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Gather around everyone! Sharing the glow of our zoologist campfire today is Matthew P.

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Rowe, professor of biology at the University of Oklahoma. Matt works in behavioral ecology,

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particularly predator-prey interactions, and he seems to really have a knack for finding super

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interesting systems such as owls that pretend to be snakes by hissing and squirrels that make

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themselves smell like rattlesnakes. Matt got on my radar due to his work on scorpions, bark

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scorpions, and those are in an arms race with their co-evolving predator the grasshopper mouse.

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Matt and his wife Ashley have studied this particular case of an evolutionary arms race

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in great detail and their work has always presented something of an aspirational dot on the

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horizon for my own scientific pursuits. And since it's my decision who comes on this podcast,

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Matt, welcome to the podcast. All right, thank you very much. It's indeed an honor

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to be invited to your podcast. I hope my stories are half as interesting as the other esteemed

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guests that you've already had share their stories around this campfire. I'm sure they will be. But

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before we get started, I wondered, I mean, as a fellow scorpion researcher, now grasshopper mice,

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this is a fantastic system that you've studied, and they change their receptors so that when they

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get stung, the venom doesn't act as something painful, but actually as analgesic, and they feel

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actually less pain after a few seconds. But for us, the same venom causes pain. But have you ever

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experienced that pain yourself? Have you been stung by a bark scorpion? Yeah, I have been. And

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it was a glancing blow. I was being careless. And yeah, always. Right. It's that intermediate

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level mistake when you're working with venomous animals. When you first start, you're scared to

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death, you're always very attentive. And once you've been bitten or stung, you get attentive again.

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But when you get a little bit familiar with them, you get too casual. And I was putting them,

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we were in a Florida Canyon in Arizona, in the Santa Rita mountains. And it was just Ashley and

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I. And we were collecting scorpions and putting them in bark scorpions, Arizona bark scorpions,

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and putting them in a plastic bag. And I got careless. And I was holding the bag with my left

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hand and I was placing the scorpion in with my right hand. And it stung me only in the cuticle

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of my finger, which there are no really very few pain receptors there. So I didn't feel that. I can

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share from colleagues who have been stung what they say a sting feels like. For me, there was no pain.

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But my arm went to sleep and it slowly moved up all the way to my elbow.

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Ashley wasn't very sympathetic. She's, you know, we're still collect trying to collect and I was

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feeling this, that sensation and I turned to her and I asked her, if this gets to my heart, am I

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going to die? Because she's the toxinologist and it never got past my elbow, thankfully. But

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we have had, of course, you know, we know people who have been stung. We try to tease out their

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experiences. And as you know, pain is a variable thing and it depends on how much venom you get.

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But a bad sting from an Arizona bark scorpion has been described, the pain of it has been described

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as burning yourself with a cigarette and then driving a 16 penny nail through that burn.

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And it can last, it can last for days, you know, 48 hours. So it's pretty intense. So

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that's my only experience with bark scorpions. Very lucky.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it could have stung me on my fingernail and I wouldn't have had to worry about

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that anyway. That's my only close.

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Okay. That's not too bad. That's not too bad. I've been way more careless, I think.

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Well, I've done other careless silly things. In my youth, I try not to do that as much anymore.

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Yeah. Well, and if you work with things like rattlesnakes, like you have,

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you better not be careless. Yeah. No, I know. Yep. Absolutely.

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So you thought of a few good stories for us today. I'm really looking forward to

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hearing some. As I said in the introduction, you've worked with so many different animals,

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so many different places. So where would you like to take us first? And when?

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Oh my gosh. Well,

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I'll start with an early experience I had, and then I'll move into more recent stuff.

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But in speaking of rattlesnakes, Ashley and I, of course, have had, I studied the interactions

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between rattlesnakes and rock squirrels and California ground squirrels for a number of years.

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And when we're out collecting scorpions now working on the grasshopper mouse scorpion system,

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of course, rattlesnakes are quite abundant in the habitats that we work. So we have any number of

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occasions where we've interacted with rattlesnakes. And one of the first things for your audience to

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know is that they really do not want to strike. In fact, some of the research that I did early on in

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my career demonstrates that they only escalate to striking primarily if they are touched. So if you

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reach down and grab a rattlesnake, the most bites in the entire body are in the

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most bites in the United States are what are called illegitimate bites. They're typically

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delivered to young males between the ages of 15 and 30 who do something with a rattlesnake that

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they shouldn't do. Like, hey, I'll watch this. There was one occasion we were working in

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in the Santa Rita experimental range research station run by the University of Arizona, South

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of Tucson. And this just epitomizes how unlikely it is that you get bitten. Now, we were careful

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because at night when you're collecting scorpions, you're using black lights. And you're working in

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environments with jumping cholla, all kinds of nasty, just bushes that want to leap out and

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sting you. So we would wear snake chaps because rattlesnakes don't glow under black light. So

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there was this one time we weren't wearing snake chaps. We were going out to bait our

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trap lines for catching grasshopper mice. And Ashley said, Matt, there's a rattlesnake. And I

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said, really, how close is it? And she said, well, it's licking my boot.

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Perfectly in a resting coil. A Mojave rattlesnake, which is one of the neurotoxic species.

