 00:32:43,080 --> 00:32:44,080 to my colleague. 520 00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:47,080 I knock on his door and he says, are you here? 521 00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:50,440 He had no idea that I arrived. 522 00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:52,200 They were not his drivers. 523 00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:56,160 They were just random people that put two people together and it happened to be okay. 524 00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:57,160 And I'm like, wow. 525 00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:58,160 Great. 526 00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:00,600 So that was fantastic. 527 00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:03,120 And then he applied for a job in Kenya. 528 00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:08,960 So we were going to the field and I was there by myself with two Swahilian speaking Tanzanians 529 00:33:08,960 --> 00:33:11,440 who I totally trusted but not very communicative. 530 00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:15,400 No, I can imagine that's a problem. 531 00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:21,360 And then we were catching mosquitoes with electric nets. 532 00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:22,880 Yes, you mentioned them. 533 00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:24,000 How does that work? 534 00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:25,000 Just briefly. 535 00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:30,560 Well, it's like your mosquito, it's your fly catcher that you have and then they get 536 00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:37,000 electrocuted and it's a certain voltage on it and then they fall in soap under the thing 537 00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:38,000 and then you collect it. 538 00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:39,000 Right. 539 00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:44,280 And we added some odors that we got from myself, my tent or other places and see some difference 540 00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:48,040 if they, some infection research. 541 00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:54,640 One time we found a bat in there who was going to the mosquitoes attracted to the odors but 542 00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:56,720 yeah, caught itself into the electric net. 543 00:33:56,720 --> 00:34:01,160 And then we got, it's very strange when you look for mosquitoes and then you look like, 544 00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:02,160 what is that? 545 00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:05,600 And then you focus out like, oh, it was dead. 546 00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:08,560 It was electrocuted itself. 547 00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:09,560 That's very sad. 548 00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:10,560 Yeah. 549 00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:11,560 So that's already sad. 550 00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:18,880 But at one point we had to make these electric nets with spark boxes and they make high 551 00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:21,760 voltage low amperage. 552 00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:22,760 Sure. 553 00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:23,760 Yes. 554 00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:51,640 And then we got into the situation that you are there as a foreigner, the local government 555 00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:54,840 want to act appropriately. 556 00:34:54,840 --> 00:35:01,000 And we were hosted, we were intense in the beginning, but then we moved up to a little 557 00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:05,520 village and then at night we heard some screams and we didn't know what was in there. 558 00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:10,680 We found out that they were beating the shit out of local guys to find out where the park 559 00:35:10,680 --> 00:35:14,280 parks came from, where the park box came from. 560 00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:15,960 So here you are. 561 00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:20,480 You mentioned that something is stolen and they have their own way of getting the information 562 00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:24,440 back and it feels so extremely bad. 563 00:35:24,440 --> 00:35:27,640 But you mean really beating? 564 00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:28,640 I was not there. 565 00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:32,480 I just said, yeah, I'm physically, yeah. 566 00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:37,920 And they just rounded up the 18 year old kids to figure out if they knew something. 567 00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:39,120 They're horrible. 568 00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:41,840 So and I was 25 like, oh, I don't want this. 569 00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:47,480 I'm a member of Amnesty and this is like, oh, no, it's very uncomfortable. 570 00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:52,920 And then the next day suddenly a spark box appears on the side of the road, completely 571 00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:55,480 covered with mud and sand. 572 00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:56,480 Okay. 573 00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:59,800 It's probably hidden in the ground somewhere. 