1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:18,000 Welcome to the Zoologist's Campfire, the podcast where animal professionals share their best, 2 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,560 funniest and most epic stories. 3 00:00:21,560 --> 00:00:29,160 Today I am joined by Michael Jowers, a biologist with I think the best specialization you can 4 00:00:29,160 --> 00:00:30,720 think of. 5 00:00:30,720 --> 00:00:33,480 Pay attention here kids, this is how you do it. 6 00:00:33,480 --> 00:00:39,640 You specialize in, drumroll, tropical islands. 7 00:00:39,640 --> 00:00:44,280 Michael got his PhD from the University of Glasgow, but has since spent many years chasing 8 00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:49,280 reptiles and amphibians and lots of other animals around the Caribbean, South America 9 00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:52,000 and many other places. 10 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:54,720 He describes 16 species new to science. 11 00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:59,720 He has written close to 100 articles, book chapters and even field guides. 12 00:00:59,720 --> 00:01:03,540 He is now at the University of Granada in Spain. 13 00:01:03,540 --> 00:01:06,760 So Mike, welcome. 14 00:01:06,760 --> 00:01:07,760 Thank you very much, Arie. 15 00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:10,520 Lovely to be here with you. 16 00:01:10,520 --> 00:01:15,440 Well before we get into your stories, which I know are fantastic, I just called you a 17 00:01:15,440 --> 00:01:20,240 tropical island specialist, but you actually do a lot more. 18 00:01:20,240 --> 00:01:26,880 Can you perhaps briefly tell us what you do as a biologist and how you got into it? 19 00:01:26,880 --> 00:01:32,560 That's a great question and a difficult one to answer to be honest, because I'm intrigued 20 00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:39,320 by most things and therefore I've never had a very constant line of research. 21 00:01:39,320 --> 00:01:49,240 But let's say that I used genetics or molecular markers to identify species and very often 22 00:01:49,240 --> 00:01:57,200 species are cryptic and through genetics we can clarify if instead of one species it's 23 00:01:57,200 --> 00:01:58,800 more than one. 24 00:01:58,800 --> 00:02:03,920 So this is kind of what I do and most of the times you end up finding new species that's 25 00:02:03,920 --> 00:02:09,000 sometimes thought to be actually quite common or widespread. 26 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:18,600 When you do this in islands, because animals become isolated, you end up finding a lot 27 00:02:18,600 --> 00:02:20,000 of new species for science. 28 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:25,560 So this is kind of what I do. 29 00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:29,200 That's how you find all those new species because you have a lot to your name. 30 00:02:29,200 --> 00:02:30,200 That's really cool. 31 00:02:30,200 --> 00:02:36,240 Most of the time, some of the times we actually do find with our collaborators new species, 32 00:02:36,240 --> 00:02:40,760 but many other times are just unknown species, let's say. 33 00:02:40,760 --> 00:02:47,640 So this is what we try to do and it has huge conservation implications of course. 34 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:52,800 And of course you enjoy going to all these beautiful countries and finding them, chasing 35 00:02:52,800 --> 00:02:53,800 them. 36 00:02:53,800 --> 00:03:00,440 Is that something you fell into or is that ingrained? 37 00:03:00,440 --> 00:03:09,320 Actually I grew up in southern Spain in Seville and my desire to become a zoologist began 38 00:03:09,320 --> 00:03:14,920 at a very early age by the nature surrounding where I used to live. 39 00:03:14,920 --> 00:03:19,800 Me and my brother lived with my mother and she had a country house. 40 00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:23,340 And then at the time it was not very built up. 41 00:03:23,340 --> 00:03:33,040 So we would just spend our childhood riding our bikes and looking for reptiles and amphibians 42 00:03:33,040 --> 00:03:35,600 because they were everywhere in southern Spain. 43 00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:40,880 Big lizards, many snakes, turtles all over the place. 44 00:03:40,880 --> 00:03:50,360 So my mother actually donated her big yard, the garden for us to actually have animals. 45 00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:55,320 Kind of like Gerald Darrow in Corfu, it's upbringing. 46 00:03:55,320 --> 00:03:58,520 And we ended up having a pond that we built ourselves. 47 00:03:58,520 --> 00:04:05,040 We were maybe 10, 11 years of age, we had 200 turtles. 48 00:04:05,040 --> 00:04:06,400 You name it, we had it. 49 00:04:06,400 --> 00:04:07,920 And this is how we had it. 50 00:04:07,920 --> 00:04:10,280 I even had a camera. 51 00:04:10,280 --> 00:04:12,080 I donated it to the zoo. 52 00:04:12,080 --> 00:04:18,280 Obviously nowadays I do not believe that people should have exotic animals, but at the time 53 00:04:18,280 --> 00:04:23,120 I was quite young and fascinated by the zoo. 54 00:04:23,120 --> 00:04:24,120 So beautiful. 55 00:04:24,120 --> 00:04:27,320 And I had a monitor that's a big one. 56 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:34,560 And some chipmunks or ferrets or anything. 57 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:36,400 And it was known as the zoo. 58 00:04:36,400 --> 00:04:41,120 People come around and just walk in the garden to see all our animals. 59 00:04:41,120 --> 00:04:42,120 They had headshots. 60 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:45,320 And that's how it started. 61 00:04:45,320 --> 00:04:53,440 That obviously the only viable progression from there was to become a zoologist. 62 00:04:53,440 --> 00:05:03,400 My mom, when I was growing up, she would often say that I learned very quickly never to open 63 00:05:03,400 --> 00:05:09,360 a box or a drill unless I knew what was inside. 64 00:05:09,360 --> 00:05:13,720 Because sometimes you would have scorpions or lots of snakes and things like that. 65 00:05:13,720 --> 00:05:16,560 So she was very worried of opening anything in the house. 66 00:05:16,560 --> 00:05:19,520 There's always some creepy crawly running around. 67 00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:21,080 So that's how I started. 68 00:05:21,080 --> 00:05:24,960 And obviously I progressed to biology because that's the only thing I wanted to do my whole 69 00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:25,960 life. 70 00:05:25,960 --> 00:05:28,520 So natural progression. 71 00:05:28,520 --> 00:05:33,600 And doing expeditions is just kind of a more sophisticated thing than what I used to do 72 00:05:33,600 --> 00:05:35,600 when I was a child. 73 00:05:35,600 --> 00:05:36,600 Yeah. 74 00:05:36,600 --> 00:05:37,600 Yeah. 75 00:05:37,600 --> 00:05:40,600 Once you get into it, you never get out. 76 00:05:40,600 --> 00:05:41,600 Yeah. 77 00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:44,600 Awesome. 78 00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:47,480 And you have gone all over the place. 79 00:05:47,480 --> 00:05:51,200 And as I said, you've picked your regions very wisely. 80 00:05:51,200 --> 00:05:54,120 The Caribbean, not bad. 81 00:05:54,120 --> 00:05:59,920 And you even worked on scorpions that, of course, are some of my favorites. 82 00:05:59,920 --> 00:06:00,920 Right. 83 00:06:00,920 --> 00:06:01,920 Right. 84 00:06:01,920 --> 00:06:02,920 Favorites. 85 00:06:02,920 --> 00:06:03,920 Absolutely. 86 00:06:03,920 --> 00:06:07,720 And you had some adventures with scorpions in Trinidad, I believe. 87 00:06:07,720 --> 00:06:08,720 Right. 88 00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:09,720 Yeah. 89 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:16,680 In the island of Trinidad, where I spent over three expeditions, over a year there, all 90 00:06:16,680 --> 00:06:19,160 in all. 91 00:06:19,160 --> 00:06:24,480 I was working on amphibians and this professor flew from Venezuela. 92 00:06:24,480 --> 00:06:27,280 Trinidad is very close to Venezuela. 93 00:06:27,280 --> 00:06:34,280 The Repallio de Trinidad, Tobago, is basically a stone throw away from North and Venezuela. 94 00:06:34,280 --> 00:06:39,360 And he wanted to capture these scorpions which are found in Trinidad, very, very dangerous 95 00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:43,320 scorpion called Titus trinitatis. 96 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:49,400 And we'll spend the nights with UV lamps, black lights, trying to find the Titus, but 97 00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:52,360 we actually never found at the time the Titus. 98 00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:54,280 We found many species, but not this one. 99 00:06:54,280 --> 00:06:57,440 And it was very hard to find. 100 00:06:57,440 --> 00:07:03,480 And we wanted to capture some life specimens to isolate the venom gland and do the acid 101 00:07:03,480 --> 00:07:05,480 composition of the venom. 102 00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:14,080 But basically, after quite a long time, we managed to find a couple of large individuals. 103 00:07:14,080 --> 00:07:21,480 The professor had already left and he gave me instructions how to euthanize the scorpions 104 00:07:21,480 --> 00:07:26,560 to extract the venom gland to preserve the glands. 105 00:07:26,560 --> 00:07:33,520 And you have to bear in mind that these expeditions, we used to go with undergrad students to Trinidad 106 00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:35,520 20 at a time. 107 00:07:35,520 --> 00:07:37,800 It's a big group. 108 00:07:37,800 --> 00:07:39,920 A big group, yes. 109 00:07:39,920 --> 00:07:44,520 And obviously, I'm not a scorpion expert as yourself. 110 00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:48,480 So I had very detailed instructions what to do and what not to do. 111 00:07:48,480 --> 00:07:54,480 And I thought, well, this is a great opportunity to show my students how it's done. 112 00:07:54,480 --> 00:07:58,120 Obviously, I've never done it myself before. 113 00:07:58,120 --> 00:08:03,800 I have never touched such a venomous scorpion ever, so I was very worried and actually quite 114 00:08:03,800 --> 00:08:04,800 nervous. 115 00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:08,720 It's like we're dealing with a very venomous snake. 116 00:08:08,720 --> 00:08:09,720 So here we are. 117 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:13,160 We have a communal living room and a kitchen. 118 00:08:13,160 --> 00:08:14,280 It's very big. 119 00:08:14,280 --> 00:08:17,360 It's off campus at the University of the West Indies. 120 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:20,520 It's very basic, but we have everything we need. 121 00:08:20,520 --> 00:08:23,800 As you may be aware, it's extremely hot. 122 00:08:23,800 --> 00:08:26,120 And so all the students are in swimsuits. 123 00:08:26,120 --> 00:08:32,080 They're all barefooted. 124 00:08:32,080 --> 00:08:34,160 And we have this big dining table. 125 00:08:34,160 --> 00:08:38,120 So I have my scorpions there in this tupperware. 126 00:08:38,120 --> 00:08:47,320 And I have these tweezers to grab the scorpion, the first scorpion. 127 00:08:47,320 --> 00:08:50,360 All those students come around, come along. 128 00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:52,920 Everybody's just putting their head into the tupperware. 129 00:08:52,920 --> 00:08:55,480 I'm surrounded by students barefooted everywhere. 130 00:08:55,480 --> 00:08:58,760 And I'm just telling them, this is extremely dangerous. 131 00:08:58,760 --> 00:09:03,240 This is a very toxic animal, venomous animal. 132 00:09:03,240 --> 00:09:06,400 If you get stung by this, you may even die. 133 00:09:06,400 --> 00:09:07,400 It's got no sense. 134 00:09:07,400 --> 00:09:08,400 All the students are like, wow. 135 00:09:08,400 --> 00:09:12,120 So I'm going to show you how to euthanize this thing. 136 00:09:12,120 --> 00:09:16,320 I think we had to put it in warm water at the time or something. 137 00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:24,320 So basically, I just grab these tweezers and try and grab the scorpion by the tail. 138 00:09:24,320 --> 00:09:32,720 For whatever reason, this big scorpion just curls back on me on the tweezers. 139 00:09:32,720 --> 00:09:37,120 And with his pincers, it starts getting my hand. 140 00:09:37,120 --> 00:09:38,120 And I'm hurt. 141 00:09:38,120 --> 00:09:39,120 Very short tweezers. 142 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:40,120 Yeah, very short tweezers. 143 00:09:40,120 --> 00:09:45,720 Basically, I just didn't grab it properly. 144 00:09:45,720 --> 00:09:49,640 And this thing just kind of released itself. 145 00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:52,560 Maybe the tweezers were not the right ones. 146 00:09:52,560 --> 00:09:55,160 So I just started scoping on the table. 147 00:09:55,160 --> 00:10:01,320 And to my amazement, this thing runs like a lizard. 148 00:10:01,320 --> 00:10:02,960 It's so fast. 149 00:10:02,960 --> 00:10:06,840 So it starts running down the table and jumps out. 150 00:10:06,840 --> 00:10:09,400 Imagine the students, which are barefooted. 151 00:10:09,400 --> 00:10:12,960 And everybody runs. 152 00:10:12,960 --> 00:10:15,480 Everybody starts running in opposite directions. 153 00:10:15,480 --> 00:10:20,000 And I remember this student, he was a big guy. 154 00:10:20,000 --> 00:10:23,160 He actually jumped and hugged the fridge. 155 00:10:23,160 --> 00:10:26,080 And he was hanging to the fridge. 156 00:10:26,080 --> 00:10:28,120 It's hilarious. 