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And it was tongue flicking. It wasn't tongue flicking aggressively, you know, when they're

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really upset to do this. It was just doing its and literally the its tongue tips were touching

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Ashley's boots. She's very she's tough. She just very calmly backed off. The snake never rattled,

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never attempted to strike. So the story I was going to share isn't isn't it was scarier, but

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for a very innocent reason. I had was when I was an undergraduate, and I borrowed my this is a

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very, very long time ago. Okay, no. Yeah, good. Like 50 years ago. So some of your some of your

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audience won't won't be familiar with how the safety systems in cars have changed. We all now

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have that three point buckle up system, right? You know, Ralph Nader, bless his heart, worked

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long and hard to get those safety measures required for new cars. And I think that's

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the most important thing. And so we now all get in and we have this shoulder belt and this lap belt

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and the very conveniently spring loaded and well back in the day when the shoulder harnesses first

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came out, they weren't spring loaded and they weren't attached to your lap belt. They in a

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harness above the passenger window for the passenger and the right the driver's window for

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the driver. And as an undergraduate, I was working on rattlesnakes and in how

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what their rattling meant to California groundswells right then the scrolls say oh this

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is venomous I'm gonna back off. And I had gone up to a field station in the foothills of this here

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in Nevada is to pick up a rattlesnake that they had. Okay, so that we can bring it back to the

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to the university. And I picked it up. And of course, it was rattling and I had to go to

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the university and I was rattling and I put it in an army ammo container because

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it was rattling and my friends my roommates car was actually kind of a kind of what in the states

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they would call a muscle car. Big engine and big engine. Yeah, dukes a hazard kind of thing.

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I'm not here to anybody any of your audience. And the snake was rattling. I was coming back

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was about a two hour drive down the freeway and it was rattling, rattling, rattling and then

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I just got lost in driving. And all of a sudden, I felt this pop on my shoulder. Oh, and the snake

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wasn't rattling. Oh, my brain immediately to it got out. And I have bitten on the back of my back

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on my left shoulder. It was the it was the it was a shoulder harness it slipped out of his harness.

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All right, I don't know how but I I swear I checked every inch of that car driving 70 miles

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an hour down the freeway losing control. That's the closest you could have died of a heart attack.

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Driven off the road, you know, so anyway, but one of the things, especially for the maybe for the

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people in your audience are just getting started. I would love to share a couple of quotes

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that I think back on a lot because they were shared with me, I was an undergraduate. And

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for me, they encapsulate the joy of what we do, right? Those, those what are those aha moments?

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I've got, I've got a number of those having done this for 40 years longer, if you count my

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graduate work and undergraduate research, that they're so meaningful to us, right? That the

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things make us go aha, that's just and the two quotes, one is from eyes and I don't I can't

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compare myself to either of these scientists. One is Isaac Asimov. Right? Yeah, not just a great

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scientist, but man, a wonderful science fiction writer. Yes. And he he once said, he said,

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he said, the nicest phrase, the most exciting phrase you can ever hear in science,

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one that Harold's new discoveries isn't Eureka, I've discovered it. But that's weird.

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Why is that animal doing that? That's funny. Yes. Yeah, exactly. The other is Louis Pasteur,

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you know, who's worked on, you know, again, just he it's said, and it's related to Asimov's chance

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favors the prepared mind. And what he meant by that was so much of what we do.

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So much of what we discover is often based on serendipity. Yes. Right. It just happened to be

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in the right place at the right time to see something, some animal, and you think that's really,

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really strange. But the trick is to is to be knowledgeable enough that recognize that it's

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strange that it is that how you got to those great systems that you found it did you ever

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serendipitously stumble on one of these? Yeah, I'm the luckiest guy alive. I mean, seriously,

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no Ari, there's there that's Yes, there are three of them in particular, that just epitomize those

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two quotes. Okay, well, I'd love to hear that. Okay, so man. Oh, gosh. So the most productive one

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of those is the is what got Ashley and I interested in the grasshopper mouse scorpion.

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Yeah, it's great. Yeah. And it's the one that has held our attention for the last,

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you know, decade and a half, almost two decades. And it all that all started. Ashley had done a

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master's looking at the population genetics of bark scorpions throughout the southwest of the

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United States. I was of course, working on rattlesnakes and cloning around squirrels,

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but also working on other projects with my students. And Ashley, after her master's,

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started teaching high school. She Yeah, she did that for a couple of years. And then she got

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she just basically got she just basically said, you go off every summer and have all this fun out

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in the field. So she went back later in her life. She was in her in her mid 30s, late 30s, and she

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went back and got her PhD. Wow. Yeah. And so in thinking about what she wanted to do, it was one

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of those aha moments where she had gotten interested in scorpion venom. Okay. As you well know,

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scorpion toxins are a cocktail of literally hundreds of peptides, maybe in a bark scorpion.

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And as you well know, with your elegant work on on scorpions, which is phenomenal. No, it really

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is. It's just it's the primary prey of scorpions are of course, arthropods and many of those toxins

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are specific to their prey. But it had been fairly well known based upon some research that come out

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of Mexico that bark scorpions also had peptides in their venom that were potentially lethal to

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small mammals. Yeah. And we were just talking one evening or out walking and, and probably actually

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said, Well, you know, why? Why? Why do bark scorpions have mammal specific lethal toxins?

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No, they don't eat. So you know, having worked with ground squirrels and rattlesnakes and knowing

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that whole story about, you know, how the squirrels are resistant rattlesnake venomous, well,

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obviously, they're probably being preyed on by some mammal. And Ashley asked, Well, what mammal

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do you think I should start with? And I said, grasshopper mice. Okay, as in certain parts of

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the US, and this has actually been published, some work had been done showing that grasshopper mice

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do eat scorpions, but all of that work had been done with scorpions that were not neurotoxic.

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Right. And in certain parts of the US grasshopper mice, which for your audience, are tiny little

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mice with short study tails, they're only about 30 grams. And they're not typical mice, they're top

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level carnivores. And they eat all kinds of nasty stuff. Mostly other art mostly arthropods. You

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know, they they pinacotti beetles and have these really noxious sprays, the tarantulas, they these

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giant centipedes. And in regions of the US, their their common name was called scorpion mice.

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Okay, well, so we thought, well, this is the first animal we should see.

