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face. Oh,

1:44

hey. Hey, hey. It's your seventh grade yearbook

1:47

photo. Allie Ward. Things are about to get

1:49

a bit squishy and fancy around here with

1:52

axolotls. They're more than just a scrabble

1:54

payday, folks. These are aquatic salamanders

1:57

with feather head gills. They're

2:00

demigods to some, they're pop cultural

2:02

icons to others, and they're potentially

2:04

the key to your survival, no

2:06

pressure. So this is a topic

2:08

I've personally wanted to explore since

2:10

high school when I had these

2:12

little amphibians in my biology classroom

2:15

and in my sketchbooks. And

2:17

we are lucky to be talking with

2:20

a scientist who not only cares for

2:22

these creatures and raises them, but also

2:24

leads research as a principal investigator into

2:26

their odd cell biology and what it

2:29

could mean for humanity and other

2:31

animals at her lab at Harvard Medical

2:33

School's Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative

2:35

Biology. Kind of a big deal. So

2:38

we hopped on a call from her lab

2:40

to discuss all things axolotl. But first, just

2:42

a quick thank you to everyone who submitted

2:44

excellent axolotl questions for this episode, including a

2:46

lot from your children. And we

2:48

kept the adult language to a

2:50

minimum for this one, but yeah, there are a

2:52

few swears here and there. If you

2:54

want 100% kid safe episodes,

2:56

though, we have a whole show for that.

2:59

We have a brand new show and a

3:01

feed for Smolgies. They are shorter classroom, all

3:03

ages episodes. Yes, you can subscribe at the

3:05

link in the show notes. There's a ton

3:08

of them there. Please tell your friends with

3:10

kids. And for all of these,

3:12

you can submit questions for future episodes at patreon.com/ologies,

3:14

and you can join that for as little as

3:16

a dollar a month. And thank

3:18

you to everyone who is having a

3:20

summer in ologies merchandise, including swimwear and

3:23

hats and totes, which you can get from

3:25

ologiesmerch.com. Also thank you to everyone who has

3:27

ever left a review for the show because

3:29

I do read them all and I pluck

3:31

a blossom from the bush to read you,

3:33

such as this recent one from Jay Madden

3:36

Mass, who called the show always

3:38

on point and a reality check

3:41

in maddening times, which I appreciate.

3:43

Thank you, Jay Madden Mass. Let's

3:45

take you on a weird wild

3:47

ride. It does get funky. So

3:49

axolotls, they're in the genus, ambostoma,

3:51

which was this word coined by

3:54

a Swiss naturalist who botched

3:56

the spelling. So it was

3:58

supposed to mean blunt mouth. But

4:00

he accidentally wrote it as a hybrid

4:03

of Greek and Latin so it actually

4:05

means to cram into your short mouth

4:08

Which honestly I like it. I

4:10

think it's an improvement now These

4:12

are a hugely important species ecologically

4:14

as well as in biomedical research

4:16

and this episode will touch on both

4:19

factors All right, so prepare for that

4:21

We're gonna talk about how widespread axolotls

4:23

are in the wild who their closest

4:26

cousins are why they look like babies

4:28

The ethics of keeping them as pets

4:30

color morphs the sexiest pyramid scheme on

4:33

the planet how to spot a genetically

4:35

modified axolotl changes to their

4:37

homeland Why scientists are rushing to

4:39

bring back ancient forms of farming

4:41

how you can adopt a salamander

4:43

without ever having to smell one

4:45

or change tank water and Shockingly

4:49

shockingly why geneticists all over the world

4:51

have them in their labs So

4:54

grab a worm sit on a rock

4:56

clap your tiny slimy hands for axolotl

4:58

researcher regenerative biologist

5:00

professor and Ambystomologist

5:02

dr. Jessica Wyden Jessica

5:23

Wyden she her and

5:26

dr. Jessica Wyden correct dr. Jessica

5:28

Wyden. Yes, I looked around for

5:31

Some of the best axolotl researchers and

5:34

scientists in the world and you are

5:36

one of them How many axolotl

5:38

researchers are out there? Are there a few of you

5:40

are there like five of you or they're like five

5:42

thousand of you? Well, they're somewhere

5:44

between five and five thousand, but much probably

5:47

closer to five but five is an underestimate

5:49

You know, maybe like 50 ish labs I

5:51

would say in the universe

5:53

that we know of and how

5:55

did you enter into the salamander

5:58

axolotl pond cave? What's? What's

6:00

your axolotl origin story? I mean, I was

6:02

one of those kids that was just like

6:04

always outside walking around, like always filthy

6:07

spent the whole day outside playing in

6:09

the creek, playing in the woods,

6:11

but I wasn't sitting around thinking, oh, I'm going

6:13

to be a biologist when I grow up. It

6:15

was just like, I was just always doing those

6:17

things. And I was into other things too. So

6:19

it is kind of hard to decide what to

6:21

study in college. But in the end, I went

6:24

with philosophy and biology. Oh, wow. And I had

6:26

actually a hard time deciding between those two, like

6:28

what to go into afterwards. But my philosophy advisor

6:30

was one of the people who really steered me

6:32

towards biology, ironically. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I remember