157 00:10:28,120 --> 00:10:31,760 I thought, oh, God, this fridge is going to fall on top of him. 158 00:10:31,760 --> 00:10:34,040 And I don't know how it happened. 159 00:10:34,040 --> 00:10:36,960 Two other scorpions, somebody hit the container. 160 00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:39,040 There's three scorpions running around. 161 00:10:39,040 --> 00:10:43,960 Everybody's, one is on the chair, the other one is on the couch. 162 00:10:43,960 --> 00:10:46,120 We can't find the bloody things. 163 00:10:46,120 --> 00:10:53,680 Anyways, and I thought, oh, my God, they were so close to having such a bad accident. 164 00:10:53,680 --> 00:10:56,000 Obviously, we managed to find them. 165 00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:58,360 It took us about 10 minutes. 166 00:10:58,360 --> 00:11:01,800 Because they run somewhere in the kitchen, in the pots. 167 00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:03,640 They go under something. 168 00:11:03,640 --> 00:11:06,640 Yeah, some of the students were still shaking for a while. 169 00:11:06,640 --> 00:11:08,000 And it was hilarious. 170 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:09,400 You have to be there to see that. 171 00:11:09,400 --> 00:11:11,320 I was like, oh, my Lord. 172 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:13,320 I nearly killed a student or two. 173 00:11:13,320 --> 00:11:18,520 So anyway, that's my first encounter with a very dangerous scorpion. 174 00:11:18,520 --> 00:11:20,000 Yeah. 175 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:21,160 It was fun. 176 00:11:21,160 --> 00:11:22,000 I won't do it again. 177 00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:22,760 Promise. 178 00:11:22,760 --> 00:11:24,840 No, the treaser thing is very familiar. 179 00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:29,400 Because if you grab a scorpion, its tail bends one way. 180 00:11:29,400 --> 00:11:34,920 And if you grab it with treasers perpendicular to the direction of movement, 181 00:11:34,920 --> 00:11:35,640 you're fine. 182 00:11:35,640 --> 00:11:36,720 Nothing can happen. 183 00:11:36,720 --> 00:11:39,240 But if you grab it in the direction of movement, 184 00:11:39,240 --> 00:11:45,160 it can just flip itself away, and it will launch into the next person, 185 00:11:45,160 --> 00:11:47,040 or your face, or something like that. 186 00:11:47,040 --> 00:11:50,560 Well, that's what happened, I think. 187 00:11:50,560 --> 00:11:54,240 But I didn't know scorpions were so fast. 188 00:11:54,240 --> 00:11:56,800 This was so, so mad. 189 00:11:56,800 --> 00:11:59,840 This thing wanted to get out. 190 00:11:59,840 --> 00:12:00,680 Christ. 191 00:12:00,680 --> 00:12:01,720 Anyway, so yeah. 192 00:12:01,720 --> 00:12:05,120 So that was a lucky escape, I'd say. 193 00:12:05,120 --> 00:12:05,760 Awesome. 194 00:12:05,760 --> 00:12:07,160 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 195 00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:09,760 I mean, the chances of getting stung are not huge. 196 00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:13,840 But I can imagine the students, after being told by you, 197 00:12:13,840 --> 00:12:16,360 like this is the most dangerous. 198 00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:17,280 So dramatic. 199 00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:19,520 You know, like, oh. 200 00:12:19,520 --> 00:12:21,480 The image of somebody climbing the fridge. 201 00:12:21,480 --> 00:12:22,480 No, that's hilarious. 202 00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:26,480 Yeah, hugging, like just floating in the air. 203 00:12:26,480 --> 00:12:28,320 Just hiding in this big fridge. 204 00:12:28,320 --> 00:12:29,360 It's unbelievable. 205 00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:34,360 But in the end, the scorpions were used for science. 206 00:12:34,360 --> 00:12:35,400 Let's call it that way. 207 00:12:35,400 --> 00:12:35,680 Yeah. 208 00:12:35,680 --> 00:12:36,480 Oh, yeah, absolutely. 209 00:12:36,480 --> 00:12:37,280 Yeah, of course. 210 00:12:37,280 --> 00:12:39,960 There were the many glasses and the tissue samples 211 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:41,360 were shipped to Venezuela. 212 00:12:41,360 --> 00:12:44,440 They got some really nice scientific papers out of them. 213 00:12:44,440 --> 00:12:48,360 Yeah, I saw your papers on them, of course. 214 00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:51,920 But it's cool to know the story behind it. 215 00:12:51,920 --> 00:12:54,200 Because you know, this is very dry paper title. 216 00:12:54,200 --> 00:12:57,360 You know, the peptides and da-da-da-da-da. 217 00:12:57,360 --> 00:13:00,280 And then this is behind it. 218 00:13:00,280 --> 00:13:02,480 Yeah, that was some published, right? 219 00:13:02,480 --> 00:13:04,920 Yeah, yeah. 220 00:13:04,920 --> 00:13:05,680 OK, yeah. 221 00:13:05,680 --> 00:13:06,840 So that's the scorpion. 222 00:13:06,840 --> 00:13:10,520 I mean, there's other encounters in Trinidad 223 00:13:10,520 --> 00:13:12,440 because we spend there so long. 224 00:13:12,440 --> 00:13:13,960 Yeah. 225 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:16,960 You wrote one of the few field guides 226 00:13:16,960 --> 00:13:20,200 on reptiles amphibians of Trinidad and Tobago, right? 227 00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:21,600 Yeah, it's a second edition. 228 00:13:21,600 --> 00:13:24,280 It's led by John Murphy, who's like the person who 229 00:13:24,280 --> 00:13:31,320 started it, or his travel many, many times to Trinidad 230 00:13:31,320 --> 00:13:32,520 and Tobago. 231 00:13:32,520 --> 00:13:34,120 I work regularly with him. 232 00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:34,920 He's a great guy. 233 00:13:34,920 --> 00:13:38,000 And I actually met him in Arizona this summer for the first time. 234 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:38,480 So cool. 235 00:13:38,480 --> 00:13:40,720 I was very, very, very happy. 236 00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:42,960 Yeah, so we got this guide out. 237 00:13:42,960 --> 00:13:44,240 But I mean, all credit to him. 238 00:13:44,240 --> 00:13:46,080 He did most of the job. 239 00:13:46,080 --> 00:13:47,480 He's amazing. 240 00:13:47,480 --> 00:13:49,920 Wow, you spent a lot of time there anyway. 241 00:13:49,920 --> 00:13:50,760 Yeah, for sure. 242 00:13:50,760 --> 00:13:54,320 And we found lots of new species of snakes, 243 00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:57,600 also to be named as biglissed. 244 00:13:57,600 --> 00:14:02,080 And frogs, which are very difficult to find in the jungle. 245 00:14:02,080 --> 00:14:07,160 They're very cryptic and conspicuous, difficult to find. 246 00:14:07,160 --> 00:14:10,880 This frog, we took maybe like three expeditions to find it. 247 00:14:10,880 --> 00:14:15,440 We could hear it calling from a swamp. 248 00:14:15,440 --> 00:14:17,560 But when you approached it, it would just 249 00:14:17,560 --> 00:14:20,560 disappear under the water and we just could not find it. 250 00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:23,040 And it took us many trips. 251 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:27,680 It was a six-hour round trip to go to this swamp. 252 00:14:27,680 --> 00:14:30,480 And this frog was only found in 1994. 253 00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:32,840 Only one individual, one male. 254 00:14:32,840 --> 00:14:36,440 Yeah, and for 10 years, we could not find it. 255 00:14:36,440 --> 00:14:38,480 Nobody could find it. 256 00:14:38,480 --> 00:14:40,800 Only we could hear a frog calling, 257 00:14:40,800 --> 00:14:43,080 and we think it was that one. 258 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:50,000 And after three years trying, at least myself, to capture it, 259 00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:54,640 just had to go into murky, swampy, black water. 260 00:14:54,640 --> 00:14:57,040 And you have to understand this featherlands, 261 00:14:57,040 --> 00:15:00,680 this pit viper's there, this caiman's. 262 00:15:00,680 --> 00:15:04,480 You go to a tropical swamp. 263 00:15:04,480 --> 00:15:05,200 Yeah, yeah. 264 00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:08,200 And it's heavily populated with everything. 265 00:15:08,200 --> 00:15:10,760 And you would hear the males calling, 266 00:15:10,760 --> 00:15:12,680 and suddenly they'd disappear. 267 00:15:12,680 --> 00:15:15,520 And there were some islets, like little islands, 268 00:15:15,520 --> 00:15:21,720 on top of the swamp, very small, with lots of roots and mud. 269 00:15:21,720 --> 00:15:26,040 Suddenly I'd realized that the males would call just 270 00:15:26,040 --> 00:15:29,880 by the roots of these little islets. 271 00:15:29,880 --> 00:15:33,360 And when you approached, they would stop calling and disappear. 272 00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:37,680 So I figured out that the only way to get this animal 273 00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:42,680 was actually putting my whole hand in the burrows 274 00:15:42,680 --> 00:15:45,520 and trying to grab over whatever was in there. 275 00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:47,040 That's a bit dangerous. 276 00:15:47,040 --> 00:15:50,040 Yeah, yeah, exactly. 277 00:15:50,040 --> 00:15:54,520 So my first response, I put my whole hand in the burrow. 278 00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:57,040 It's full of mud, and it's murky water. 279 00:15:57,040 --> 00:16:00,680 Half is in the water, half is outside. 280 00:16:00,680 --> 00:16:02,360 So you just can't see what's going on. 281 00:16:02,360 --> 00:16:04,760 You put your whole arm, and you feel something. 282 00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:07,720 But your first something moved and touched my arm. 283 00:16:07,720 --> 00:16:09,480 The first thing you do is pull out, obviously, 284 00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:11,080 because you don't know if it's a snake. 285 00:16:11,080 --> 00:16:13,040 You don't know what the hell is. 286 00:16:13,040 --> 00:16:16,560 And after a while, I actually took the courage 287 00:16:16,560 --> 00:16:19,480 to just grab whatever that was. 288 00:16:19,480 --> 00:16:20,320 You can imagine. 289 00:16:20,320 --> 00:16:21,520 You don't know what that is. 290 00:16:21,520 --> 00:16:23,480 And just pull it out. 291 00:16:23,480 --> 00:16:29,680 And I managed to find four frogs in the first ever female 292 00:16:29,680 --> 00:16:30,840 captured. 293 00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:32,640 And so yeah, that's another thing. 294 00:16:32,640 --> 00:16:34,440 So you did that trick multiple times 295 00:16:34,440 --> 00:16:37,520 with the blind grabbing stuff. 296 00:16:37,520 --> 00:16:41,440 A whole morning doing that and wishing for the best 297 00:16:41,440 --> 00:16:46,160 not to get whatever it may have been, tarantula, 298 00:16:46,160 --> 00:16:50,640 or maybe a snake. 299 00:16:50,640 --> 00:16:53,200 And yeah, I was lucky. 300 00:16:53,200 --> 00:16:55,360 So I managed to pull four out. 301 00:16:55,360 --> 00:16:59,000 But of course, I had to dig in dozens of burrows 302 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:01,240 and just feel for whatever that was inside. 303 00:17:01,240 --> 00:17:03,040 And no wonder nobody could find this thing, 304 00:17:03,040 --> 00:17:05,760 because nobody was going to do that. 305 00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:07,400 My students refused to do it. 306 00:17:07,400 --> 00:17:10,320 Like I said, OK, guys, now you know how you do it. 307 00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:12,000 When I called the first one, they all refused. 308 00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:13,000 No way I'm not. 309 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:14,440 Yeah, no. 310 00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:16,440 They're probably smarter than you, Michael. 311 00:17:16,440 --> 00:17:18,040 Yeah. 312 00:17:18,040 --> 00:17:20,920 Let's let Todactylus need CO2. 313 00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:24,480 This is possibly the greatest challenge we have. 314 00:17:24,480 --> 00:17:25,280 Yeah, cool. 315 00:17:25,280 --> 00:17:25,800 Todactylus. 316 00:17:25,800 --> 00:17:27,520 Those are pretty big frogs, usually, right? 317 00:17:27,520 --> 00:17:28,320 I mean, they can be. 318 00:17:28,320 --> 00:17:29,480 Yeah. 319 00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:31,720 They actually, yeah. 320 00:17:31,720 --> 00:17:35,880 There's a group of frogs that lay floating foam. 321 00:17:35,880 --> 00:17:40,760 And they put the eggs and tadpoles hatch inside the foam. 322 00:17:40,760 --> 00:17:45,640 But with this species, nobody's ever found how it breeds. 323 00:17:45,640 --> 00:17:47,920 Nobody's ever found a tadpole. 324 00:17:47,920 --> 00:17:49,440 So it's a mysterious animal. 325 00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:51,840 And it's only found in this one swamp 326 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:56,560 in the south of Trinidad, in this little peninsula. 327 00:17:56,560 --> 00:17:58,200 And the swamp is small. 328 00:17:58,200 --> 00:18:00,040 It's maybe like 5,000 square meters. 329 00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:00,520 That's it. 330 00:18:00,520 --> 00:18:01,600 Nowhere else. 331 00:18:01,600 --> 00:18:02,440 Wow. 332 00:18:02,440 --> 00:18:03,400 It's unbelievable. 333 00:18:03,400 --> 00:18:04,280 Wow, wow. 334 00:18:04,280 --> 00:18:04,800 Yeah. 335 00:18:04,800 --> 00:18:07,800 Aspiring biologists, pay attention. 336 00:18:07,800 --> 00:18:08,320 Yeah. 337 00:18:08,320 --> 00:18:12,200 This is just many of mysteries and still there. 