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And the mnemonologists we talked to said, oh, grasshopper mice will not eat bark scorpions,

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really avoid them. Okay, of course, we had to test that. And sure enough,

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they do eat those. And they're not adept at not getting stung. And stung. And the research over

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the last decade and a half has demonstrated that the mice are almost completely immune to

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bark scorpion. And the research over the last decade and a half has demonstrated that the mice

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are almost completely resistant. Well, they're completely resistant at a functional level,

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to the peptides and bark scorpion toxins that are lethal to small mammals. In fact,

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they can eat one of the more lethal members of the Centurion family, Mexico, who sting is lethal

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to small mammals. And they eat them like popcorn. We understand how they do that. It's a mutation in

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one of the ion channels that is actually a couple of them that are the targets of the scorpion

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toxins that cause your diaphragm to shut down. No more breathing. Yeah. No more breathing.

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But the other thing, and this is really fun and exciting, is we discovered that the mice are also

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resistant, not completely, also resistant to the toxins that cause pain. And as you know,

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venom has kind of two main functions in the critters that possess venom. They can use it to

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capture prey. They can also use it to deter potential enemies. And one of the things that

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distinguishes those two broad categories is that you don't need to have a painful venom to capture

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your prey. You just need to slow it down. So those venoms tend to be paralytic. You only need a pain

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component if you're using your venom to deter a potential predator. And so most defensive venoms

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are both, they have some component of tissue damage or neurological dysfunction, and it's paired

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with an immediate sensation of intense pain. Pain is the advertisement, right?

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It is. It's exactly what it is. And people have wondered, well, are both necessary? Could you have

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a defensive venom that wasn't painful but was toxic? Or could you have one that was only painful but

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not toxic? And the grasshopper mice, this is another one of those little aha moments,

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presented us with an opportunity to disentangle those two components.

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Which is a super rare opportunity and really important for the evolution of venoms.

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Yeah, because the mice are resistant to the toxins that kill, it's only the pain components

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that are driving their decisions, their choice of whether or not to eat a bark scorpion. So

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we did those experiments, and long story short, pain is necessary because it gets the scorpion

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dropped, but it's not sufficient because even though a grasshopper mouse, which feels a tiny

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fleeting bit of pain, and I can share with your audience why that is, a bark scorpion sting,

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as I've mentioned before, can cause, in us, unbearable pain for two days. For a bark

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scorpion, for a grasshopper mice, it's tiny, it lasts about three seconds, they might drop the

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scorpion, the pain is gone, in fact, they're co-opting the pain component, turning it into

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an analgesic, so now they don't feel the pain and they go right back and they eat the scorpion.

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So pain, as you correctly identified, is the signal, but it's got to be for a long-term

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strategy, right? It's got to be paired with some kind of debilitation.

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Yeah, it actually has to have a real threat attached to it. It's amazing to hear the

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background of this system that I know so well, and I read all your papers, of course, about it,

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and so the prepared mind in this case was you knowing that these grasshopper mice eat

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scorpions. Yeah.

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And how did you happen to know that?

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Well, literature, yeah, so I was familiar with the publications and with their common name,

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scorpion mice in certain parts of the US. I don't even know where I ran into this.

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But I was familiar with some of the reports that they would eat things like giant desert

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hairy scorpions, which are not neurotoxic. Which are probably bigger than the mice themselves.

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Oh, they are. Yeah. Ari, these mice, we joked that if they were the size of a honey badger,

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honey badgers would be afraid. Elephants would be afraid, yeah.

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Yeah, elephants, they might be. Yeah, so true. So that was one of the aha moments. And I have a

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couple other I could share. But I also have anecdotes about various animals that now,

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when I'm sitting around at night, maybe drinking a glass of wine, it just brings a smile to my face

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remembering these interactions. Those are fantastic. A small moment alone with an animal that you

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can remember forever, probably. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll share two if I don't get too long winded.

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Oh, please. One was when I was in Africa studying baboons in the middle of the Yokobongo.

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Oh, baboons, right. Yeah, many this almost seems like a lifetime ago.

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So when is this more or less, which year? This was during graduate school and was hoping to

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use, look at the anti-predator behavior of baboons for my doctoral project. It did not work out for

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a couple of reasons. And that's when I came back and I got interested in, found out, I can tell you

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about the brewing, that became part of my dissertation. But I got over to Africa,

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the Morimi Wildlife Reserve and the Yokobongo Delta, which is a very remote, very, it was then,

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I hope it still is now, pristine ecosystem with all of the top level predators, leopards and lions

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and black, all of that. It must be gorgeous. I've only seen it in documentaries, I'm afraid.

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Oh, all right. It must be great to be there. Yeah, it was. So I was there twice, five months in 1980,

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four months at the end of my PhD, 1984. And both times I was looking at baboons. And

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I had hoped, like I said, to study the interactions between baboons and in particular

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leopards, because there were reports from Herb Dvor that didn't make a lot of biological sense,

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that baboon troops had a very interesting geometry, where they would forage through the

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environment and subadult males would be on the perimeter and adult males with the young would be

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in the center. And the adult males were protecting the phalanx of subadult males are out there to

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defend the entire troop. And of course, it didn't make any sense based upon what we know about

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selfish genes and natural selection, right? Yeah. So I was going to test that model.

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And as it turns out, it wasn't testable because baboons, at least in the Morame, don't forage as

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a tight-knit group. They are just strung out along a long line. And the predators, like leopards and

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lions, typically wouldn't show themselves to the part of the troop that... And we had to walk with

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these baboons on foot. Yeah, you couldn't drive. It's a delta. It's almost quite swampy, I imagine,

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and very hard to get to any part in that area. Yeah. And in fact, the Borough River comes down

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out of the Angola Highlands. And the highlands get their rain in January and February. And then the

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high water slowly works down to the delta, which is a big Okavango delta, a big England sink.

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And basically, there's no exit to the sea. It just all evaporates. And so during the low water season,

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the baboons make some water crossings, but not many. I'm actually jumping stories here,

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but I'll come back to the other one. But then as the water level rises up,

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it becomes a gigantic swamp with long open stretches of water and

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pockmarked by these little islands. And so the baboons have to traverse these water crossings.