6:34

that like it was yesterday was like, I

6:37

would give my left big toe to be

6:39

a biologist in today's age. And

6:41

I was like, really? Yes. And so I was really interested in

6:46

Evo Devo at the time, which is

6:48

a field where people sort of integrate

6:51

developmental biology and evolutionary biology. Interviewed

6:53

at MIT and I met the guy who became

6:55

my PhD advisor. And it was just like instantaneously,

6:58

I want to work on

7:00

these topics and with this person. So

7:02

I went there instead to study basically

7:04

how the nervous system develops using

7:07

a fruit fly model. And like I

7:09

was really always into insects, actually, when I was

7:11

a kid, I had a butterfly collection and my mom

7:13

was sort of like an amateur butterfly collector. And so

7:17

Drosophila melanogaster is technically it

7:19

is an insect, of course, but it's also

7:21

like not the kind of insect you imagine

7:23

working on into collecting insects, right?

7:26

You want those big, beautiful, glorious

7:28

ones out in the field. But

7:30

it's a really robust genetic model.

7:33

P.S. Feel free to name a D&D

7:35

character that Drosophila melanogaster, as it is

7:37

both regal and

7:39

intimidating. But do know that that's a

7:41

species of fruit fly and it's commonly

7:43

used in research, including genetics a lot.

7:45

And for more on flies, including

7:48

species named after drag queens, please

7:50

see our diptorology episode linked to

7:52

the show notes. It's fantastic. And

7:55

once I started thinking in that direction, I was like, isn't

7:57

it also important to understand

7:59

and how the animal is resilient and

8:02

how the animal keeps everything in place

8:04

even during homeostasis. And then that

8:06

led me to think, well, what about if the

8:08

animal suffers a really dramatic injury

8:10

or loss of a body

8:12

part? What happens? And

8:14

so then I thought, so which

8:16

animals are really awesome regenerators? And a

8:19

lot of other ones also come to

8:21

mind, like planarians and starfish, for example.

8:24

And I think those are amazing models also.

8:27

But there was something about the salamander that was just

8:29

sort of charming me into going

8:31

in that direction. And so at

8:33

that point, I realized I wanted to do

8:35

this in salamanders and in axolotls. And then

8:38

it's time to find out where could I

8:40

do that research, right? I hope that her

8:42

one-time philosophy professor knows that she is working

8:44

on exactly what happens when an animal gives

8:47

its left big toe for something. And

8:49

we are going to have much, much

8:51

more on the science of regenerating whole-ass

8:53

body parts in a bit. We're going

8:55

to cover a lot. First, the basics.

8:57

And you must have had to

8:59

learn a lot of axolotl

9:02

anatomy and life cycle. And

9:04

these little critters are

9:06

so charismatic and so darling. Free

9:09

fly's got nothing on them. I mean, let's be honest.

9:12

But can you walk me through a little bit of

9:14

what is an axolotl? It is

9:17

a salamander that is aquatic,

9:20

but it's got a frilly face, which I understand

9:22

are gills. What is

9:24

it? What's going on with it? Yeah.

9:27

So the salamander that most people think of when they

9:29

think of a salamander is the one that you might

9:31

encounter in the woods, like under a log, for example.

9:34

And most, but not all

9:37

of those salamanders have this kind

9:39

of lifestyle where the parents go

9:41

to a pond. Sometimes these

9:43

are called vernal pools, which is like melted

9:45

snow. And they go back

9:47

to the one where they came from and

9:49

they breed in there and they lay hundreds of

9:52

eggs. And then the eggs hatch

9:54

into these little baby salamanders, which at that point

9:56

have no arms and legs, and they

9:58

grow bigger in there. big enough

10:00

to actually walk out of there

10:02

eventually, right? And it's part of

10:04

that metamorphosis. Then what happens is

10:07

that the gills

10:09

are lost and then they become, you know, semi-terrestrial.