338 00:18:12,200 --> 00:18:14,680 Oh, that's the, I mean, the only people 339 00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:17,120 I know that stick their hand down burrows to grab stuff 340 00:18:17,120 --> 00:18:18,600 are people working in Madagascar, 341 00:18:18,600 --> 00:18:21,000 because they know there is nothing venomous there. 342 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:22,560 Oh, OK. 343 00:18:22,560 --> 00:18:23,560 Well, nothing dangerous. 344 00:18:23,560 --> 00:18:26,040 I mean, there's some scorpions there and spiders. 345 00:18:26,040 --> 00:18:27,680 But nothing that will kill you. 346 00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:30,320 But yeah, otherwise, it's a bad idea. 347 00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:31,320 Yeah, it's very not. 348 00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:33,240 It's not wise. 349 00:18:33,240 --> 00:18:36,160 Yeah, I think I was also with my flip flops there. 350 00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:37,880 And I was stunned by something. 351 00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:41,440 I think it was maybe a scorpion or a spider. 352 00:18:41,440 --> 00:18:44,360 And my foot was like a balloon for like three days. 353 00:18:44,360 --> 00:18:47,760 Or it's full of creepy cronies. 354 00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:51,000 But you know what it's like. 355 00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:52,680 Anyway, so yeah, to treat that. 356 00:18:52,680 --> 00:18:53,180 Yeah. 357 00:18:56,400 --> 00:18:57,040 Awesome. 358 00:18:57,040 --> 00:19:00,640 Yeah, and so you had the first female. 359 00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:02,760 You described it, I presume. 360 00:19:02,760 --> 00:19:03,680 And that all was. 361 00:19:03,680 --> 00:19:06,360 And also, we took them to the lab alive. 362 00:19:06,360 --> 00:19:08,640 We studied them for weeks. 363 00:19:08,640 --> 00:19:10,760 And we recorded the course. 364 00:19:10,760 --> 00:19:14,160 And we published more than one paper. 365 00:19:14,160 --> 00:19:17,160 And one paper was, when they are mad, 366 00:19:17,160 --> 00:19:19,560 they have this distinctive call. 367 00:19:19,560 --> 00:19:22,040 So we actually published this while 368 00:19:22,040 --> 00:19:23,440 that they have different calls. 369 00:19:23,440 --> 00:19:27,000 The mating calls, and maybe male-male competition, 370 00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:29,120 and then what we call an aggression call. 371 00:19:29,120 --> 00:19:30,040 Cool. 372 00:19:30,040 --> 00:19:32,200 But even in the lab, we had them in huge tanks. 373 00:19:32,200 --> 00:19:33,280 You can never see them. 374 00:19:33,280 --> 00:19:34,600 They were just hiding them. 375 00:19:34,600 --> 00:19:39,240 It's even in the, you knew they were in a one square meter 376 00:19:39,240 --> 00:19:39,800 tank. 377 00:19:39,800 --> 00:19:43,200 And it would take you a while to find the frog. 378 00:19:43,200 --> 00:19:45,680 They're extremely elusive animals. 379 00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:47,800 Extremely elusive animals. 380 00:19:47,800 --> 00:19:52,880 Yeah, so and then, yeah. 381 00:19:52,880 --> 00:19:55,960 So that's all the stories of Trinity that, you know. 382 00:19:55,960 --> 00:19:59,000 Yeah, no, and to know anything about an animal, 383 00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:00,840 you need to first find it. 384 00:20:00,840 --> 00:20:03,360 That's pretty basic. 385 00:20:03,360 --> 00:20:04,720 Yeah. 386 00:20:04,720 --> 00:20:06,160 Well, yeah. 387 00:20:06,160 --> 00:20:11,040 Yeah, that was a very rewarding event. 388 00:20:11,040 --> 00:20:12,680 Yeah. 389 00:20:12,680 --> 00:20:14,760 And then to be able to study it in the lab 390 00:20:14,760 --> 00:20:17,160 and get all that data out of it. 391 00:20:17,160 --> 00:20:18,960 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 392 00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:22,080 You increase the knowledge of that particular species 393 00:20:22,080 --> 00:20:23,280 by a lot, I imagine. 394 00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:25,920 Yeah, and it's extremely, it's an endemic. 395 00:20:25,920 --> 00:20:28,520 I mean, we found other frogs, like golden tree frog 396 00:20:28,520 --> 00:20:31,600 of Trinidad, which is one of the rarest frogs in the planet. 397 00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:32,480 Really? 398 00:20:32,480 --> 00:20:35,360 Yeah, it lives in two summits, in Tucuchan, 399 00:20:35,360 --> 00:20:36,520 in the cloud forests. 400 00:20:36,520 --> 00:20:42,080 And this is like, I think in the Edge website, 401 00:20:42,080 --> 00:20:46,200 the Edge is A-D-G-E. Is that Edge? 402 00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:50,960 Yeah, this is the rare evolutionary species. 403 00:20:50,960 --> 00:20:54,520 This frog is like number 80 in the world, 404 00:20:54,520 --> 00:20:59,520 as one of the rarest evolutionary species in the world. 405 00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:00,120 Oh, cool. 406 00:21:00,120 --> 00:21:04,320 It's only found in two mountain tops in Trinidad. 407 00:21:04,320 --> 00:21:08,240 And recently, they found the population in Venezuela. 408 00:21:08,240 --> 00:21:12,080 And it lives in a giant bromeliad, only that bromeliad, 409 00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:12,960 nowhere else. 410 00:21:12,960 --> 00:21:15,280 The top of the feeds on the microalgae. 411 00:21:15,280 --> 00:21:18,680 So Trinidad is fascinating because it has these. 412 00:21:18,680 --> 00:21:20,280 And this is a monogenes animal. 413 00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:22,960 It's the only species of its genus. 414 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:25,080 It's called phytotriadus. 415 00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:26,360 It's extremely rare. 416 00:21:26,360 --> 00:21:27,000 And that's it. 417 00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:29,920 There's no other close relatives anywhere. 418 00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:31,320 First time I hear of it, too. 419 00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:33,040 So yeah. 420 00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:33,840 Wow. 421 00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:34,440 Cool. 422 00:21:34,440 --> 00:21:36,720 And you also spent some time in Venezuela, right? 423 00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:40,080 I mean, you've had some trips there. 424 00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:44,160 I mean, I had one trip from my PhD. 425 00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:48,480 We had to go and fly over and meet some researchers, 426 00:21:48,480 --> 00:21:52,880 local researchers, to look for this dendrobatic frog, which 427 00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:56,960 I rather, I guess you're aware of because you published 428 00:21:56,960 --> 00:21:59,360 with dendrobats, haven't you, your early work? 429 00:21:59,360 --> 00:22:00,840 I think so. 430 00:22:00,840 --> 00:22:01,840 Have I? 431 00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:05,880 I think you have a big paper, isn't it? 432 00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:07,040 I think you did. 433 00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:11,040 No, I may be on a few papers. 434 00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:13,440 But I just did a bit of sequencing. 435 00:22:13,440 --> 00:22:14,280 OK. 436 00:22:14,280 --> 00:22:16,280 I thought maybe you were wrong. 437 00:22:16,280 --> 00:22:18,200 Sad thing as a grad student. 438 00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:21,640 You're in the lab going through people's. 439 00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:24,600 People like you go to the field, get all these fancy frogs. 440 00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:25,880 And I get in the lab. 441 00:22:25,880 --> 00:22:28,040 I got to analyze the DNA. 442 00:22:28,040 --> 00:22:30,440 But you get the final story. 443 00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:31,640 These days I do that. 444 00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:34,640 To be honest, my expeditions to Trinidad 445 00:22:34,640 --> 00:22:36,320 were quite some time ago. 446 00:22:36,320 --> 00:22:38,640 Now I have amazing collaborators. 447 00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:39,960 They send me the tissues. 448 00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:43,200 They are maybe from Venezuela or Trinidad. 449 00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:47,280 They've been working much more than I have there. 450 00:22:47,280 --> 00:22:49,720 So now I rely on their expertise. 451 00:22:49,720 --> 00:22:51,080 And they ship me the tissues. 452 00:22:51,080 --> 00:22:52,240 And I'm like you. 453 00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,360 I'm doing the genetics and writing the story, right? 454 00:22:55,360 --> 00:22:58,080 So all credit to them for sure. 455 00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:00,200 Venezuela, yeah, so I was working 456 00:23:00,200 --> 00:23:03,160 with this dendrobatic, it's called Manufraine. 457 00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:06,880 Trinitatis from Trinidad is an endemic species of frog. 458 00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:09,560 Beautiful frogs, very colorful. 459 00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:11,280 Yeah, but this one is the dark one. 460 00:23:11,280 --> 00:23:16,000 It's actually the low pretty one, unfortunately for me. 461 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:19,560 But actually most of my PhD was on this frog. 462 00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:24,880 And it was believed to occur in the north of Venezuela 463 00:23:24,880 --> 00:23:28,600 in this beautiful place called the Paria Peninsula. 464 00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:31,840 And so we ran some genetic work. 465 00:23:31,840 --> 00:23:34,200 And we actually realized that the animal in Venezuela 466 00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:35,240 was a different species. 467 00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:39,200 So we called it Manufraine venezolensis, very original. 468 00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:44,440 Nevertheless, we wanted to find a species called Manufraine 469 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:49,320 hermini, which is closely related to the Trinidad 470 00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:51,280 and the northern Venezuelan species. 471 00:23:51,280 --> 00:23:54,080 For this, I flew from Trinidad. 472 00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:58,560 I got a little airplane, the propeller airplanes. 473 00:23:58,560 --> 00:23:59,840 And I flew to Caracas. 474 00:23:59,840 --> 00:24:04,120 I'm from Caracas, I got another little propeller plane. 475 00:24:04,120 --> 00:24:08,200 And I flew down south to Maturin, I think it was. 476 00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:09,200 It's in the jungle. 477 00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:11,760 And this trip was terrible. 478 00:24:11,760 --> 00:24:16,160 This little airplane, it had seen better days. 479 00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:17,960 You could see the rust everywhere. 480 00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:22,800 And I remember all my life that this guy from Galicia, 481 00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:25,080 I don't know what he was doing in the airplane. 482 00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:27,160 It was about two or three people, that's it, 483 00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:28,040 in the airplane. 484 00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:32,120 Me and this, maybe, I think the stewardess and this guy. 485 00:24:32,120 --> 00:24:36,000 This guy was praying because the plane was jumping 486 00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:37,400 and it was terrible. 487 00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:39,360 And the clouds would come in the airplane. 488 00:24:39,360 --> 00:24:40,960 It was freezing cold inside. 489 00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,200 And he was, oh, what? 490 00:24:43,200 --> 00:24:44,160 Why am I here? 491 00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:45,320 Why am I here? 492 00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:47,440 My life, my job is not worth it. 493 00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:49,200 This is not worth it. 494 00:24:49,200 --> 00:24:52,840 He was cursing all the triads like, oh, Christ. 495 00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:57,640 Anyway, so basically, this is a strip of land in the jungle. 496 00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:01,080 We just landed this thing. 497 00:25:01,080 --> 00:25:03,800 The guy from Galicia says, thank you, Lord. 498 00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:04,440 Thank you. 499 00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:04,960 Thank you. 500 00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:08,360 It's just so thankful to be alive. 501 00:25:08,360 --> 00:25:10,040 OK, here we go. 502 00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,360 And so I've got a huge rock-sack because I'm 503 00:25:13,360 --> 00:25:17,120 going to meet some local researchers to go and look 504 00:25:17,120 --> 00:25:18,320 for this frog. 505 00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:20,360 And they know where to find it in the jungle. 