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And yeah, I've switched gears here. So maybe you can edit this so it makes the transition

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a little less choppy. But the baboons were just deathly afraid of crossing water. Okay.

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There was something into water that scared them. Yes. And they would come to a water crossing,

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and they would sit there for an hour up in trees, scanning the water, alarm barking, looking out,

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general sense of agitation on the part of the troop. And then eventually, they would start to

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move across the water crossing. And they were adept at choosing the path that was shallowest

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from one island where they were foraging to another. But the reason they were so agitated,

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and but they the reason they were so agitated was because of crocodiles.

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All right. And so in fact, the baboons are so afraid of crocodiles that they wouldn't drink

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at a water crossing. The little camp we had in the Morame, we just, we had a pump and we'd pump

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water directly out of the Borough River and drink it and it was, you know, it was perfect. It was

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clean. Yeah. But the baboons would never drink at these water crossings. Instead, they would drink

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in the middle of an island in a rain puddle. Really? Yes. What to us to be not a safe place

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to drink if parasites were what you're most afraid of, but they were justifiably afraid of crocodiles.

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Mm hmm. And so when I was there in 80 and again in 84, especially in 84,

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there were only two researchers in camp and one of them had finished their data collection. So I was

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out walking around with the baboon troops by myself. And I always felt fairly safe.

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Okay. I made a water crossing. Some of these could be 50 meters long.

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Okay. That's quite a ways up. Way deep. And some of the wild tour guides that we became friends

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with in the town of Mounds said they would never make a water crossing that was more than knee deep.

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Okay. All right. But when I was with the, we studied two different troops, one of which

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roosted in camp and when I was studying camp troop and they would go out and they would make

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these water crossings and come back, I at least felt safe safety in numbers because I was one of

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70. Right? Yes. You know, my chances it's the selfish herd phenomenon,

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but sometimes they would make a decision to roost on a different island. And I'd have to

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make these water crossings back to camp by myself. Probably at the end of the day.

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At the end of the day, you can't not go home. Yeah. And I wasn't good at climbing palm trees.

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So I'd make these water crossings and I was smiling. And imagine those are Nile crocodiles.

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Those are not little tame. They're big. They're huge. Yeah. There was actually,

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we had friends studying Brown hyenas and lions in the Kalahari. They were funded by

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the Guggenheim foundation and one of the Guggenheim people came out to visit them,

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looked at their, you know, and then went up to the Okavango and was bathing and got eaten by a

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croc. So, you know, okay. Yeah. So it's the threat is real. Yes. So I was smiling when I was listening

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to Rodrigo Dillamarts story about the grizzly bear and one of his grad students, you know,

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pulled out there. All of us carry the Swiss army knife, the little red, right? So when I was making

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these water crossings by myself, I'd pull out my little Swiss army knife and then open up the

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biggest blade and walk with it. And the only thought going through my head is, you know, you

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can't, crocodile skull, you know, I might as well just take that knife if I get jumped by a crocodile.

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Anyway, those were, that's probably the greatest risk that I've taken over my career. But I got

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started on that because one of my drinking wine, looking back and thinking about animals,

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wild animals I have known to see a lot, Ernest Thompson Seaton,

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was a little baboon called Wimpy. Now, Wimpy, he was about a year and a half old, 18 months,

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which puts him kind of developmentally into that middle school age for people, you know, kind of a

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sixth grade little boy. And he was, he was just mischievous as heck. Anybody that doesn't believe

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in evolution, just go study a primate anywhere. Spend some time with them and you're going to

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recognize they lie, they cheat, they have friends, they grieve, they, you know, they have fun. It's

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all of the emotions that anyway. So Wimpy discovered we had a, we had an outhouse.

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It had half of a, half of a toilet seat, the bottom half. Okay. So we only had, because this

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is a remote part of Africa, it's very difficult to buy something. So we had half of a, half of a

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toilet seat. And toilet paper was really, really hard to, you know, that was just a precious

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commodity. Well, Wimpy discovered that he could get our attention if he ran into the, to the

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outhouse, grabbed the tail end of the toilet paper and ran through the pan. And because this is so

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precious to us, we were running after Wimpy, took out all his toilet paper and he would start to

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scream and that would attract the attention of the big males. Oh, oh yeah. And, and, and male,

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the canines on a male baboon are bigger than on a leopard. And you know, oh my gosh. So,

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but that wasn't his coup de grace, coup de grace. But we, we did try to have a land rover for a

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while and it just wasn't functional. So we buried it, but we cannibalized the top. Okay. And turned

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into a solar water collector. But it's prior to that to take a warm shower, you heated up a five

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gallon bucket of water over the fire. You poured it into another five gallon bucket that had a,

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a spigot attached to the bottom. You pressed it right. And then he, and it was great. But

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one of the, one of the other grad students who was there when I was there in 1980, whose father

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was an architect, designed this thing. So we had this, this roof of a land rover,

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and we had some corrugated tin and we, we got some hose, some garden hose and we sprayed the whole

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thing black. And we turned it into a solar panel. Right. And we had a solar panel. And we had a

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solar panel. Right. That'll work. Yeah, it did. It worked great. And of course you had to cover it,

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the roof with the instant one plastic. Yes. Yeah. That's even harder to get than toilet paper.

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So you can see where this is going. Yeah.

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Withy discovered he could run in, he could grip the plastic off of our solar collector

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and, you know, even got a bigger reaction from us. And we had to, and it still didn't work.