10:11

They live on land, but they need to be

10:13

kept moist. And so that's kind of what most

10:15

people have in mind when they think of a

10:18

salamander. And that's sort

10:20

of an old lifestyle. Whereas the

10:22

axolotl has deviated from

10:24

this a little bit where it skips that

10:26

last stage. So it never loses its gills

10:28

and it never becomes terrestrial. So

10:30

it's kind of permanently stuck in this

10:33

aquatic phase, but it's permanent. It can

10:35

get bigger there and it can reproduce

10:37

there. And so it just chills out

10:40

all the time. I'm just chilling.

10:43

And what's the benefit

10:45

of that from an evolutionary standpoint?

10:48

Like, why do they, why do that?

10:50

Why stay cute, cute, cute babies? So

10:54

I'm gonna probably be hand waving a little bit

10:56

here because we don't have a time machine and

10:58

we can't really know for sure, like what the

11:00

pressures were. But I've heard this

11:02

argument, which is that they

11:05

have everything they need. They don't need to leave that

11:08

particular ecosystem or that

11:10

particular habitat. Whereas that example

11:12

where a salamander, like a tiger salamander goes

11:14

into a vernal pool, lays its

11:17

eggs, they develop for a certain amount of time,

11:19

then they lose the gills and they come out

11:21

on land. Well, those vernal pools often dry up

11:23

like towards the end of the summer. And

11:26

so those animals really do

11:28

have to crawl out and go on the

11:30

land. And so it's perhaps

11:32

an adaptation whereby they

11:35

can get away with not going and doing

11:37

that last step. Do

11:39

axolotls live just in

11:41

water then? I understand that they're

11:44

from outside of Mexico City. Whereabouts

11:47

do they live other than tanks

11:49

in people's homes or labs? Yeah,

11:52

so they live in this lake and canal

11:54

system outside of Mexico City. Unfortunately, I haven't

11:56

personally been there, but I would love to

11:58

go. From what

12:00

I can tell, they live there, they stay there. In

12:03

the old days, they were plentiful

12:05

and they were sort of

12:08

like in harmony with their natural environment because

12:10

people are taking care of it and axolotls

12:13

were quite numerous. In fact, so numerous that

12:15

people ate them. Oh. So

12:18

just a quick aside, axolotls are

12:20

relatively new species, evolutionarily speaking, and

12:22

they're related to the tiger salamander.

12:24

And one of their only natural

12:26

habitats for axolotls for the last

12:28

10,000 years or so were

12:30

a few lakes southeast of this

12:33

sprawling Mexico City. And indigenous Mesoamerican

12:35

civilizations consumed them as food, used

12:37

them for medicine, and they were

12:39

still used as a food source

12:41

recently. And people have said they

12:43

taste like a frog, which is

12:46

to say somewhere betwixt a fish

12:48

and a chicken. But also they

12:50

have been revered as a god

12:52

by some for their power to

12:54

hide. But due to this drainage

12:56

they did to prevent flooding and

12:59

build the city dating back to

13:01

the 17th century, what

13:03

remains most notably of those lakes

13:05

are a few canals that tourists

13:07

can check out by these colorful

13:10

boats that you can rent out.

13:12

But given that these kind of

13:14

carrot-sized, foot-long-ish creatures burrow in the

13:16

mud in the daytime, or they

13:18

hide in grasses, and

13:20

they're now heartbreakingly rare in the

13:22

wild, it's not likely that a

13:24

visit to those canals will get

13:27

you an eye full of these

13:29

baby-faced beauties. So you might, though,

13:31

however, see an island in the

13:33

canal that's strewn with some creepy

13:35

old dolls and said to

13:37

be haunted by the ghost of

13:39

a young drowned girl. Many of

13:41

the dolls, which are nailed into

13:43

trees and hanging from strings, have

13:45

faded, chipped faces, bodies askew, missing

13:47

limbs, which they can't grow back

13:50

because they are not frickin' axolotls.

13:52

And so back then, they were

13:54

really plentiful, but now

13:56

they're critically endangered. In fact, they're basically

13:58

almost extinct in the wild. No.

14:00

And is

14:02

that habitat loss or predation

14:04

from humans? It's

14:07

not predation from humans per se,

14:09

but it's modifications to the habitat.

14:11

So there's a combination of things

14:13

like pollution, but also introduction of

14:15

these invasive species that can

14:18

eat the axolotls where in the past they were

14:20

sort of the apex predators in that system. But

14:23

now there are tilapia and carp and other kinds of

14:25

things that can eat them. Oh

14:27

no. Yeah. And

14:30

so as apex predators, what were

14:32

they feasting on before? Yeah.

14:35

So an axolotl will basically eat anything that

14:37

moves that it can get inside its

14:39

mouth. Yeah, me too. But some of

14:41

its favorite things were like small crustaceans,

14:44

insect larvae, small fish,

14:46

things like this. Yeah. And actually I

14:48

learned that when you dissect

14:50

an axolotl's gut, you may also

14:53

find remnants of plants inside

14:55

there. And so even though they're typically thought

14:57

of as carnivores, sometimes they might have a snack

14:59

on a leafy green. Yeah.