574 00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,600 And did it still work? 575 00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:04,600 Yeah. 576 00:36:04,600 --> 00:36:11,320 So despite not having your supervisor there and you got your equipment back so you were 577 00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:12,320 able to finish your research. 578 00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:14,720 Yeah, they're done a very unpleasant way. 579 00:36:14,720 --> 00:36:18,320 I'm not sure at that point whether they were there, but that was at the time that a lot 580 00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:19,320 of these things happened. 581 00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:20,920 One was gone, one had to come. 582 00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:26,000 And so my supervisor from the north, he had, we didn't know if he was coming. 583 00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:27,480 It was before cell phones. 584 00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:28,480 We had faxes. 585 00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:29,480 Yeah. 586 00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:31,920 I feel like I'm grandma now. 587 00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,360 But so it was not so easy to communicate. 588 00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:38,480 And after a few days or maybe weeks, he suddenly arrived at his land for over the other side 589 00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,240 of the country and they just joined us. 590 00:36:40,240 --> 00:36:43,080 So at the end we were with all together. 591 00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:44,680 And we had a very good time. 592 00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:49,280 And but we also, that was in a small village. 593 00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:50,720 We had to put bed nets up. 594 00:36:50,720 --> 00:36:53,680 We did some experiments also with bed nets and catching mosquitoes. 595 00:36:53,680 --> 00:37:01,880 And then another story was that we visited person and he was very apprehensive to let 596 00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:03,840 us in, but we selected that house. 597 00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,200 So we were persistent and things like that. 598 00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:14,320 And then we found this lady in the back of this hut and all covered by, she was well 599 00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:15,320 covered. 600 00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:22,520 And then we found later on that it was someone's daughter who had had epileptic attack, but 601 00:37:22,520 --> 00:37:26,080 she had was was carrying hot water and she had burnt herself. 602 00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:27,080 Oh dear. 603 00:37:27,080 --> 00:37:28,080 Yeah. 604 00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:29,320 And that was months ago. 605 00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:36,800 And the parents had given her to someone who was going to prove her to witchcraft her to 606 00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:37,800 cure her. 607 00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:40,320 And it was an old man who was now living with this young lady. 608 00:37:40,320 --> 00:37:41,840 All kind of like. 609 00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:42,840 Oh yeah. 610 00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:46,640 That's quite a, quite a shift from the Netherlands. 611 00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:47,640 Yeah. 612 00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:51,200 So you come there and luckily I was not responsible for this whole thing. 613 00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:57,160 We had a local someone from Tanzania and there's a lot of probably talk about this that I don't 614 00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:58,160 know of. 615 00:37:58,160 --> 00:38:05,640 But I remember this was my field, my first real field experience that was quite intense. 616 00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:07,120 Quite a culture shock. 617 00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:08,120 Yes. 618 00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:10,840 That's what I wanted to say. 619 00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:15,360 The fieldwork has very often nothing to do with the topic you're investigating. 620 00:38:15,360 --> 00:38:16,360 Yeah. 621 00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:24,200 That's the despite your best attempts to plan everything, things happen all the time, right? 622 00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:25,200 Yes. 623 00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:26,200 Especially with people. 624 00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:31,840 This is probably not the best, these are not the nicest experiences where you like fieldwork. 625 00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:38,680 But it is definitely the only way you experience these things and you never know what happens. 626 00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:49,520 So you have to be a little bit adaptive, flexible and try to get out it without too much harming 627 00:38:49,520 --> 00:38:52,120 anyone or yourself. 628 00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,800 I never felt really afraid there but in hindsight when you come back home and then you tell 629 00:38:56,800 --> 00:38:58,600 like, oh yeah, this happened. 630 00:38:58,600 --> 00:38:59,600 Yeah. 631 00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:01,600 Oh, that was weird. 