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We had to pile all of these acacia branches around the solar panel to try to keep Wimpy

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from wreaking havoc. There's, there's one little mechanic of Wimpy, and this is the reason I smile

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when I think of him. One, I, I don't know, I don't think I was that mischievous when I was in,

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in middle school, but he, he had, he had something to him. There was one day, and this is,

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this is always been special to me, where typically in the morning, if the troop roosted in camp,

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they'd get out slowly, you know, which is kind of nice. And you'd get out and make some coffee and

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toast some bread or something. And then you'd be taking a census, the morning census, when the

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baboons are all out ventral basking in the sun and they're not, because then they're quiet and you

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can, and I was doing that one morning and lost in thought and recording who was where, as leopards

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would sometimes come in and, you know, you couldn't always be guaranteed that the, the baboons who went

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up in the trees at night would still be there in the morning. Wow. Okay. And, and I was taking a

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census and, and all we wore was shorts and flip flops because especially in high water season,

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you couldn't wear shoes because you'd get foot rot from, you'd get a fungal infection.

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And it was warm enough. You really didn't need anything other than a pair of shorts. So I was

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taking notes and I felt, felt a little pressure on both knee at the same time.

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Okay. Not scary, just, just gentle. And I looked down, there's Wimpy. And he was standing on his

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hind legs. And this is one of those moments where you feel that connection. And he had a hand on

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each one of my knees and he looked up and I looked down, you know, and it was just, it was a,

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aw, community moment. Yeah. So that's one, you know, if you've been at it as long as I have,

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that's one that, of many, many of those special moments, which is in part why we do what we do.

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When a real wild animal like that sees you and interacts with you, it's a, it's a special thing.

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Yeah. Yeah. How long had you been there before you got that connection with Wimpy?

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The eight. So, um, they, yeah, they, so the, the, the camp troop, which was the one that was studied

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the most often, um, there were other researchers, other grad students that had been there before me

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and they, um, so they were habituated to, this is going to sound terrible.

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They were habituated to Caucasians. Right. Come in and study them. Yeah. If a novel Caucasian came in,

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they would be very wary of them for two weeks, a week or two. So you would,

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you would have to be off on the edges and then actually, um, if, if one of the, the local people

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came and wanted to work with the baboons, we didn't have anyone to work with baboons and that's our

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fault for not better involving the Botswannans in that research, in my opinion. Um, they, the baboons

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would, would take a lot longer to habituate. Right. They were, they were, they were very adept

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at recognizing faces. Um, but yeah, because, because of the previous researchers there,

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it wasn't, it didn't take months for me. Now when, when in that process did Wimpy come up and put

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his little, probably, probably much later than that. He really had to gain his trust over a long

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period of time. Yeah. Even though we chased him all the time, you know, he was, he was, he was

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a great, great guy. Yeah. Even though we chased him all the time, you know, well,

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chased, followed with a notebook, I imagine. Yeah. We never, we never caught him. And of course he,

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I think he took great fun in watching this tower to the big males that he would have tried. Thank

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you. They, they could have really, uh, that could have been, but, but as you, as, as you said about

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the rattlesnakes, I don't really want to bite for every predator or a defensive animal that has a

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great weapon. There's also a risk. That's so true because rattlesnake still has to put his head

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quite close to you and can break off his teeth or can be smashed in the head. They have a very

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fragile skull. And I guess for baboons, there's also a risk in attacking a human. I mean,

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yeah, we can do very much, but we can do something. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So

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nobody wants to attack. Nobody wants to be, no, for, for the, you know, in terms of the systems

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that you and I have studied, there's even a cost of venom production, right? So, you know, to,

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um, for, for, for animals like rattlesnakes and scorpions that use their venom, both to capture

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prey and, um, to deter predators, you know, if you can get a predator potential enemy to back off

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with injecting them, then better say, so you can eat the next day. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I

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noticed when, when reading again through your, uh, CV that, um, that you work with Bill Hayes,

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uh, who's also studied. Yeah. Yeah. I've worked with Bill. Yeah. Yeah. He also studied the

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expenditure of, uh, of, of scorpion venom, right? He did a lot of that work on venom. Yeah. He

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sure did. With Zia Nisani, his, his grad student. And I know him because I stayed at this place when

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I was looking at scorpions in the U S so, yeah, it's a small world. It is. So, you know, I have,

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I have other anecdotes about animals. Um, I've got other aha moments. Uh, so you've worked with

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so many animals. Is there one group that's your favorite? Cause, uh, most biologists have a

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favorite group, right? I mean, we don't, we shouldn't say it, but we do. Oh, Ari. Ari, Ari,

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Ari. That's so tough. So I know, I, I know, I know when I'm going through my collection of

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scorpions in the lab with my grad student, it says every second species, you say, this is your

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favorite species. Well, I guess at that moment it is. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I mean, so,

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so obviously grasshopper mice, because they are so, so amazing and they eat so many. I mean, one of

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the projects we're working on now is how is it that they can eat these there? Some people call

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them bombard your beetles, but that's an in label. They're darkling beetles or pinacati beetles.

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And nothing is darkling beetles. Almost nothing. I mean, some spiders are specialized in darkling

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beetles, but that's upper mice again, eat them like popcorn. Yeah. And the Tom Eisner, which is

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a name you probably familiar with the original, uh, evolutionary biochemists, right? Uh, ecological

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chemistry, uh, documented, he thought that grasshopper mice ate darkling beetles by grabbing them,

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sticking their butts in the ground. So the spray, this noxious, you know, um, benzoquinone spray

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that can really damage your eyes would be dispersed harmlessly in the sand.

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Okay. And so we tested that. And as it turns out, grasshopper mice get better at feeding on

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darkling beetles, but they get sprayed a lot. Okay. But, um, but they, it's kind of like the

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scorpion thing. They will come back after getting sprayed until the beetle runs out of spray. And

371
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:12,640
at that time, the grasshopper mice eats them. And you can find, you can be out in the field and you

372
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:19,040
can see a carapace of a darkling beetle that a grasshopper mouse has eaten because innards,

373
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:26,400
right? Right. Yeah. But, um, anyway, so grasshopper mice, but, oh my gosh, I've studied

374
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:32,800
burrowing owls. I've studied sawed owls. There's a, one of those anecdotes about cute animals that,

375
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:39,040
you know, wild animals I have known. I was working with a graduate student looking at the, uh,

376
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:44,720
impact of urbanization on burrowing owls in Florida a long time ago. And burrowing owls-

377
00:44:44,720 --> 00:44:50,640
They're these very small, cute owls, right? They're small, cute. They are fosorial in the sense that they

378
00:44:50,640 --> 00:44:57,360
will use abandoned prairie dog or ground squirrel burrows, uh, to, to raise their young, you know,

379
00:44:57,360 --> 00:45:01,920
that's where they nest. It's the refugium. And when it rains or when a predator comes along.