15:03

And salad today. Exactly. But

15:06

an interesting thing about axolotls and many

15:08

other salamanders is they love to eat

15:10

each other. No. Yes.

15:14

They look so cute and sweet and sweet and

15:16

cute. Yeah. Do they eat each other like, oh,

15:18

here's a group of babies. I'm going to snack

15:20

on that. Or do they start

15:23

eating a whole adult? Are

15:25

adults eating adults? As

15:28

adults, it doesn't happen as much unless they're

15:30

underfed. And like now I'm talking about in

15:32

captivity that if you have a

15:34

couple of adults and you're not feeding them, which

15:36

obviously is terrible, then they might bite

15:39

each other's legs off or part of

15:41

the tail or something. And that can actually lead

15:43

to one of the adults dying because it could,

15:45

you know, get infected or whatever that can happen.

15:47

But if you keep juveniles, they're much more voracious

15:49

eaters. So I have two

15:51

sons and they have over the years had

15:53

axolotls as pets. And I remember this one

15:55

time there were about four and one of

15:57

them just started freaking out screaming and crying.

15:59

mommy mommy and I came in and one

16:02

of the animals had the entire other animal inside

16:04

its mouth with just its head poking out. No.

16:08

Yes. Oh. Life

16:10

lessons, right? When

16:12

you said you had two sons, I thought you meant like,

16:14

I have two sons and man, can they mow

16:17

through the pantry? I thought that's what you meant because

16:19

of juveniles do eat a lot. I

16:22

wish they would just clean up after themselves every day

16:24

I go home and it's like, I thought I left

16:26

this clean and there's fruity pebbles crushed all over the

16:28

entire kitchen. Oh, juveniles.

16:31

Yes, exactly right. Yeah. So

16:33

the juveniles are kind of naughtier about that. And

16:36

it's interesting because this is something that people

16:39

have speculated about in the wild

16:41

also with things like these other

16:43

kinds of salamanders, the tiger salamanders.

16:45

And we have a collaborator in

16:47

Berlin, this woman Nadia Frobisch and

16:49

she and her student Vivian have

16:51

provided us direct photographic evidence that

16:53

in their wild naturalistic pond

16:55

that they have for the tiger salamander that

16:57

if you just sample animals out of there

17:00

that often they'll be missing more than one

17:02

body part, like simultaneously. Wow. And

17:04

so I think that it's a legitimate possible

17:07

selective pressure on these

17:09

kinds of animals because they're laid in such

17:11

high density at this one defined time in

17:13

the year, at least for tiger salamanders and

17:15

ones like that. And that

17:17

basically if they get hungry, that that's

17:19

who's there to eat. Yeah.

17:22

And the animal regeneration is probably very handy

17:24

if your peers

17:26

are eating your legs. Exactly.

17:29

Especially if you need to then crawl out.

17:31

Like if you wash the axolotls in a

17:33

tank, they're kind of swimming more than they're

17:35

crawling. So they have

17:37

arms and legs and they can use them

17:39

to grasp onto rocks and things like this.

17:41

But if you're aquatic and you have this

17:43

really strong tail, which they do, most of

17:45

the movement you see them doing is more

17:47

swimming. Whereas when you're looking at a salamander

17:49

crawling out of a pond, of course it's

17:51

literally crawling. Yeah. And

17:54

for more on this, feel free

17:56

to thumb through the study, Tail

17:58

Regeneration at Different Autogenetic Stages of

18:01

the Tiger Salamander, which It's right

18:03

up top that axolotls are pedomorphic,

18:05

retaining larval features throughout adulthood and

18:07

they do not naturally undergo metamorphosis.

18:10

So unlike other salamanders, axolotls

18:12

simply refuse to grow up

18:14

because the feathery gills and

18:16

the strong tail and the

18:18

tiny teeth all work just

18:20

fine for what they're doing

18:22

and where they're at. Now, this trait,

18:25

when it behooves a species to

18:27

stay childlike, is called neoteny. For

18:29

example, the domestic dog has been

18:31

bred for neoteny. So compared to

18:33

a wolf, an adult dog has

18:35

like floppier ears, bigger eyes, it's

18:37

more docile, more playful, more like

18:39

a wolf puppy. And so neoteny

18:42

may also help in the survival

18:44

of artists or sweet,

18:46

cute boyfriends who don't want to

18:48

pay rent. Now, in the axolotl,

18:50

honestly, having this wide, flat head

18:53

and like a naturally upturned little

18:55

smile and gills that look like

18:57

a carnival headdress has indeed kept

19:00

their species alive, albeit in captivity.