632 00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:04,640 Usually it's in hindsight. 633 00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:09,660 So that's in the context of being there, it doesn't seem so extreme as then when you 634 00:39:09,660 --> 00:39:10,660 come back. 635 00:39:10,660 --> 00:39:11,660 Yeah. 636 00:39:11,660 --> 00:39:13,160 That's usually the case. 637 00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:14,160 Yeah. 638 00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:16,160 Or for me at least, yeah. 639 00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:23,560 It feels, I think it's the, if you're good in fieldwork, you do what you have to do and 640 00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:25,760 you get out of it. 641 00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:26,760 You are innovative. 642 00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:31,520 I'm very much not so good in being in the desk and doing policy. 643 00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:34,960 But so I definitely have a lot of things I'm not so good at. 644 00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:38,640 But I found now I'm nearly 54. 645 00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:47,560 I think I'm very good at that in taking it in, find a solution and try not to put yourself 646 00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:52,920 in danger too much and just get with the people and figure it out and always think that you're 647 00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:54,400 winning. 648 00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:59,200 And now you take students into the field to share that experience, I imagine. 649 00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:00,200 Yeah. 650 00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:01,200 Yeah. 651 00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:02,200 Yeah. 652 00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:03,200 Yeah. 653 00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:05,000 I have actually come back what I work, I do now. 654 00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:09,520 This is my students, they go, I've sent three or four groups to the Caribbean. 655 00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:10,520 Yeah. 656 00:40:10,520 --> 00:40:15,760 It was an urban setting and it's not the most, definitely not sending people to Tanzania. 657 00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:20,840 But there's quite some history between the Caribbean and the Netherlands. 658 00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:29,400 So it gives other challenges and it definitely needs some adaptation from the student side. 659 00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:30,400 I'm sure. 660 00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:31,680 I mean, these are all young students. 661 00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:33,320 It's always a culture shock, right? 662 00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:34,320 Yeah. 663 00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:41,440 So I very often, that's a good, I found out that useful advice I gave it last week also 664 00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:43,040 to someone who's going to a Rubai. 665 00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:48,840 It's like, I asked them what they're going to do and that student says, well, I arrive 666 00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:53,040 on Wednesday at five o'clock at night, I take a good sleep and then eight o'clock I will 667 00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:58,880 be at the department and I'm going to give them the agenda and figure out the schedule. 668 00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:03,240 And I said, hold your horses, you're not going to do anything this week anymore. 669 00:41:03,240 --> 00:41:10,280 You're going to arrive and figure out where you are and spend Thursday, Friday and the 670 00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:12,680 weekend to figure out where you are. 671 00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:18,400 Maybe say hi, but leave your efficiency, the Dutch efficiency behind. 672 00:41:18,400 --> 00:41:20,720 And then on Monday you make an appointment. 673 00:41:20,720 --> 00:41:27,520 When on Monday it feels nice and then you are in the right set and you're not a time 674 00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:28,520 lagged anymore. 675 00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:32,400 And I got students back who said like it was very hard not to do anything. 676 00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:37,280 The first three days, but it gained at the end so much. 677 00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:38,280 Yeah. 678 00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:42,280 You have to get into the speed of the locale. 679 00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:43,280 Yeah. 680 00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:44,280 Yeah. 681 00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,960 And they are so used to what we call a fish. 682 00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:50,320 It's very, well, it's a problem with the fitters, right? 683 00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:53,440 It's very fit for the Netherlands. 684 00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:56,760 Very unfit for many other places. 685 00:41:56,760 --> 00:41:58,240 It's not that they are slower or anything. 686 00:41:58,240 --> 00:41:59,440 It's just very different. 