380
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:09,200
And, uh, I got interested in burrowing owls because of this report that they had a, um, uh,

381
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:14,160
hiss, it sounded like a rattle of a rattlesnake. And anyway, that was one of those aha moments,

382
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:19,760
but the anecdote I was going to share when a graduate student, my first graduate student,

383
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:24,560
and I were looking at the impact of burrowing owls, urbanization on burrowing owls in Florida,

384
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:30,960
Cape Coral, Florida. Um, they have these big clutches and they, they have lots of little, um,

385
00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:37,440
owlets and the owlets are staggered in size because they're asynchronous hatchers. So you have eight

386
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:46,400
of them. Wow. And the burrow mound gets bigger, you know, and, uh, there was one time and we were

387
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:51,200
and we were documenting cause the impact of urbanization on, on burrowing owl colony down

388
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:58,320
there. And, um, the little ones oftentimes stand close together waiting for mom or pop

389
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:06,800
to bring in food. And they're so funny because they'll stand there and they'll try to take your

390
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:14,240
bearing by tilting their head. I can't tilt my head nearly as far. They can tilt their heads this

391
00:46:14,240 --> 00:46:20,800
far. And it was one time Ari, we were, my graduate student and I were watching this group of burrowing

392
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:30,240
owl owlets and they were lined up in a line in perfect descending height. Always the next,

393
00:46:30,240 --> 00:46:35,840
always the next, always to the young one. And we were, we used our car as a blind because it was

394
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:40,240
an urban area and it worked pretty well, but they were doing this and it was synchronous. They were

395
00:46:40,240 --> 00:46:46,560
doing this back and forth, tilt their hill, tilting their head. And the lowest one on the very end,

396
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:58,960
tilting his head so far, he fell over. Oh, that's very cute. We were laughing so hard.

397
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:08,000
It's in our field notes. You know, I was writing the rain notebooks. It was anyway, it was, uh,

398
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:14,480
yeah. So what are my favorites? I've been very lucky, uh, very blessed to have

399
00:47:15,600 --> 00:47:22,400
spent a lot of time in the field studying a lot of interesting critters. Um, and I, you know,

400
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:28,480
I wish I had another lifetime to do it, um, because it's just, it's magical. It's just such a joy.

401
00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:34,000
It is. I'm just imagining the owlet. Were you able to attribute that to urbanization or?

402
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:46,320
I guarantee you he'd lead to us anthropomorphizing. He seemed so embarrassed by it. He got,

403
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:50,480
shook himself off and kind of looked around, but nobody saw.

404
00:47:52,240 --> 00:47:56,080
You know, we shouldn't attribute human emotions to our, to our study animals, but

405
00:47:56,080 --> 00:48:04,800
sure. Look that way. Um, yeah. And I don't know if, if, if we're running out of time, but one of the

406
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:14,080
other aha moments relates to burrowing owls. Um, and that suggestion that they might have a hiss

407
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:22,640
that sounds like a rattlesnake's rattle. This had been first documented back in the late 1880s by, uh,

408
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:32,960
uh, early naturalist named, um, Samuel Garmin. And he wrote a paper in, in 1888 that, um, it was an

409
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:39,920
anecdote, which he was out in the great Plains and they had seen a burrowing owl because burrowing

410
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:45,680
owls use abandoned prairie dog grounds for burrows, except in Florida, where they have learned to dig

411
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:52,320
their own, I guess, cause the soil is so sandy, but the West, they use abandoned, uh, colonial

412
00:48:52,320 --> 00:49:01,200
saguare burrows. And so you oftentimes get ground squirrels or burrowing, uh, uh, prairie dogs and

413
00:49:01,200 --> 00:49:07,120
burrowing owls and even rattlesnakes in the same area. In fact, Ernest Thompson Seaton calls it

414
00:49:07,120 --> 00:49:16,000
the happy family, right? Where the owl stands guard, the rattlesnake provides safety, uh, for

415
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:21,600
the prairie dog or squirrel pups that are in the burrow. And that myth got started maybe in part

416
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:27,280
because of Garmin's report. They were out in the great Plains and they saw a burrowing owl run down

417
00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:32,240
into a prairie dog burrow. And as an early naturalist, they wanted to go collect it. So

418
00:49:32,240 --> 00:49:39,200
they were digging the burrowing owl out of the prairie dog hole and they heard a hiss. They heard

419
00:49:39,200 --> 00:49:46,000
a rattle actually. They described it as a rattling sound of a rattlesnake. And it turned out to be a

420
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:52,800
burrowing owl. So that was the first, the earliest report that I could find of burrowing owls

421
00:49:52,800 --> 00:49:58,320
mimicking rattlesnakes. Now I didn't, I didn't actually believe that. I thought, well, that's

422
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:05,680
pretty far-fetched, you know, but, um, totally different project that was looking at this

423
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:11,760
comparative project examining again, the anti-predator behavior of two closely related species of black

424
00:50:11,760 --> 00:50:18,560
birds, red-winged black birds that are territorial and tricolored black birds look almost identical

425
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:27,360
to them that nest in mass and they both nest. And the tricolored, the colonies can be 30,000 birds,

426
00:50:28,000 --> 00:50:34,800
you know, and yeah, close, close, close, close. And so I was, um, I was, um,

427
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:43,520
looking at how they responded to potential avian predators. I was using birds at the

428
00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:49,360
university of California Davis, rapidly a patient center that couldn't be released. Right.