506 00:25:20,360 --> 00:25:25,720 It takes about two days of trekking through rivers 507 00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:28,480 to actually go to the summits where they're found. 508 00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:29,560 Wow. 509 00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:37,920 Because I end up walking to what you would call a little airport. 510 00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:39,600 But it's not an airport. 511 00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:42,040 It's like a room. 512 00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:45,680 And they asked me, what are you doing here? 513 00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:47,480 And I said, well, I'm a researcher. 514 00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:48,440 I'm doing my PhD. 515 00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,200 And I'm coming to work. 516 00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:58,600 I presume this is a high drug area or a conflict zone. 517 00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:02,960 And I immediately get a paramilitary with machine guns 518 00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:05,120 pointing at me. 519 00:26:05,120 --> 00:26:05,640 Right. 520 00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,440 And I was like, oh, dear. 521 00:26:08,440 --> 00:26:10,880 Maybe I should have said something different. 522 00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:12,720 And so they put me in a room. 523 00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:14,440 It's kind of a detention room. 524 00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:15,800 I'm close there. 525 00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:18,760 And I don't know what's going to happen to me. 526 00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:21,440 They take my passport, they take my rucksack, 527 00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:23,200 they leave me there, they close me in. 528 00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:26,280 I don't know how long I was there. 529 00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:28,680 And I'm young. 530 00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:29,680 Why? 531 00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:31,120 I don't know. 532 00:26:31,120 --> 00:26:34,600 Because it's just very suspicious 533 00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:39,760 that you have this European in the middle of nowhere, 534 00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:42,520 alone, with no local researchers. 535 00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:43,840 And so I'm OK. 536 00:26:43,840 --> 00:26:48,240 So I don't know how much the time lapse is. 537 00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:53,320 You were detained in the middle of nowhere in the jungle. 538 00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:56,800 Yeah, but this weird dressed military, which 539 00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:59,160 I don't know who they are. 540 00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:02,880 They don't seem like national military. 541 00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:06,040 It's just like, I don't know. 542 00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:07,360 I'm confused, right? 543 00:27:07,360 --> 00:27:09,760 Because I was expecting a normal airport. 544 00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:11,640 I was expecting a little town. 545 00:27:14,520 --> 00:27:15,720 Somebody stabs your passport. 546 00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:17,680 You just walk through. 547 00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:19,640 And I was looking forward to it. 548 00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:22,840 And I realized, oh, OK, this is really not 549 00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:25,360 what I thought it was going to be. 550 00:27:25,360 --> 00:27:29,080 So basically. 551 00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:30,320 And you were very young then, right? 552 00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:31,320 You were a PhD student. 553 00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:33,400 You were a kid. 554 00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:36,200 Yeah, second year PhD or third year PhD. 555 00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:37,600 I'm not sure. 556 00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:39,600 I mean, I was not the youngest. 557 00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:41,200 I did my PhD kind of late in life. 558 00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:42,240 Maybe I was 28. 559 00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:47,880 But you're not prepared to for. 560 00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:51,160 Basically, so after a while, they take me out. 561 00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:53,400 And they lay on this big table. 562 00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:55,120 And they put my rucksack on the table. 563 00:27:55,120 --> 00:27:58,840 And there's three or four guys pointing at the rucksack 564 00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:02,480 with a gun and another one at me. 565 00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:06,120 And they asked me to open and take everything out. 566 00:28:06,120 --> 00:28:08,840 And of course, they have eppendals 567 00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:14,840 to preserve the samples, tweezers, alcohol, ethanol. 568 00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:16,360 I have all the equipment. 569 00:28:16,360 --> 00:28:19,800 So kind of they start maybe believing my story 570 00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:21,360 that I'm coming for research. 571 00:28:21,360 --> 00:28:26,000 So they told me to pack everything in my big rucksack. 572 00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:27,360 And they walked me through a room. 573 00:28:27,360 --> 00:28:29,520 And this I will never forget. 574 00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:31,600 It's like in the movies of Narcos. 575 00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:34,640 When you see you open the room. 576 00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:38,160 And I have to picture this room. 577 00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:43,800 It's like an old table and a chair. 578 00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:50,920 And there's this guy who looks like in the movies of Narcos, 579 00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:52,280 a drug dealer. 580 00:28:52,280 --> 00:28:57,280 He's got a sweat vest on. 581 00:28:57,280 --> 00:28:59,800 And he's got a big belly, all stained. 582 00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:02,440 He's got this mustache. 583 00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:05,880 And he's smoking a cigar. 584 00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:09,840 And he's holding his passport, my passport, 585 00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:11,840 with his left arm. 586 00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:17,560 And you have this old fan, which is all just 587 00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:18,880 getting a bit of air. 588 00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:20,000 He's all sweaty. 589 00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:26,800 And he's holding the passport in the air, my passport. 590 00:29:26,800 --> 00:29:30,120 And he's just smoking the cigar and just kind 591 00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:32,120 of thinking about something. 592 00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:34,200 And I'm at the door. 593 00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:36,320 And I'm just thinking, OK, this is it. 594 00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:38,480 This is what happens in the movies. 595 00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:41,560 They all get killed. 596 00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:42,600 That's me done. 597 00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:47,600 My whole life is in his hand, his passport. 598 00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:48,360 My passport. 599 00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:53,080 If he decides to break the passport or throw it, I'm done. 600 00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:54,640 I'm never getting out. 601 00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,120 And so he calls me and he's just like that, come. 602 00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:02,760 And to his surprise, I speak Spanish fluently. 603 00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,360 Even though my name says Michael J. Chowers. 604 00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:10,120 So this is, oh, he's, what, he says, what are you doing here? 605 00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:11,600 In English, I think it was. 606 00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:13,120 And then I started speaking Spanish. 607 00:30:13,120 --> 00:30:15,880 And I said, look, I'm coming for a frog. 608 00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:17,640 He could not believe it. 609 00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:19,560 He said, what? 610 00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:21,880 You're coming for a frog? 611 00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:24,840 I said, yes, I'm coming to get this frog. 612 00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:25,960 Really? 613 00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:29,640 You're flying from the UK to Trinidad to Caracas here 614 00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:31,160 for a frog? 615 00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:33,240 Yes. 616 00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:35,840 And he was like, oh, this is the best thing 617 00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,960 I've ever heard in my life. 618 00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:40,520 This guy is crazy. 619 00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:43,080 So then he asked me, OK, who's picking you up? 620 00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:45,080 Who are you working with? 621 00:30:45,080 --> 00:30:46,800 What does a frog look like? 622 00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:48,640 Everything. 623 00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:50,600 And he laughed the story. 624 00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:53,480 I can't believe it. 625 00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:55,400 So he said, that's fantastic. 626 00:30:55,400 --> 00:31:00,120 And he just did something to my passport, gave it back to me. 627 00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:02,160 All the guys took company me out. 628 00:31:02,160 --> 00:31:05,920 And several hours later, I met up with the researchers 629 00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:08,120 outside this airport. 630 00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:11,840 And I was like, thank you for the frog. 631 00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:15,040 He was just amused by it. 632 00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,800 He thought it was fantastic, fantastic. 633 00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:20,960 I'm sure he went home that day and told his family, 634 00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:22,320 this guy. 635 00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:23,080 Yeah. 636 00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,200 Well, I guess there's not a lot happening there 637 00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,320 at that little airport every day. 638 00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,960 You were the craziest thing to come by there. 639 00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:30,560 Yeah. 640 00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:31,760 It's been a long time. 641 00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:35,360 So I was very blessed to get out of that place 642 00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:37,920 and survive that little airplane thing. 643 00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:44,200 It's like a little dragonfly, the airplane. 644 00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,760 It was so dodgy. 645 00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:51,520 Anyways, and obviously, we didn't find the frog. 646 00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:55,920 We went to Helm back to find the earth, sleep deprivation. 647 00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:59,320 We were sleeping in hammocks, eating alive by mosquitoes. 648 00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:02,000 And it's the only time in my life 649 00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:06,040 that I had to call it quits and say, I cannot carry on. 650 00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:06,640 I have to stop. 651 00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:07,760 I'm going to faint. 652 00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:13,080 It's the only time in my life that my body was to its limit. 