19:02

So being cute, it

19:04

sadly can save your life. Let's

19:07

talk about their frilly, frilly gills because

19:10

I feel like that's one of the things that

19:12

makes them so interesting and charismatic. What

19:14

are those gills doing? Do they

19:17

have to gulp air or can they

19:19

just be submersed like a fish and

19:21

they're just good to go? So

19:24

they actually typically are literally breathing

19:26

through those gills. And if you look at

19:28

them under the microscope, even the ones that

19:30

we have here in the lab, you can

19:33

see the individual red blood cells coursing through

19:35

them. It's very cool. What? Yeah. Like through

19:37

a microscope or by the naked eye? I

19:39

bet you could see them high mag on

19:41

your iPhone, probably, maybe. But

19:44

just even a low mag microscope, you can see them. So

19:47

they really are doing a lot of gas exchange

19:49

in those gills. They can also perform some of

19:51

it through their skin underwater. And then

19:53

they do come up and gulp. It's

19:55

debatable like what the actual function of

19:58

this gulping is if you prowl around

20:00

the internet, you can find lots of

20:02

theories about that. But I don't want

20:04

to say any more about what the

20:06

gulping definitely is or is not. She's

20:09

right. People do debate this online, as

20:11

I found out. Some people saying it could indicate poor

20:13

water quality, a bloom of

20:15

bacteria. Others saying that a tank,

20:17

for example, needs more oxygen via

20:19

a bubbler or plants. Well, some

20:21

folks insist that they just gulp

20:24

for buoyancy. And still others say

20:26

that it's just normal axolotl behavior,

20:28

just to take a sip of

20:30

air from above the waterline. Because

20:33

while they have very adorable feathery,

20:35

frilly gills. They do have

20:37

lungs. Oh. So they have these

20:39

cryptic lungs. Yeah, they have a pair of lungs and

20:42

they kind of have the appearance of almost like cellophane.

20:45

But of course they have blood in them.

20:47

And I have a colleague who studies limb

20:50

regeneration, but he also has found that they can regenerate,

20:52

into a chunk of their lung if you take it

20:55

off, which is quite cool. Do

20:57

the scientists think that they're using

20:59

their lungs also? I

21:02

would say that probably not so much. But

21:05

they may be vestigial. So when

21:08

an animal changes its life cycle,

21:11

there could come some of the

21:13

parts that were part of the

21:15

previous life cycle from an evolutionary standpoint. They

21:18

could just persist if it, or

21:20

they might be lost, right? So cave

21:22

animals are a famous example. A lot

21:24

of cave animals have lost pigmentation, but

21:27

they've also lost eyes. So

21:29

it's a moving target, I would

21:31

say, about why do they still

21:33

have these lungs? It's maybe

21:35

if we could fast forward time, like millions

21:38

of years, they would be losing them. I

21:40

don't know. Okay. I'm

21:43

done with this. Well, you mentioned colors and

21:45

that was a huge question I have. I

21:47

feel like I've seen axolotls that are mottled,

21:49

mossy, brown and green. And I've

21:51

also seen ones that look just pink straight up

21:54

frilly. And one is up with their

21:56

colors. Right. The wild

21:58

type ones, which is what. that is this

22:00

called an example that you would typically see

22:03

in the field, is kind of

22:05

a modeled blackish brown like you just

22:07

said. It's pretty dark, although there are

22:09

axolotl morphs that just look jet black,

22:11

they don't even look modeled. And then there are

22:14

tons of other axolotl morphs, but the most famous one

22:16

is the one that you refer to as

22:18

kind of pinkish looking. And that one

22:20

is actually called the white mutant. Oh,

22:22

it's a mutant in its pigmentation pattern.

22:24

It can actually make the pigment like

22:26

it has the biochemistry intact to make

22:29

that black pigment. But the issue is that the

22:31

cells that normally go and spread out around the

22:33

body and give the animal the dark appearance, they

22:35

don't go where they're supposed to go. And so

22:38

overall, the animal looks white, even though

22:40

secretly it can be producing this pigment

22:42

from a biochemical perspective. So

22:45

it's not a true albino, right? A true

22:47

albino really can't make the pigment. And those

22:49

also exist in axolotl. So there are true

22:51

albinos and golden albinos, which look like true

22:53

albinos, but then they also have like these

22:55

really cool silvery splatches all over them. And

22:57

there's a whole bunch of other morphs if

23:00

you were to look in the pet trade.