687 00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:03,200 And you have to figure out what the fit way to do. 688 00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:07,920 So I usually ask them to do that. 689 00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:08,920 Right. 690 00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:20,240 And I mean, we talked about the snake people before and I'm a scorpion guy, but I have, 691 00:42:20,240 --> 00:42:26,200 you know, dozens of my favorite species of scorpions, but do you have any favorite mosquitoes 692 00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:31,680 or doesn't it work like that in mosquito world? 693 00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:38,600 No, I think I'm actually an anthropologist that uses mosquitoes to get everywhere. 694 00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:44,720 No, actually on my WhatsApp, I have a picture of Sabete Siena, Sienese. 695 00:42:44,720 --> 00:42:48,400 I see I'm not even pronouncing it right, but this is the most beautiful mosquito in the 696 00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:54,000 world which has purple, blue flags on their legs. 697 00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:55,000 Oh. 698 00:42:55,000 --> 00:42:58,400 So it's very beautiful. 699 00:42:58,400 --> 00:42:59,400 It's a forest. 700 00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:01,160 It's an American forest mosquito. 701 00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:07,600 And I actually never saw it in real life, but it's definitely beautiful mosquito. 702 00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:13,400 We recently had a project with someone in Sweden who actually can make pictures of live 703 00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:19,360 mosquitoes because I think a lot of people that work with beetles think they're so pretty 704 00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:26,240 that they have a whole history in having all catalogs of pretty beetles or butterflies, 705 00:43:26,240 --> 00:43:30,200 but mosquitoes are horrendously ugly dead. 706 00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:31,200 Yes. 707 00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:32,200 Yeah. 708 00:43:32,200 --> 00:43:33,200 I know. 709 00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:37,080 So collections are things break off. 710 00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:38,760 So you cannot pin them. 711 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:40,560 It's keep them fresh. 712 00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:46,120 So I have, of course, some taxonomy friends who teach taxonomy, so they have to renew their 713 00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:49,400 collection the whole time because otherwise you cannot see this. 714 00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,360 So I'm not into that neighbor at all. 715 00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:58,240 I, of course, appreciate that all mosquitoes are a species are different than doing different 716 00:43:58,240 --> 00:43:59,240 things. 717 00:43:59,240 --> 00:44:02,520 That's my job, but I'm not so good in the taxonomy. 718 00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:10,040 But yeah, I did work with Aida's mosquitoes, with anophilus mosquitoes, with cutyx mosquitoes. 719 00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:12,720 So I did my fair range. 720 00:44:12,720 --> 00:44:19,720 Usually only because they transmit diseases, what is the treat of them, obviously. 721 00:44:19,720 --> 00:44:20,720 Well they can't help it. 722 00:44:20,720 --> 00:44:21,720 Does it make them sick? 723 00:44:21,720 --> 00:44:26,720 I mean, the first person's first creature to get sick, I imagine is the mosquito, right? 724 00:44:26,720 --> 00:44:28,440 It's a trade-off. 725 00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:33,520 If they get infectious diseases, it's always an end. 726 00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:36,320 We all know what an R0 is, right? 727 00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:43,920 Since Corona, you have to be efficient to spread, to give something to more than one 728 00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:47,040 other individual. 729 00:44:47,040 --> 00:44:49,920 Anything that doesn't do that, dies out. 730 00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:54,560 So there's probably a lot of very inefficient viruses that attack the mosquitoes that never 731 00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:56,080 survive. 732 00:44:56,080 --> 00:45:02,080 So the ones that we have now, obviously, I've never tested, and there's some research on 733 00:45:02,080 --> 00:45:08,080 putting a lot of malaria parasites in mosquitoes and they do suffer from it. 734 00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:13,720 In the natural range, there's a trade-off because especially the mosquito still has 735 00:45:13,720 --> 00:45:18,400 to fly to be helping the virus. 736 00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,040 And of course, it's not consciously, it's how evolution works. 737 00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:27,160 But all the viruses that get into a mosquito that kills it or being less efficient or whatever, 738 00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:28,920 has not very efficient. 739 00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:36,360 So over the evolution, there's a relationship between certain viruses and certain mosquito 740 00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,520 species. 