653 00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:15,560 And we couldn't make it. 654 00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:17,320 We couldn't find the frog. 655 00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:18,960 Anyway, so. 656 00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:20,720 No, but that's. 657 00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:21,720 Never found it. 658 00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:22,320 Yeah. 659 00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:25,200 How long did you spend there on the mountain looking for it? 660 00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:26,040 Oh, it wasn't long. 661 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:29,120 Maybe it was like five days, a week. 662 00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:31,560 But I was slow enough to kill you. 663 00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:34,800 Yeah, I was asleep, deprived, not sleeping at night. 664 00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:37,640 The mosquitoes were just going for me like crazy. 665 00:32:37,640 --> 00:32:41,560 And I was sleeping one hour a night. 666 00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:42,720 The diet was terrible. 667 00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:48,080 Having Yuka, try Yuka with tuna not to have diarrhea. 668 00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:49,440 It was not right. 669 00:32:49,440 --> 00:32:54,160 And yeah, my colleagues eventually found the frog. 670 00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:57,160 But I think it took another year or something like that. 671 00:32:57,160 --> 00:32:57,680 OK. 672 00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,560 It's a good thing you didn't stay around for that. 673 00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:02,960 No, no. 674 00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:05,880 I wanted to get out. 675 00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:08,600 But yeah, that was you know. 676 00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:11,920 So was the guy disappointed when you came back and didn't have. 677 00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:13,080 I never saw it again. 678 00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:14,200 I never saw it again. 679 00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:18,000 No, no, I flew out through another airport. 680 00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:21,640 I think it's they dropped me off in Caracas and I don't remember 681 00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:23,920 where I just flew out somewhere different. 682 00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:25,160 Right, right, right. 683 00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:26,840 Yeah. 684 00:33:26,840 --> 00:33:29,480 Otherwise, it would have detained you because you couldn't show a frog. 685 00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,280 Yeah, yeah. 686 00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:34,200 Yeah. 687 00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:38,000 So yeah, that was a defeat. 688 00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:39,400 Let's say never finding them. 689 00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:40,600 It's happened many times. 690 00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:44,920 I failed in Martinique to find a dentrobacter as well. 691 00:33:44,920 --> 00:33:48,520 I failed to find a snake again in another. 692 00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:50,200 Sometimes they're just gone. 693 00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:51,400 They just can't find them. 694 00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:52,200 No, I know. 695 00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:56,480 I mean, I've seen the really cool documentary on Ushuaia TV. 696 00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:57,000 Oh, yeah. 697 00:33:57,000 --> 00:34:04,160 You guys going to to Diamond Rock, which is small, almost vertical island 698 00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:09,760 just sticking out of the out of the tropical sea to find a snake there. 699 00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:16,800 But yeah, that was that was one of the hardest expeditions ever for sure. 700 00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:19,000 I think nothing prepares you for that. 701 00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,400 We me and my good friend, 702 00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:24,440 Stefan Kuhl is a French researcher. 703 00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:28,280 We work together in Doniana, a biological research station in Seville. 704 00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:35,120 And we we we wrote a paper about this snake is believed to be extinct. 705 00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:36,400 Leovis Curso. 706 00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:38,800 This is a colubrid snake. 707 00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:44,840 And we managed to get some samples from the Natural History Museum in Madrid, 708 00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:50,720 in Paris, and I managed to sequence some genes and put it put it in an evolutionary 709 00:34:50,720 --> 00:34:53,440 tree and we published a little nice paper. 710 00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:57,000 And this snake is was believed to be extinct. 711 00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:02,600 But there was reports that after the introduction of the mongoose in the island 712 00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:08,760 of Martinique in the Caribbean, the snake population had been decimated. 713 00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,400 Extinct mongoose eat, prey on snakes. 714 00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:12,480 Yeah, famously. 715 00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:13,640 Yeah, exactly. 716 00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:15,440 And there are huge problems in the Caribbean. 717 00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:21,040 But this small islet, maybe like 300 meters off the coast of Martinique. 718 00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:26,760 Hasn't gotten mongoose and the last reports and the last captured individual, 719 00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:33,480 which I sequenced, I believe, was captured from this little island in 1962. 720 00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:34,800 Oh, that's a while ago. 721 00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:35,080 Yeah. 722 00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:35,760 Yeah. 723 00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:40,120 So that's the last time that an animal was captured. 724 00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,360 The specimen of Leovis Curso. 725 00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:44,640 Leovis Curso. 726 00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:45,400 That's it. 727 00:35:45,400 --> 00:35:45,920 Yeah. 728 00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:49,320 So we thought, hey, what about going to this place 729 00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:53,120 and seeing if the animal is still there? 730 00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:54,680 It would be fascinating. 731 00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:55,160 Yeah. 732 00:35:55,160 --> 00:36:00,600 And we got funding, I think, I'm not sure it was through National Geographical. 733 00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,760 And I think, no, maybe another organization. 734 00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:10,080 And we actually led an expedition there to look for the snake. 735 00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:15,720 Now, we stayed in a house, preparing the expedition for three weeks 736 00:36:15,720 --> 00:36:21,000 and in the island of Martinique, it's a very nice island. 737 00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:23,480 It's a balance to France. 738 00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:27,160 It's all very comfortable, beautiful. 739 00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:30,640 And from the house, we could see diamond rock. 740 00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:33,840 So we had binoculars and we could just plan. 741 00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:35,440 OK, interesting. 742 00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,040 We prepared traps, 40 traps that we released, 743 00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:43,200 that we put in the island, in the diamond rock, eventually. 744 00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:47,880 And we were organizing for three weeks. 745 00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:52,120 It was me, my colleague, and a cameraman from Canada, 746 00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:57,760 who Alex came to film because we were going to do a documentary out of it. 747 00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:04,360 And basically, we got a boat to take us there. 748 00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:07,960 And you have to bear in mind, there's no water in this island. 749 00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:14,360 And we have filming equipment, cameras, well, you name it. 750 00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:15,160 Yeah. 751 00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:20,560 And so we are taking, I don't know, 500 kilos of equipment. 752 00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:23,640 I mean, just the water, I think we took 600 liters. 753 00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:25,440 You can't be there without water. 754 00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:27,400 Nobody lives there. 755 00:37:27,400 --> 00:37:33,760 The food, hammocks, we're going to sleep on hammocks in the caves. 756 00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:36,920 So we load the car four in the morning, 757 00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:40,520 go to the port, load everything in the boat. 758 00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:44,440 And from a distance, everything looks nice. 759 00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:46,040 Like, OK, this is going to be easy. 760 00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:46,760 Yeah, it's nice. 761 00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:51,320 Yeah, little island 300 meters away from civilization. 762 00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:52,840 How bad can it be? 763 00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:53,880 No big deal. 764 00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:54,840 I've done this before. 765 00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:56,920 Oh, and we go with a climber, actually. 766 00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:00,160 The first day, we take a professional climber 767 00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:05,400 to open and put the ropes so we can actually 768 00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:07,280 move around the island. 769 00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:08,440 So we get there. 770 00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:12,120 And as we're getting closer, Stefan and I look to each other 771 00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:15,400 and we realize, oh my word, what are we doing? 772 00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:17,840 This is impossible. 773 00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:20,400 It's a sheer wall. 774 00:38:20,400 --> 00:38:22,760 You have to bear in mind, we're not climbers. 775 00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:26,560 We've been doing climbing for the last weeks to train, 776 00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,400 but we're not professional climbers. 777 00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:32,880 And we don't know how to work the equipment properly. 778 00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,320 This has just been given to us the night before. 779 00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:38,120 We get there. 780 00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:42,200 And this is a sheer rock face, this island. 781 00:38:42,200 --> 00:38:44,200 It's terrible. 782 00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:50,880 And it's one of those times when you realize, OK, maybe 783 00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:53,880 I've chewed on too much that I can swallow. 784 00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:55,080 This is too much. 785 00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:57,520 And of course, the boat is trying 786 00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:01,720 to get to the landing dock, let's say, where 787 00:39:01,720 --> 00:39:04,880 we're going to start releasing and putting all the equipment. 788 00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:06,920 But this boat is moving up and down. 789 00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:08,800 The waves are hitting. 