23:02

Yes. I needed to know some names here

23:04

and axolotl people, you didn't

23:06

disappoint. Morphs are

23:08

named Firefly axolotl, Iridaphor,

23:12

Lucy, Chimera, Xanthophor, or even

23:14

Mosaic, which is kind of

23:16

like a Cruella de Vil

23:18

split down the middle axolotl

23:20

look. And there are these

23:22

beautiful apricot colored ones and

23:25

mossy green model types.

23:27

They have spotty granite looking

23:29

axolotls and shades of brown

23:31

and pink ones that don't

23:33

not resemble human appendages of

23:37

the below belt variety. And so

23:39

do you think that the ones that we're used

23:41

to that are that like soft

23:43

pink color are those ones that would exist

23:46

a little bit in the wild, but they've

23:48

been bred and bred for like the domesticated

23:51

or like pet trade or research trade.

23:53

Are those pretty rare in the

23:55

wild or are those like, oh no, there's some

23:57

caves that just have a bunch of those. Yeah.

24:00

I guess I would say that in

24:02

any wild population of animals, there are

24:04

going to be mutants, right? Every bunch

24:06

of mutants, we're all mutants, right? But

24:08

sometimes there's a mutation that causes a

24:10

visible difference in the animal, right? And

24:13

this can be an awesome thing because it might also

24:16

sort of give the animal some selective advantage,

24:18

like, oh, now this animal has, let's just

24:20

for devil's advocate's sake, say this animal's got

24:22

an extra arm. And isn't that handy? Now

24:24

we can do all these things that it

24:27

couldn't do before, right? But

24:29

those things can only persist and pass

24:31

their genes on, assuming it was genetically

24:33

encoded, right? And if there's some kind

24:35

of advantage to having them, otherwise they'll

24:37

be lost. And something like a pigmentation

24:39

difference where you go from modeled brown

24:41

and easily camouflaged, they basically look like

24:43

camouflage, to something that's bright white probably

24:45

comes, we would guess, with a disadvantage,

24:47

right? Because now if there is a

24:49

predator, it's easier for that predator to

24:51

spot that animal. You ever

24:53

see an albino deer or a

24:55

white buffalo? I mean, they do

24:57

sometimes happen, but if left in

24:59

the wild population, they might be

25:01

easier for predators to spot. Yeah.

25:04

Yeah. So it is true

25:06

that the white axolotls have been selectively

25:08

bred so that we

25:10

can use them as scientists because they're easier

25:12

to see through their skin. You want to

25:15

look inside and see what's happening down

25:18

there. And so that's why they're preferred over

25:21

the quote, wild type ones. What about breeding? What

25:23

about breeding in captivity versus breeding out in the

25:25

wild? How are they getting it on? How

25:27

are they making babies? And is it hard to

25:29

do in captivity? Yeah.

25:32

So one of the greatest days of my

25:34

scientific life was after I first got axolotls.

25:36

So I went to a lab, you have

25:38

to do this thing called a postdoc usually,

25:40

not always, before you become a professor. And

25:42

that's like your second massive research experience and

25:44

people like you to mix it up. So

25:46

going from flies to salamanders, it was like,

25:48

oh, perfect, right? And almost the night before

25:50

I went, I wish just, I almost didn't

25:52

do it because

25:55

I couldn't imagine doing the surgeries to do

25:57

the amputations. Right? And so it was... really

25:59

hard transition. But when I got there, I

26:01

was the only one working on X-levels. So

26:03

I had to import the X-levels and start

26:05

the colony, right? And after

26:08

about a month there, I was like, well, time to

26:10

breed them. And so I literally

26:12

just put a male and a female in the

26:14

cage together, and I didn't really think anything would

26:16

happen. And I went in like 20 minutes later,

26:19

and it was insane. But

26:21

sadly, this is the best I'd ever seen it

26:23

happening. And so I kind of like, oh, and

26:25

I think I have a video from like an

26:27

ancient phone, but I don't know what happened to

26:29

it. But the girl was,

26:32

I swear, following the

26:34

male and sort of like he had

26:36

his tail straight up in the air,

26:38

and it was bright red. Like, whoa,

26:41

yes. And she was sniffing it. This

26:43

is what I remember, right? Usually

26:46

when we make them in the lab, we don't really

26:48

get all those visuals. It

26:50

usually happens when we're not around. They're kind of

26:52

shy about it, you know? This

26:54

is your first time. And it's actually a

26:56

problem. Well, you got to keep track

26:59

of how many times have they had sex, right? Because if

27:01

you try to make them have

27:03

sex too frequently, then they're like, no, we're not doing

27:05

this. We won't get any babies, right?