741 00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:47,600 And that's why AIDS is not transmitted by mosquitoes or malaria is only transmitted 742 00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:52,720 by anopheles and not by AIDS mosquitoes because although they're all mosquitoes and a very 743 00:45:52,720 --> 00:46:00,720 narrow family of 3,500 worldwide, apparently, you have to realize that the mosquito doesn't 744 00:46:00,720 --> 00:46:01,720 want it, right? 745 00:46:01,720 --> 00:46:03,720 They're not the male man. 746 00:46:03,720 --> 00:46:05,320 They're not paid for it. 747 00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:13,920 So they try not to carry them, but the pathogen escapes the defense mechanism. 748 00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:19,440 So it's not actually, I like to, instead of calling it vector competence, this is the 749 00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:24,000 competence of a vector to transmit a pathogen. 750 00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:25,160 Is it a vector? 751 00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:29,080 Is it a defense failure? 752 00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:38,720 It's a very different way of looking at, so the malaria parasite has find a error in the 753 00:46:38,720 --> 00:46:40,920 anopheles mosquito. 754 00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:47,200 What is not too big for anopheles to not survive anymore, but can carry it around. 755 00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:50,120 Everybody wants to be the carrier of pathogens. 756 00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:51,960 It's not in their... 757 00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:59,080 No, for one thing, it would endanger their host species, right? 758 00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:03,000 If all the people die out, mosquitoes have nothing to eat, so they don't really want 759 00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:04,640 to transmit, I imagine. 760 00:47:04,640 --> 00:47:08,600 But usually things are not so black and white, so the chance that the whole... 761 00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:11,960 So that's a good point. 762 00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:15,880 Obviously the longevity of humans are still not selected in that part. 763 00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:22,320 It's too long, so it would not have an evolutionary trait on the mosquito parasite relationship. 764 00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:27,360 There has to be a backfiring thing, of course, but if you're still around, that will not 765 00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:28,360 backfire. 766 00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:35,360 But it is definitely intricate between the vector and the host. 767 00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:48,680 The famous story is about the worms, the Eugiria bankrosi, that only it's a small worm where 768 00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:50,680 you get elephantiasis from. 769 00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:53,040 People with big legs. 770 00:47:53,040 --> 00:47:55,080 Quite a horrible disfiguring disease. 771 00:47:55,080 --> 00:47:58,480 Also a very interesting Tanzania story on it. 772 00:47:58,480 --> 00:47:59,480 I will finish the... 773 00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:00,480 Oh, please. 774 00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:08,400 So these salarial worms, they are only in the blood when the mosquito is active. 775 00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:17,200 So they come in the blood when it's crupuscular, so it's in the transition from light to dark 776 00:48:17,200 --> 00:48:19,840 and because they also have other things to do in your body. 777 00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:25,760 But then it's selected for the night active worms because they can be picked up when the 778 00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:27,880 mosquito is blood-feeding. 779 00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:34,640 So there's a lot of intricate adaptations or evolution between these interactions. 780 00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:35,640 That's amazing. 781 00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:39,200 So they come to the surface to be picked up by mosquitoes. 782 00:48:39,200 --> 00:48:40,200 Yeah, periphery. 783 00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:47,600 Actually, the blood, they go from your tissues into the blood and in your bloodstream. 784 00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:48,600 Wow. 785 00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:56,800 When we were in Tanzania, we were actually going to a place to put the... 786 00:48:56,800 --> 00:49:00,160 So we put electric traps next to someone's home. 787 00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:01,160 Yes. 788 00:49:01,160 --> 00:49:02,800 We were talking to the person. 789 00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:04,560 My colleague was back from Funeral. 790 00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:09,840 They were talking to each other and I found out that this was a very small man who had 791 00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:12,640 a very big skirt on. 792 00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:21,760 Very thick cloth and it's not a Muslim area, so guys wearing skirts, what you sometimes 793 00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:23,000 see in Indonesia or other things. 794 00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:27,040 It was not a cultural thing for males to wear skirts. 795 00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:30,960 So I asked my colleague and I said, what happened? 