790 00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:13,600 And basically, we have to download, unload, all just 791 00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:14,200 the water. 792 00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:16,280 It's like 600 liters. 793 00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:23,240 And through this rope, an old rope on the side of the wall, 794 00:39:23,240 --> 00:39:27,480 we just hang into that with all the equipment. 795 00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:29,440 And there's one cave. 796 00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:31,720 We start putting everything in one cave. 797 00:39:31,720 --> 00:39:35,520 At one point, Stefan, who is blind as a bat, 798 00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:37,560 loses his glasses. 799 00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:38,920 And they fall to the sea. 800 00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:41,680 So I have to dive and look for them. 801 00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:43,800 So I had to go down 8 or 10 meters. 802 00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:46,280 And luckily, they were hanging on the wall 803 00:39:46,280 --> 00:39:48,120 on top of a sea urchin. 804 00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:51,880 And I meant it because otherwise, he would have been blind. 805 00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:53,840 So this is the beginning. 806 00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:56,960 And it's exhausting. 807 00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,720 And we downloaded hundreds of kilos of equipment and food 808 00:40:00,720 --> 00:40:02,520 and you name it. 809 00:40:02,520 --> 00:40:04,280 And this is camp one. 810 00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:08,000 And then from there, we have to take some equipment 811 00:40:08,000 --> 00:40:09,360 to the next camp. 812 00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:14,560 And this is, again, you have to go through a forest, 813 00:40:14,560 --> 00:40:19,560 open with machetes, and to leave a second camp, which 814 00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,280 is where we have the food and most of the water 815 00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:23,720 and the hammocks. 816 00:40:23,720 --> 00:40:27,520 And then it's when the climbing starts. 817 00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:35,360 And then you have to climb maybe 100 meters or 120 meters 818 00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:37,240 to go to the cave where we're going to sleep. 819 00:40:37,240 --> 00:40:39,760 Because there's no other place to sleep. 820 00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:42,720 Down in the base, there's no beach. 821 00:40:42,720 --> 00:40:43,600 There's no sand. 822 00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:45,440 It's all lava. 823 00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:46,960 Or when it's all rock. 824 00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:50,520 And it's full of mosquitoes. 825 00:40:50,520 --> 00:40:52,160 It's going to rain. 826 00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:53,520 So you need cover. 827 00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:54,020 Yeah. 828 00:40:54,020 --> 00:40:57,080 Most of all, the expensive filming equipment. 829 00:40:57,080 --> 00:41:00,480 Little did I know that after the climber, 830 00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:01,600 I think it's called Lawrence. 831 00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:02,320 I don't remember. 832 00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:05,080 He prepares the lines because the lines were just 833 00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:07,080 all broken. 834 00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:12,360 Just to get to the cave, I remember thinking, 835 00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:13,440 how are we going to do this? 836 00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:15,640 This is just terrible. 837 00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:17,320 It's so hard. 838 00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:18,480 So hard. 839 00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:19,280 So heavy. 840 00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:25,920 Anyway, so and then we had to do many trips to go to the cave. 841 00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:29,480 It's an hour each way just to go up another 45 minutes 842 00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:30,880 to go down. 843 00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:35,800 And I remember clearly being exhausted after 16 or 18 hours 844 00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:36,600 the first night. 845 00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:37,600 And we're going to cook. 846 00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:40,560 And we forgot the gas. 847 00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:42,560 The gas valves at the very first. 848 00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:43,560 Oh, no. 849 00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:45,720 We had to climb all the way down again. 850 00:41:45,720 --> 00:41:47,160 No, it was night. 851 00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:48,920 So we didn't have the strength. 852 00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:52,280 So we just ate packet noodles, the dry stuff. 853 00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:53,120 That's what we ate. 854 00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:54,200 That's the water. 855 00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:55,160 Yeah, the rope. 856 00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:57,920 Yeah, that's what we had. 857 00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:00,880 And so basically, we went to look for this snake. 858 00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:04,920 And this island used to be in the Napoleonic Wars. 859 00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:06,920 It was an English colony. 860 00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:09,840 And the French fought to take it back. 861 00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:13,440 And after a long campaign, they managed to take it. 862 00:42:13,440 --> 00:42:17,920 And nobody had ever spent more than one night in this place 863 00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:22,360 until me and Stefan went, which is funny, 864 00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,240 because the English fought the French for so long. 865 00:42:25,240 --> 00:42:29,240 And it was two years later than a French scientist, 866 00:42:29,240 --> 00:42:33,080 Stefan and myself, English, actually went together 867 00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:37,680 to try and look for a snake for conservation, which is, 868 00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:38,560 we made peace. 869 00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:41,440 We made peace. 870 00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:46,120 And of course, this reports that when the English lived there, 871 00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:49,040 it was absolutely full of snakes. 872 00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:51,600 Because they had to build a pool with fresh water. 873 00:42:51,600 --> 00:42:52,800 And then there were snakes. 874 00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:56,160 But when the pool cracked, the water, the fresh water 875 00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:57,280 disappeared. 876 00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:00,960 The snake populations disappeared. 877 00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:05,000 So we spent 10 days there. 878 00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:06,040 It was hard. 879 00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:09,720 And it's full of cacti as well, which is so odd. 880 00:43:09,720 --> 00:43:12,880 Like, huge, spiny cacti. 881 00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:16,360 And we didn't find it. 882 00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:18,800 We actually went back three years later. 883 00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:19,560 You're right. 884 00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:20,240 Oh, really? 885 00:43:20,240 --> 00:43:20,760 OK. 886 00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:21,440 Yeah. 887 00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:23,280 We had to go twice. 888 00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:25,720 The technology had changed since the first edition 889 00:43:25,720 --> 00:43:26,920 of Dr. Metric. 890 00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:28,040 And now it's drones. 891 00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:30,800 So we had to go back with another team and use drones. 892 00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:33,560 And we still couldn't find the snake. 893 00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:34,800 We never found it. 894 00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:38,920 Unfortunately, the snake is possibly extinct. 895 00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:40,240 So wow. 896 00:43:40,240 --> 00:43:42,720 So that specimen that you sequenced from the museum 897 00:43:42,720 --> 00:43:45,040 may have been the last one. 898 00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:47,400 The thing is, there's local myths by fishermen 899 00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:49,480 that they still see the snake there. 900 00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:51,120 We went to Martinique in the market, 901 00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:52,960 and everybody was saying, yeah, I've seen it. 902 00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:54,280 I've seen the snake. 903 00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:55,440 Busting on the rocks. 904 00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:56,840 And all these stories. 905 00:43:56,840 --> 00:43:58,440 You know, that was like five years ago. 906 00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:00,800 So it's obviously not true. 907 00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:02,920 It's basically just myth now. 908 00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:03,680 Yeah. 909 00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:10,520 And it was very, I mean, it was a good experience. 910 00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:14,360 But then the sheer size of these walls. 911 00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:16,360 And also, nobody told us, you're going 912 00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:18,600 to have to be climbing 16 hours a day. 913 00:44:18,600 --> 00:44:21,080 And like, no. 914 00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:22,200 It's so heavy. 915 00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:23,400 No. 916 00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:25,600 Fortunate enough to be healthy and fit. 917 00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:28,480 But maybe somebody that hasn't got upper strength, 918 00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:30,360 I'm not seeing. 919 00:44:30,360 --> 00:44:32,520 I don't know how they would do this. 920 00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:37,040 I mean, having seen that island on the documentary 921 00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:40,320 is just a bit of rock sticking out straight 922 00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,520 from the sea, it's a bit vertical onto the top. 923 00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,760 And yeah, covered with nasty spiny. 924 00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:52,200 Don't let the tropical island biologists think this is stuff. 925 00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:54,280 Yeah, but it was fantastic. 926 00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:55,760 It was a beautiful place. 927 00:44:55,760 --> 00:44:59,160 And you can see Martinique at night from there. 928 00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:01,040 And there's obviously some funny stories. 929 00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:03,600 We took three liters of punching rum, 930 00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:05,480 but we had no ice and no lime. 931 00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:07,000 So we just treated it straight. 932 00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:09,120 And that wasn't a good idea, because we 933 00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:11,600 got very intoxicated one night. 934 00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:12,680 And you're by a cliff. 935 00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,360 And you need to go to the loo very quickly. 936 00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:18,360 And you're looking for a spot. 937 00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:20,760 And everybody's looking for a spot at the same time. 938 00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:25,920 And it is kind of nasty. 