429
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:57,120
And, uh, uh, uh, Cooper's hawks, which are unknown bird predators and magpies. And I was tethering

430
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:03,120
them either next to a black bird, you know, territory or a tricolored black bird, you know,

431
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:11,120
or a tricolored black bird, Mars. Right. And, um, I had taken a great hordal out from the

432
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:17,120
Raptor center and had done my presentations and got those recorded. And it was, I brought the

433
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:22,400
great hordal back to the Raptor rehabilitation center and the director of the center to Matt,

434
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:30,880
come take a look at this guy is really cute. And he had a, he had a cardboard pet carrying box.

435
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:38,320
Right. You know, the old ones and, and, and he opened it up just a couple of inches.

436
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:45,920
And so I came over and I put my head down right on top of this before my eyes could become adjusted

437
00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:54,000
to the darkness at the bottom of this box. I heard a rattlesnake rattle and I jumped back

438
00:51:54,000 --> 00:52:09,760
and I probably swore director anyway, it turned out to be a, it turned out to be a burrowing album.

439
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:17,520
Wow. And I had, I had spent a couple of years studying rattlesnake rattling and I was, well,

440
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:24,880
of course, at that point I was condensed. So that led to the whole study where we demonstrated that

441
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:32,160
the hiss is indeed effective at mimicking the rattlesnake's rattle. And it's even effective

442
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:40,640
against ground squirrels from populations of squirrels that are knowledgeable about rattlesnakes

443
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:46,480
who can, from the rattlesnake's rattling sounds, tell whether the snake is big,

444
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:52,000
and warm or small and cold. So these are sophisticated dupes, right? If anybody...

445
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:55,200
Yeah, it depends on it, on recognizing these things.

446
00:52:55,200 --> 00:52:58,400
Yeah. So even they were duped.

447
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:03,600
Wow. So, and it's, that's amazing because it, when we think about mimicry,

448
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:10,080
people always think about color patterns and bright colors and, and, but never about sounds

449
00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:14,800
or smells. And I really like that of your research that you find mimicry in the

450
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:20,400
research that you find mimicry in all these, these modalities of sensory modalities.

451
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:21,440
Yeah.

452
00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:22,480
Yeah. Really cool.

453
00:53:24,240 --> 00:53:27,760
It smells a tough one to crack, but it's gotta be, it's gotta be pretty common.

454
00:53:28,720 --> 00:53:33,520
It's gotta be. Once we get better sensors for smells, I think we will find so much more

455
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:37,360
in that area. Yeah. Very unexplored area of biology.

456
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:43,600
Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. It's cool. And then to think that it fooled the squirrels that are,

457
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:47,520
well, their life depends on it, on recognizing a rattlesnake. So...

458
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:55,840
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I wasn't, you know, when you're younger,

459
00:53:55,840 --> 00:54:00,480
you do things that you think back on and you think, well, maybe I really shouldn't have done that. So

460
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:10,640
my last day in the Okavango swamps in 1984, and I had, I had interviewed at Appalachian State

461
00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:18,000
University before going out. They offered me the job when I was still out there. So, you know,

462
00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:21,760
back then it was, and it's still not easy to get jobs in academia.

463
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:22,720
Oh, tell me about it.

464
00:54:22,720 --> 00:54:28,560
Especially at the field biologist, as you well know, as you know. So,

465
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:33,680
so I jumped at the chance for a tenure track position at Appalachian State University

466
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:42,560
and had, had funding to stay longer in Africa, but I couldn't afford not to. And so it was my

467
00:54:42,560 --> 00:54:48,560
last night and there was one other researcher in camp and we had this little zodiac that we used

468
00:54:48,560 --> 00:54:54,640
to get around, because what we'd have to do to get in and out of our camp, which is called Babam

469
00:54:54,640 --> 00:55:00,320
camp, which is called Babam camp, you had to go down river to a tourist camp that was a few miles

470
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:04,720
down river where they had a dirt airstrip and you could fly to the nearest town, which was called

471
00:55:04,720 --> 00:55:13,520
Mount. And we knew a researcher up river who was part of a British team trying to figure out,

472
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:17,440
and I hope they haven't succeeded, but maybe they have and followed up on it,

473
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:20,560
how to get rid of setsy flies from the Okavango.

474
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:21,060
Oh, wow.

475
00:55:21,060 --> 00:55:29,620
Yeah. And setsy flies carry, as you probably know, a couple of different kinds of trypanosome.

476
00:55:29,620 --> 00:55:34,420
One causes human sleeping sickness. The other causes cattle sleeping sickness called nougana

477
00:55:35,380 --> 00:55:43,460
and areas in Africa that still have good wildlife populations, not coincidentally, oftentimes have

478
00:55:43,460 --> 00:55:52,100
setsy flies because it keeps cattle out. It prevents pastoralists from coming in. So I don't

479
00:55:52,100 --> 00:55:57,780
know the status of that program, but we went up to visit with him and have a couple of beers. And so

480
00:55:58,420 --> 00:56:03,540
we went up and we were visiting and he was sitting on the edge of his boat, which was an aluminum,

481
00:56:03,540 --> 00:56:10,020
just a little aluminum boat. And we were sitting on the edge of our little zodiac, tiny zodiac,

482
00:56:10,020 --> 00:56:13,140
with our legs dangling in the water. Okay.

483
00:56:17,140 --> 00:56:25,140
Yeah. I mean, come on. I should have known better. It could easily have ended in a non-humorous fashion.

484
00:56:25,140 --> 00:56:25,940
Yes.

485
00:56:26,580 --> 00:56:27,220
Right?

486
00:56:27,220 --> 00:56:28,660
Crocodiles. Yes.

487
00:56:30,420 --> 00:56:36,180
But luckily it didn't. So the guy that was studying setsy flies, how to eradicate them,

488
00:56:36,180 --> 00:56:38,980
got up to go get us a couple more beers.