796 00:49:30,960 --> 00:49:38,520 Oh, the man has elephantiasis in his testicles. 797 00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:43,800 So I was culturally well aware that I should not mention it to the man as a white woman 798 00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:47,520 investigating asking whatever. 799 00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:49,240 You don't want to say, can I see it? 800 00:49:49,240 --> 00:49:51,000 No, obviously not. 801 00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:56,560 But also not the story on it, but we had been... 802 00:49:56,560 --> 00:50:05,280 Since you cannot save the world, there is a little bit, how we call it, a custom to take 803 00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:07,560 care of the people when you're there. 804 00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:11,680 So if you work at people's home and you see an illness or you can help something out, 805 00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:16,520 there is an ability to do that, not to take care because you're gone in two weeks, but 806 00:50:16,520 --> 00:50:19,880 that's a little bit the favor you can give to someone. 807 00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:22,240 So I asked him what to help it. 808 00:50:22,240 --> 00:50:28,760 And anyway, long story short, we took him to the capital and he has been in surgery 809 00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:33,760 and he was still in surgery or waiting for surgery when I left the country. 810 00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:36,360 But I found out that he has been... 811 00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:44,000 We paid for his surgery and he had been 11 years with this. 812 00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:45,280 That's fantastic. 813 00:50:45,280 --> 00:50:52,080 But we went to the hospital with him and I will never forget that the nurse asked him 814 00:50:52,080 --> 00:51:04,160 to sit on a stool, but the weight of his disease would just push the stool away until he would 815 00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:07,520 put it to the back wall so we could sit on it. 816 00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:11,240 And these were his big. 817 00:51:11,240 --> 00:51:17,960 And that was already 11 years and that was caused by elephantiasis where it's a worm 818 00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:21,480 that is clogging, I think, the lymphatic system. 819 00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:25,280 And then you get a kind of an autoimmune... 820 00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:31,960 I'm not mad, but there's something that Udim collects where this is... 821 00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:37,360 And that happens to be legs in India and it happens to be on the different parts of your 822 00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:38,840 body in Africa. 823 00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:41,440 That's interesting. 824 00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:48,320 How that goes, maybe it's a different solar wall, maybe a different mosquito. 825 00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:53,960 But we helped him, but it's amazing that someone... 826 00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:55,400 It doesn't cure itself. 827 00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:58,520 What a life. 828 00:51:58,520 --> 00:52:02,280 So he was able to sit down but barely, I think. 829 00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:06,080 Yeah, and then you have those jokes, you have Landro, he's in the middle and I ask him to 830 00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:13,960 sit away a little bit from my rear mirror, but he had to sit that wide on the bench because 831 00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:14,960 there's so... 832 00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:21,320 I mean, I'm not a man, but I can imagine that is not good. 833 00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:26,520 Not just the amount of mass pulling on that fairly small part of the body. 834 00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:32,720 Yeah, I know that I don't have to explain to any other person that guy that that is 835 00:52:32,720 --> 00:52:33,920 something you don't want. 836 00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:39,360 And he had that since his last daughter was born and his daughter was 11 years. 837 00:52:39,360 --> 00:52:40,360 Wow. 838 00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:47,760 I actually have seen a person with the same affliction on a bus in Germany and all the 839 00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:52,280 seats were full and people were standing and it was empty seat and we were wondering, okay, 840 00:52:52,280 --> 00:52:53,280 why is that seat empty? 841 00:52:53,280 --> 00:52:59,360 And then we sat down and then we saw that the guy sitting across from us had a gigantic 842 00:52:59,360 --> 00:53:07,360 something, something between his legs that must have been elephantitis, I imagine. 843 00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:09,640 It's not a good look. 844 00:53:09,640 --> 00:53:11,240 I had to bring... 845 00:53:11,240 --> 00:53:16,040 We brought him to the hospital and we were guarding it and I think it was like a few 846 00:53:16,040 --> 00:53:17,040 tens of dollars. 847 00:53:17,040 --> 00:53:21,080 It was really not enough for us to pay it. 848 00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:26,440 And then I walked around with the form and it was written because Tanzania, they speak 849 00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:30,840 Swedish, but it is in English, the medical terms. 