939 00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:28,880 And you would go to the toilet, but there are very limited 940 00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:33,040 places, so you can only go once to the same spot. 941 00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:34,400 You cannot repeat, right? 942 00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:36,120 You cannot hammer it or anything. 943 00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:38,720 You cannot dig, so it's all rock. 944 00:45:38,720 --> 00:45:43,440 Yeah, so three liters of rum. 945 00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:51,200 And it's actually over 75% alcohol with no lime, no ice. 946 00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:52,760 Not a good idea when you dehydrate. 947 00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:54,240 Terrible idea, Michael. 948 00:45:54,240 --> 00:45:55,080 Terrible idea. 949 00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:57,320 But that was like our thing at the end of the day. 950 00:45:57,320 --> 00:45:59,680 It was like, let's have a rum. 951 00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:02,800 And even though it felt terrible, it was like, 952 00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:03,680 it's going to be done. 953 00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:08,240 And I think we drank it all, actually, or most of it. 954 00:46:08,240 --> 00:46:10,800 And then obviously, to have a swim or to clean yourself, 955 00:46:10,800 --> 00:46:13,640 you had to climb all the way down to come base one. 956 00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:14,720 And there we would swim. 957 00:46:14,720 --> 00:46:18,560 And we had some emergencies, like the director, 958 00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:21,360 the person who was filming suddenly went down. 959 00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:24,080 He came up, and his eye was so red. 960 00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:27,120 Like a vein had burst inside the eye. 961 00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:31,880 And it looked like a complete, not pink, I mean, red, 962 00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:33,600 like blood. 963 00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:37,840 So we had to leave a day soon, go straight to the hospital. 964 00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:41,800 And Stefan, I think, cracked a vertebrae or something. 965 00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,680 So yeah, so from there, we had to go straight 966 00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:45,560 to the hospital. 967 00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:49,760 And you can imagine how we smelt or how we looked. 968 00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:56,640 There we are, not good, smelly, and wearing the same clothes 969 00:46:56,640 --> 00:46:59,600 for 10 days. 970 00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:05,040 Anyway, but we couldn't find it, like other species 971 00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:06,160 as we can't find them. 972 00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:09,760 Yeah, that's very sad, isn't it? 973 00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:13,680 A lot of human-introduced animals. 974 00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:15,680 There's problems everywhere. 975 00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:16,760 Yeah. 976 00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:21,280 But yeah, and this was Martinique. 977 00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:24,040 I went again 10 years before that. 978 00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:27,840 I think I went to Martinique with a colleague of mine. 979 00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:29,880 And we were on the main island. 980 00:47:29,880 --> 00:47:31,360 We were looking for a dendrobatic frog. 981 00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:36,040 And we just went for a quick swim in the sea at night. 982 00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:37,320 It was very hot. 983 00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,200 And she got stung by a jellyfish. 984 00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:42,880 And we're in the middle of nowhere. 985 00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:45,800 We're sleeping in a cabin in the forest somewhere. 986 00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:47,880 We have no car until the day afterwards. 987 00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,360 And suddenly, she's choking. 988 00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:52,280 Ooh. 989 00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:52,800 Yeah. 990 00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:54,880 And real strong reaction. 991 00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:57,800 Yeah, basically, she had a terrible, 992 00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:00,680 I thought, I don't know, she's going to die. 993 00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:02,640 And she was freezing cold. 994 00:48:02,640 --> 00:48:07,760 And so I had to put six blankets on her, hugging her all night. 995 00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:09,360 And she was still freezing. 996 00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:12,600 She's having a shock, so I gave her antihistamines. 997 00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:14,640 And she had a burn on her back. 998 00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:18,400 And I thought she was not going to make it. 999 00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:21,440 And thank God we had so many. 1000 00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:23,280 She took three or four antihistamines. 1001 00:48:23,280 --> 00:48:26,160 And that was my first experience in Martinique, 1002 00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:27,440 and looking for this dendrobatic. 1003 00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:29,920 And then she was too sick to help me. 1004 00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:33,760 So we went there four days, but we couldn't find a dendrobatic frog. 1005 00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:36,720 It's just I needed two people, and she was too sick. 1006 00:48:36,720 --> 00:48:38,000 And bless her. 1007 00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:38,520 Yeah. 1008 00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:40,520 It's not her fault. 1009 00:48:40,520 --> 00:48:43,200 At that point, you're just grateful she survived, right? 1010 00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:46,120 Yeah, so basically, I've been three times to Martinique 1011 00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:49,480 to look for two species, and I never found them. 1012 00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:52,440 So do you want to go back at some point? 1013 00:48:52,440 --> 00:48:53,160 I don't know. 1014 00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:58,880 I think maybe Martinique, my strike of lucky strikes there 1015 00:48:58,880 --> 00:49:03,320 has been three trips, nothing to show for. 1016 00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:04,000 I'm not sure. 1017 00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:08,840 So I mean, you've traveled a lot of places. 1018 00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:10,560 Are there places you still want to go? 1019 00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:13,120 Is there something that's on your top of your list? 1020 00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:13,840 Of course. 1021 00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:15,040 I mean, there's so many. 1022 00:49:15,040 --> 00:49:16,680 I actually want to go to Trinidad. 1023 00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:21,080 I haven't been there since 2004. 1024 00:49:21,080 --> 00:49:23,120 That's the last time, 20, 19 years ago. 1025 00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:24,240 Imagine. 1026 00:49:24,240 --> 00:49:25,240 I need to go back there. 1027 00:49:25,240 --> 00:49:28,080 I've been. 1028 00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:33,640 I would like to do some other Caribbean islands for sure. 1029 00:49:33,640 --> 00:49:35,800 Northern Venezuela is extremely interesting, 1030 00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:38,240 but it's too dangerous. 1031 00:49:38,240 --> 00:49:41,720 Yeah, Venezuela is just the most biodiverse country 1032 00:49:41,720 --> 00:49:42,680 in the world. 1033 00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:43,320 It's amazing. 1034 00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:45,880 There's so much there. 1035 00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:50,040 But recently, we did another expedition in Cape Verde. 1036 00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:52,800 We spent a week in St. Lucia. 1037 00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:55,200 It's non-habitable. 1038 00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:57,080 It's uninhabitable. 1039 00:49:57,080 --> 00:50:00,760 And we went to do a species inventory there for a week. 1040 00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:02,760 We mooted throughout the island. 1041 00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:03,640 That was pretty cool. 1042 00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:10,200 We lost most of the water when we were landing the first time. 1043 00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:12,360 The zodiac has almost flipped in the waves. 1044 00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:15,560 So you have to bear in mind that St. Lucia 1045 00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:20,720 is like an island, a volcanic island, and there's no shade. 1046 00:50:20,720 --> 00:50:22,320 So there's no trees. 1047 00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:23,120 There's no cover. 1048 00:50:23,120 --> 00:50:26,240 There's nothing, which we kind of knew. 1049 00:50:26,240 --> 00:50:29,240 But until you're there, you don't realize 1050 00:50:29,240 --> 00:50:31,320 how much you need shade. 1051 00:50:31,320 --> 00:50:33,360 And it was unbearably hot. 1052 00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:35,960 And we lost most of the water. 1053 00:50:35,960 --> 00:50:37,880 So we had to rush in the water. 1054 00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:41,400 When they came to pick us up, we had like a liter left, 1055 00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:43,000 me and Stefan again. 1056 00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:44,880 And yeah, that was really bad. 1057 00:50:44,880 --> 00:50:48,840 And every three days, we'll move like five kilometers 1058 00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:51,320 from the north of the island. 1059 00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:54,280 Then we move to the center and then to the south. 1060 00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,480 And I remember the first night we camped on a beach. 1061 00:50:57,480 --> 00:50:59,480 And there was a local guard there. 1062 00:50:59,480 --> 00:51:01,960 And I said, can we camp here? 1063 00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:02,840 And he said, yeah. 1064 00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:04,840 I said, are you sure the waves will not hit us here? 1065 00:51:04,840 --> 00:51:06,600 Because it's all rock. 1066 00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:08,480 So it's the only place where you can put the tent. 1067 00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:09,560 I said, no, no. 1068 00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:10,920 The water never comes here. 1069 00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:11,760 I said, are you sure? 1070 00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:12,240 Yeah. 1071 00:51:12,240 --> 00:51:13,640 So it's 4 o'clock in the morning. 1072 00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:15,840 And suddenly, I'm sleeping in my tent. 1073 00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:19,320 And I hear a wave just hitting my tent. 1074 00:51:19,320 --> 00:51:23,760 And it's taking me in my tent. 1075 00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:27,560 I was like, I'm shouting, Stefan, get out. 1076 00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:29,360 So we're looking for the ship. 1077 00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:30,280 And there we are. 1078 00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:32,480 The ocean is just hitting us. 1079 00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:35,040 And we got out, luckily. 1080 00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:37,000 Everything is soaking wet. 1081 00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:39,920 4 o'clock in the morning, first day of the expedition. 1082 00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:42,160 I was like, oh, this is not good. 1083 00:51:42,160 --> 00:51:44,000 Oh, that's a really bad start. 1084 00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:48,240 And were you able to communicate that somebody would come pick 1085 00:51:48,240 --> 00:51:49,040 you up or were you? 1086 00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,720 No, actually, no. 1087 00:51:51,720 --> 00:51:53,560 I mean, the cell phones did work occasionally. 