489
00:56:38,980 --> 00:56:40,420
Okay.

490
00:56:40,420 --> 00:56:46,500
Okay. Because we were young and he got out. And of course we're just in short cut-off, right?

491
00:56:46,500 --> 00:56:59,460
Got out and his legs were covered in leeches. He must have had 10, he must have had a dozen or more

492
00:56:59,460 --> 00:57:06,420
on each leg. It was like a Christmas tree, a white Christmas tree with long black ornaments, right?

493
00:57:06,420 --> 00:57:10,900
Oh, yeah. They can be big, right? I mean,

494
00:57:10,900 --> 00:57:18,900
these guys are a couple inches. The guy I was with, I won't share his name. We started laughing.

495
00:57:18,900 --> 00:57:23,780
We were laughing so hard. Because what you do is you're supposed to just slap them off, right?

496
00:57:24,340 --> 00:57:29,540
And he was doing that. And of course, everyone he slapped off, there'd be this train of blood going

497
00:57:29,540 --> 00:57:30,900
down his leg.

498
00:57:30,900 --> 00:57:34,740
Yeah, because they have an anticoagulant and it keeps bleeding these little wounds.

499
00:57:34,740 --> 00:57:44,020
It keeps bleeding. And then it hit my coworker exactly the same time.

500
00:57:45,540 --> 00:57:46,100
Wait a minute.

501
00:57:49,700 --> 00:57:52,020
And of course we had to do the slap dance.

502
00:57:56,020 --> 00:58:00,260
So that, yeah, anyway, be careful at who and what you laugh at, right?

503
00:58:02,580 --> 00:58:04,500
But yeah, fine memories.

504
00:58:04,500 --> 00:58:07,940
Everybody covered with leeches. Yeah. And you don't feel them because they have an analgesic

505
00:58:07,940 --> 00:58:08,980
in their saliva.

506
00:58:08,980 --> 00:58:11,140
Completely anal.

507
00:58:11,140 --> 00:58:20,020
Yeah. I had the same experience walking with these terrestrial leeches. You think, oh,

508
00:58:20,020 --> 00:58:23,380
these things are slow. They're never going to catch me. They're already in your shoes.

509
00:58:23,380 --> 00:58:24,260
You just don't feel them.

510
00:58:26,420 --> 00:58:28,900
Where were you? Which part? Where were you on this one?

511
00:58:28,900 --> 00:58:30,020
Oh, that was Malaysia.

512
00:58:30,660 --> 00:58:31,460
Malaysia.

513
00:58:31,460 --> 00:58:32,580
A long time ago. Yeah.

514
00:58:32,580 --> 00:58:37,460
Yeah. Yeah. Many of my experiences are a long time ago. For you, they weren't that long ago.

515
00:58:37,460 --> 00:58:47,620
Well, that's true. Well, we will have to have you back on for more experiences from a very long

516
00:58:48,820 --> 00:58:49,220
career.

517
00:58:49,860 --> 00:58:56,100
It's very, it's been a pleasure being able to share these with your audience. It's been a joy

518
00:58:56,100 --> 00:59:04,900
to reminisce about the many of these experiences. And I would hope that for your audience, they get

519
00:59:04,900 --> 00:59:10,980
some joy from them and even better yet, go out and experience some of them themselves.

520
00:59:10,980 --> 00:59:11,620
Absolutely.

521
00:59:11,620 --> 00:59:18,740
And as you know, you don't have to go to Africa. You don't have to go to Malaysia to study

522
00:59:18,740 --> 00:59:20,580
organisms that are understudied.

523
00:59:20,580 --> 00:59:21,380
No, no.

524
00:59:21,380 --> 00:59:22,820
They can be in your backyard.

525
00:59:22,820 --> 00:59:24,420
Absolutely.

526
00:59:24,420 --> 00:59:26,660
Absolutely. Absolutely.

527
00:59:26,660 --> 00:59:28,820
So little we know about bark scorpions.

528
00:59:30,420 --> 00:59:33,220
One of the most common animals in the desert southwest.

529
00:59:36,180 --> 00:59:40,820
It was fantastic to hear, especially for me personally, but I think for everybody,

530
00:59:40,820 --> 00:59:46,820
the stories about animals in the wild and the background of all that research, because

531
00:59:46,820 --> 00:59:53,620
there's a lot of research going on and published, but these fun parts, we don't hear about enough.

532
00:59:53,620 --> 00:59:58,020
That's why I started the podcast. And yeah, these are definitely fantastic stories.

533
00:59:58,020 --> 01:00:01,220
This is exactly why we're doing this. So thank you very much.

534
01:00:02,340 --> 01:00:05,780
If people want to know more about your research, where can we find it?

535
01:00:06,660 --> 01:00:13,380
The lab website is so I'm retired now from the University of Oklahoma,

536
01:00:13,380 --> 01:00:15,460
but actually I maintain a website.

537
01:00:17,060 --> 01:00:20,660
I'll put it on the screen so people can put it in the description under this.

538
01:00:20,660 --> 01:00:24,340
I still occasionally log back on to ResearchGate.

539
01:00:24,340 --> 01:00:25,140
All right.

540
01:00:25,140 --> 01:00:26,580
Provide an update.

541
01:00:26,580 --> 01:00:30,980
But yeah, especially if they want to keep abreast of the grasshopper mouse system.

542
01:00:32,980 --> 01:00:41,300
I will put all that information in with this podcast and I hope to have you on again sometime

543
01:00:41,300 --> 01:00:44,820
soon if you can think of more stories. But for now, thank you very much.

544
01:00:44,820 --> 01:00:46,020
It was very entertaining.

545
01:00:46,660 --> 01:00:48,580
All right. Thank you so much for having me.

546
01:00:48,580 --> 01:00:58,580
It's been a joy, truly.