27:07

So we got to keep track. And no

27:10

commentary on this, but you can make the males

27:12

more frequently than you can make the females. No

27:14

say. With success,

27:17

right? And so it's actually quite a

27:19

cool process. It's so cool because what

27:22

happens is that the fertilization is internal, but

27:24

he doesn't go in there. What? Yeah. So

27:27

they have a little mating ritual, which

27:29

honestly I rarely see, but it exists.

27:32

And for this kid's book, basically, we

27:34

are illustrating that they cuddle because that has

27:36

been seen. And the people who study their

27:38

behavior, they kind of like nudge up against each

27:41

other and they do this little ritual. And there

27:43

are pheromones involved, actually. I'm very interested in

27:45

those too, but that's like side note. And

27:48

they share some chemical pheromones. And anyway,

27:50

so what he does is he lays this

27:53

thing called a spermatophore, which I kid you

27:55

not. It's like, oh, I

27:57

don't know, three

27:59

quarters of an inch. tall and it looks like

28:01

a little pyramid, like a jelly pyramid, and it's

28:03

kind of translucent. But at the peak

28:05

of the jelly pyramid, it's opaque white

28:08

and it's just chucky, jam full of

28:10

sperm. And they have the coolest sperm. Like they're

28:12

sperm. If you put that in a Petri dish

28:14

and then you kind of like mix it around

28:16

so you can break them all away from each

28:18

other, the sperm tails on an axolotl sperm are

28:20

just like super, super

28:22

long and real, really coiled.

28:25

They're beautiful. Where can I see images of axolotl

28:27

sperm? You're asking yourself. And I'm here to tell

28:29

you in a 2021 paper

28:31

titled Detailed Morphological Analysis of Axolotl

28:33

Sperm, which has plenty of microscopy

28:36

treats for you. And yes, these

28:38

sperms, they look like a

28:40

curved upholstery needle, like a curved

28:43

needle with a long curly thread

28:45

attached. And according to the 2024

28:47

paper, establishment of a practical sperm

28:50

prior preservation pathway for the axolotl,

28:52

a community level approach to germ,

28:54

plasma, and repository development. These sperms

28:57

have different dances among them. Some

29:00

will spiral, some will undulate,

29:02

and some are wallflowers, tenderly

29:05

described as static. And

29:07

they're all in this little conical pouch, which

29:09

he leaves as a gift for his potential

29:11

baby mamas to make lifelong baby looking babies.

29:13

So he lays his sperm out of four

29:15

and you got to give him a rock.

29:17

They'll do it on a piece of plastic,

29:19

like if you have a plastic bin, but

29:22

it's not ideal. So we put rocks in

29:24

there, like slate rocks, and then he lays a

29:26

sperm out of four. If

29:28

you're looking for eggs and you see sperm out of

29:30

fours, you're like kind of excited because

29:32

it means you might get them. And

29:34

then she goes and she literally

29:37

like sticks her cloaca on top of the sperm

29:39

out of four and wiggles around and gets it

29:42

up in there. So she kind of puts the

29:44

sperm in there. Yeah, no way. She

29:46

decides. Yeah. Well, that's kind

29:49

of lovely. Yes, it's very lovely. And

29:51

then she goes and lays the eggs if we're lucky. And

29:53

then we collect the eggs and we do what we want to do

29:55

with the eggs, which is usually inject them with

29:58

constructs, which was like kinds of DNA

30:00

that we've made in the lab to try

30:02

to make transgenic X-lols or sometimes we'll knock

30:04

a gene out. So we'll use

30:07

CRISPR on them. But it's really ideal to collect

30:09

the eggs right after she lays them so

30:11

that they're only one cell. And

30:14

once they start dividing, you can still

30:16

inject these ingredients and still get some effects.

30:18

But eventually though, it's like diminishing

30:20

returns because there's just too many cells and

30:22

etc., right? So. Yeah.

30:25

So you want to get it when you've got 100% of

30:27

the cells with the genetic code that

30:29

you want? Yeah. So the

30:31

ideal situation is you got at least two people

30:34

and somebody's helping you because you've got to take

30:36

them out of these jelly coats that they're laid

30:38

in. So kind of like frogs, they're laid

30:40

in a jelly coat and it's pretty big.

30:42

It's like the size of like, you know,

30:44

your fingertip and there's several membranes inside there

30:46

also. And you just have to get really

30:49

good at using really fine forceps to pop

30:51

the embryo out without destroying it. Because the

30:53

minute you kind of poke it a little

30:55

bit with your super fine forceps, it just

30:58

explodes. Whoa. Yeah.