1088 00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:55,680 But we actually managed to be OK. 1089 00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:56,680 We rationed everything. 1090 00:51:56,680 --> 00:51:57,960 And we were fine. 1091 00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:00,720 And it all worked very well at the end. 1092 00:52:00,720 --> 00:52:04,760 But then I remember I took a sheet, a white sheet, 1093 00:52:04,760 --> 00:52:08,960 that's going to do like an insect trap with a light 1094 00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:13,400 behind for maternal animals to capture insects in vertebrates. 1095 00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:17,760 We're doing an invertebrate survey first in the island. 1096 00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:20,760 And we're putting traps to capture insects. 1097 00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:24,800 And luckily, we took this sheet that we 1098 00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:27,520 could put between the two tents. 1099 00:52:27,520 --> 00:52:30,320 And it was basically 1 and 1.5 square meters. 1100 00:52:30,320 --> 00:52:33,520 And we could be there sitting in the shade 1101 00:52:33,520 --> 00:52:35,720 like in the whole part of the day. 1102 00:52:35,720 --> 00:52:39,480 When the sun is scorching down. 1103 00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:40,760 Because you cannot be in the tent. 1104 00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:42,640 The tents are polyester. 1105 00:52:42,640 --> 00:52:44,920 It's an oven. 1106 00:52:44,920 --> 00:52:48,480 And I remember just being there, just praying for a cloud 1107 00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:50,240 to come or something. 1108 00:52:50,240 --> 00:52:53,240 And yeah, no shade for a week. 1109 00:52:53,240 --> 00:52:54,480 And it's not ideal. 1110 00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:56,200 And so that's not the last expedition 1111 00:52:56,200 --> 00:52:58,080 we did about two years ago with Stefan. 1112 00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:01,040 And now we are actually trying to go back 1113 00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:03,920 and do some other islands. 1114 00:53:03,920 --> 00:53:05,440 OK. 1115 00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:06,200 Do that again. 1116 00:53:06,200 --> 00:53:07,120 Why not? 1117 00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:07,880 Yeah, why not? 1118 00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:09,760 But this time, I'll take some other. 1119 00:53:09,760 --> 00:53:11,360 Yeah, bring a hat, maybe. 1120 00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:13,200 I'm going to take a big red eye. 1121 00:53:13,200 --> 00:53:16,800 The ones you take to the beach, one of those. 1122 00:53:16,800 --> 00:53:19,160 And yeah, so that's it. 1123 00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:20,000 Yeah. 1124 00:53:20,000 --> 00:53:22,320 And so many other things I would like to do, of course. 1125 00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:24,240 But it's a lot of time, is there? 1126 00:53:24,240 --> 00:53:25,080 No, no. 1127 00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:29,680 But well, I know you are keeping very busy going everywhere 1128 00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:34,520 and with science and conservation and taxonomy. 1129 00:53:34,520 --> 00:53:35,480 Yeah, we try. 1130 00:53:35,480 --> 00:53:37,840 We try not to get too bored. 1131 00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:39,440 Yeah. 1132 00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:41,320 So basically, in a nutshell, that's 1133 00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:45,960 kind of what I've been doing and some of those stories. 1134 00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:47,360 Yeah, no, fantastic. 1135 00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:49,840 I know you've developed more where that comes from. 1136 00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:51,960 Yeah, there's many. 1137 00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:54,560 You get stopped at gun points often in those places. 1138 00:53:54,560 --> 00:54:00,840 And we got stopped at gun point once in the jungle. 1139 00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:01,960 We were looking for frogs. 1140 00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:04,360 And these guys wanted our money. 1141 00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:06,120 And anyways, we had to. 1142 00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:09,040 So that was really a stick up in the jungle. 1143 00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:13,880 Yeah, I took a team and we were doing in Mountain Benedict, 1144 00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:18,040 we had these traps and frogs would deposit tadpoles 1145 00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:22,640 on the little, not traps, on the little plastic containers. 1146 00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:24,680 And we were studying that for three months. 1147 00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:27,400 And this guy just with a shotgun just came along. 1148 00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:31,080 And I knew he was, he wanted no good. 1149 00:54:31,080 --> 00:54:33,360 So I just walked straight to him and I said, 1150 00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:35,000 what are you doing here with a gun? 1151 00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:36,240 And it kind of broke the ice. 1152 00:54:36,240 --> 00:54:37,880 And what's your name? 1153 00:54:37,880 --> 00:54:39,080 He said, my name's Luis. 1154 00:54:39,080 --> 00:54:40,480 What are you doing here with a gun? 1155 00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:42,280 And I'm looking for anaconda. 1156 00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:44,240 He said, oh, interesting, interesting. 1157 00:54:44,240 --> 00:54:46,800 I knew there was no anaconda in that part of the jungle. 1158 00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:48,400 So I knew he was lying. 1159 00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:49,640 And Luis said, bush meat? 1160 00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:50,640 You want to eat it? 1161 00:54:50,640 --> 00:54:51,720 Yeah, yeah, bush meat, bush meat. 1162 00:54:51,720 --> 00:54:53,080 Yeah, OK, OK. 1163 00:54:53,080 --> 00:54:56,240 So I told my team, we picked up everything. 1164 00:54:56,240 --> 00:54:59,200 And I told my team, look, the students, I mean, 1165 00:54:59,200 --> 00:55:02,000 there's this guy around, just beware. 1166 00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:04,120 Take $100. 1167 00:55:04,120 --> 00:55:06,120 Trinidad and Torrego dollars in your pockets. 1168 00:55:06,120 --> 00:55:08,160 If he stops you and I'm not there with you, 1169 00:55:08,160 --> 00:55:10,280 he's giving the money, so he's happy. 1170 00:55:10,280 --> 00:55:13,080 So I had to go down south to look for another frog. 1171 00:55:13,080 --> 00:55:14,760 And my team went there and they actually 1172 00:55:14,760 --> 00:55:16,320 got stopped and gunned by this guy. 1173 00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:22,320 And we knew the guy was lurking around. 1174 00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:26,040 So when I went to remove the final stage of the experiments 1175 00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:28,600 after three months, I had to take the police 1176 00:55:28,600 --> 00:55:31,680 with machine guns and everything. 1177 00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:32,720 We needed protection. 1178 00:55:32,720 --> 00:55:35,360 So I had the option of losing the experiment 1179 00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:41,560 for three months or taking police and saving all my data. 1180 00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:46,640 And of course, I was not going to leave my data, three months 1181 00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:48,280 of work. 1182 00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:54,600 And so we took a team of professionals, police, I mean. 1183 00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:58,480 And the guy was around, but he saw the police arrived. 1184 00:55:58,480 --> 00:55:59,600 And so he just left us. 1185 00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:01,800 And we picked up everything. 1186 00:56:01,800 --> 00:56:04,160 So my team was stopped at gunpoint. 1187 00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:05,560 That was not nice. 1188 00:56:05,560 --> 00:56:06,520 No, no. 1189 00:56:06,520 --> 00:56:09,800 But you already spotted him beforehand. 1190 00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:12,000 And I'm sure that didn't end up in the paper, right? 1191 00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:12,760 So these are real. 1192 00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:13,840 No, of course, no, no. 1193 00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:15,640 This is exactly what I love so much, 1194 00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:18,000 because that's why I started this podcast. 1195 00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:24,120 These stories behind the papers, that's 1196 00:56:24,120 --> 00:56:28,200 really what makes the biologist life very interesting. 1197 00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:30,080 Let's put it interesting. 1198 00:56:30,080 --> 00:56:30,920 Yeah. 1199 00:56:30,920 --> 00:56:37,120 It's always the hardest part is what you never write about. 1200 00:56:37,120 --> 00:56:38,320 No, no. 1201 00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:41,200 It's a little paper about the eggs and the deadpoles 1202 00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:43,560 and never about the guy with the gun. 1203 00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:45,120 Exactly, exactly. 1204 00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:48,920 And it's also the months of funding 1205 00:56:48,920 --> 00:56:52,520 to get there and the logistics. 1206 00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:56,880 And you get sick, like everybody. 1207 00:56:56,880 --> 00:56:59,160 And when you're there, you get dengue or something 1208 00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:01,600 other than it's not present. 1209 00:57:01,600 --> 00:57:03,760 But at the same time, at least. 1210 00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:05,280 Yeah. 1211 00:57:05,280 --> 00:57:06,920 I really have to love those deadpoles 1212 00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:09,000 to go through all that. 1213 00:57:09,000 --> 00:57:13,600 Mike, if people want to know what you're doing 1214 00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:18,640 and follow you around with your science or anything, 1215 00:57:18,640 --> 00:57:19,440 where do they go? 1216 00:57:19,440 --> 00:57:22,160 Where can we find more about you? 1217 00:57:22,160 --> 00:57:24,040 That's a good question. 1218 00:57:24,040 --> 00:57:26,960 I mean, I have a personal website. 1219 00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:30,440 You can just type my name, Michael Chowers. 1220 00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:33,360 I will link it with this podcast, for sure. 1221 00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:33,920 Right. 1222 00:57:33,920 --> 00:57:34,760 That would be great. 1223 00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:35,360 Thanks. 1224 00:57:35,360 --> 00:57:39,280 And you can just find me there. 1225 00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:41,600 Michael J. Chowers, Michael Joseph Chowers. 1226 00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:47,320 And it's a Wix homemade website where 1227 00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:52,560 I put all my papers and some pictures of expeditions, 1228 00:57:52,560 --> 00:57:54,560 things like that, animals. 1229 00:57:54,560 --> 00:57:58,520 And I suppose that's just putting my name on Google. 1230 00:57:58,520 --> 00:58:00,360 The website will come up. 1231 00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:01,480 We will find you then. 1232 00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:02,840 We will find you. 1233 00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:03,720 Awesome. 1234 00:58:03,720 --> 00:58:06,080 Mike, thank you very much for being on the podcast. 1235 00:58:06,080 --> 00:58:08,160 Well, thank you for inviting me. 1236 00:58:08,160 --> 00:58:09,400 It's an honor. 1237 00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:15,280 And I hope you're going to go around and survive and come 1238 00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:16,760 back to tell us about it. 1239 00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:17,400 Absolutely. 1240 00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:18,720 I would love to. 1241 00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:20,160 All right. 1242 00:58:20,160 --> 00:58:21,520 Thanks a lot. 1243 00:58:21,520 --> 00:58:22,640 Thank you so much, Adi. 1244 00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:23,000 Bye bye. 1245 00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:23,680 I'm talking for you. 1246 00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:24,160 Cheers. 1247 00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:24,960 Bye bye. 1248 00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:54,520 Bye.