850 00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:34,440 Extremely huge balls was on it. 851 00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:39,880 Or maybe extremely huge test because I will refrain from it. 852 00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:42,440 But it was, yeah, it was very... 853 00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:45,520 It's not very common to become that big. 854 00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:46,520 So it was... 855 00:53:46,520 --> 00:53:53,000 Yeah, I had my fair share of poor Tanzania then because it's definitely a poor man's 856 00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:54,000 disease. 857 00:53:54,000 --> 00:54:02,760 It's probably anti-worm treatment in an earlier stage and it probably would have been resolved. 858 00:54:02,760 --> 00:54:04,640 He has of course no active worms anymore. 859 00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:05,880 So this has to be different. 860 00:54:05,880 --> 00:54:11,440 I mean, this is a secondary effect of an early infection. 861 00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:13,600 But that doesn't... 862 00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:15,520 So it's a secondary effect. 863 00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:21,840 So even when he doesn't have worms anymore, this is not going to go away and it happens 864 00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:26,840 more often because I think he had been treated for the worm infection, not for the consequence 865 00:54:26,840 --> 00:54:27,840 that came from it. 866 00:54:27,840 --> 00:54:31,360 Okay, well, it must be a nice feeling to be able to do something back. 867 00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:32,360 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 868 00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:34,360 It was very nice. 869 00:54:34,360 --> 00:54:36,360 Also very topic, very... 870 00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:42,760 Yeah, so in 2025, you're in a strange country, then you're a bump into this. 871 00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:43,760 It's... 872 00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:44,760 Yeah, you have to go out of... 873 00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:50,880 We have to deal with what lies in front of you. 874 00:54:50,880 --> 00:54:51,880 Yeah, fantastic. 875 00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:57,640 And it's a really nice story that you were able to give something back to the people 876 00:54:57,640 --> 00:54:59,240 that you were... 877 00:54:59,240 --> 00:55:01,400 That were helping your research in fact, right? 878 00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:02,400 Yeah, yeah. 879 00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:06,360 Well, Marietta, it's been almost an hour, I think. 880 00:55:06,360 --> 00:55:07,360 So let's... 881 00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:08,360 Yeah, I'm sorry. 882 00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:13,400 No, I could listen to your stories for much longer, but maybe we should do that another 883 00:55:13,400 --> 00:55:14,480 time. 884 00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:16,440 That's fine. 885 00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:19,720 If you're up for it, if you have more stories, I would love to hear them. 886 00:55:19,720 --> 00:55:20,760 It's very interesting for me. 887 00:55:20,760 --> 00:55:27,680 It's mosquitoes and medical things are a bit of an exotic field, because I'm usually hang 888 00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:32,480 around with bearded herpetologists and people like that. 889 00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:37,720 See, that's one hand back to rule as a young bearded herpetologist. 890 00:55:37,720 --> 00:55:38,720 Exactly. 891 00:55:38,720 --> 00:55:43,160 So, yeah, in fact, biology is... 892 00:55:43,160 --> 00:55:49,000 Besides being kind of having a purpose, we don't have to do anything about valorization. 893 00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:55,440 It's much more easier to write that, but it is also really hurting people sometimes. 894 00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:59,640 So we do it for purpose, and these are just one of those stories. 895 00:55:59,640 --> 00:56:00,640 So it's... 896 00:56:00,640 --> 00:56:01,640 Yeah. 897 00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:06,600 As rule said, it's probably much more to do with people. 898 00:56:06,600 --> 00:56:11,160 And I mentioned, I started it saying that I really was not so interested in people. 899 00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:12,160 So full circle. 900 00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:17,040 Actually, I do factors, and it has to do with animal and human health. 901 00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:20,320 So it's funny how... 902 00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:22,520 Turns out people are the interesting ones. 903 00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:23,520 Yeah. 904 00:56:23,520 --> 00:56:28,520 Sometimes I want to get away with it, and then we really do full work out in the end. 905 00:56:28,520 --> 00:56:30,040 Okay, thank you. 906 00:56:30,040 --> 00:56:35,960 Thank you very much, Marietta, and hopefully see you again sometime soon. 907 00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:36,960 All right. 908 00:56:36,960 --> 00:56:39,160 I'm looking forward to it. 909 00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:47,760 Bye.