31:00

And the jelly coat is like, it's really

31:02

cool because it's nature's way of protecting

31:04

them from cooties like

31:06

bacteria, for example. So once they're out of

31:09

the jelly coats, then you also have to

31:11

cultivate them with antibiotics just to

31:13

make sure that the embryos don't get infected. But yeah,

31:15

you pop them out of the jelly coats and you line

31:17

a whole bunch of them up, like you line 50 of

31:19

them up in this little gadget that we have that helps

31:21

you line them up. And then you

31:23

make your own needle, it's made out of glass and

31:26

you fill it up with the DNA or whatever you're

31:28

going to put in there. And then

31:30

you have like a little tiny device that

31:32

you can move all aspects of the needle

31:35

and you line it up. But then in order

31:37

to eject the DNA from it, you actually have

31:39

to have a pressurized air system. So you basically

31:41

pump the DNA in there and then you get

31:43

out as fast as you can because the longer

31:46

you keep the needle in there, the more likely you're going

31:48

to kill it. Basically.

31:51

Yep. I did not know this. Those

31:53

teeny, teeny tiny needles are made with a

31:55

machine that heats glass and pulls it apart

31:58

like taffy to make a hollow needle. And

32:00

then these pulled needles in some labs,

32:02

they can get to be 1-20th the

32:04

width of a human hair depending on

32:06

the application because I mean not everyone

32:09

out there is making axolotls.

32:11

And then how long does it take once something

32:13

is an egg to hatch and then do

32:17

they molt or do they just get a bigger and bigger?

32:20

Yeah, so it takes about between

32:22

like 10 days and two weeks depending on the

32:24

temperature for them to hatch out of those eggs

32:26

or for the ones that you've already gotten out

32:28

of the eggs to fully develop into free living

32:30

animals. About six or so

32:32

days after fertilization that you can see

32:35

them moving and you can start to

32:37

see their little gills forming. They're absolutely

32:39

adorable like super cute. So

32:41

once they hatch out then it's

32:43

about a day or day and a half or

32:45

so before they can start eating. So we have

32:47

to monitor them and then they have to be

32:49

fed something that is moving. So usually

32:52

we use brine shrimp, which we have to hatch

32:54

out here. We are now

32:56

also transitioning some of the colony

32:58

to rotifers for nutrition reasons.

33:00

They seem to be more

33:02

nutritious, but we're still piloting that. Just

33:04

a side note, a rotifer is not

33:07

a piece of drilling equipment. It's a

33:09

tiny maybe half millimeter at most, spiraling,

33:12

usually freshwater animal, a little teeny-teeny

33:14

and it eats debris and it

33:16

generally minds its own business. So

33:18

you have to feed them live food in

33:20

the beginning and then eventually you can wean them

33:22

on to what we call pellets,

33:25

which are like salmon feed. I

33:27

remember feeding the axolotl in our

33:29

science classroom at tubaflex worms, just

33:31

a little pinch of

33:33

these wriggling red worms and then they

33:35

just eat them up like confetti, which

33:38

was disgusting but fun also. It's disgusting but

33:40

also you can't take your eyes off of

33:43

it. Yeah, you're like, so much wriggling. Can

33:46

I ask you some questions from

33:48

listeners? Yes, let's do it. But

33:50

before we do, let's take a

33:52

quick break and donate some cash

33:54

to a worthy cause. And this

33:56

week, Jessica chose the Institute of

33:58

Biology, De La Universidad Nacional, Arunoma,

34:00

New Mexico. and it's affiliated with

34:03

this renowned Mexican axolotl ecologist Dr.

34:05

Luis Embrano and they have this

34:07

program called Adopt an Axolotl which

34:09

raises money to help axolotl habitat

34:11

rehabilitation and the conservation of

34:13

local wildlife and the strengthening of better

34:15

agricultural practices they say. So that donation

34:17

was at the behest of Jessica and

34:19

it was made possible by sponsors of

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for 25% off. Down

38:55

the hatch. Okay,

38:57

we are back with your questions and let's

39:00

start with one shared by patrons, Gemma, Mouse,

39:02

High Limp Supreme, Overlord, Zoe Litt and Sarah

39:04

Williamson and Sparky. Here's the deal. So I

39:07

had so many questions from people with kids.

39:09

Like we have Smolodgies, which is a separate

39:11

show for kids but I was like, why

39:13

are so many people being like, my toddler

39:16

has a question. And then I realized

39:18

it was because of Minecraft. Are

39:21

you, you have two kids.

39:23

Are you familiar with the axolotls

39:25

in Minecraft and how do you

39:27

feel about the explosion of popularity

39:29

of axolotls because of that? Yeah,

39:32

it's funny because I have two kids. They're fraternal

39:34

twins and they're boys. They're both 15. And

39:37

I don't think they would even be embarrassed for me

39:39

to say that they have literally been addicted to Minecraft

39:41

for at least a decade. So

39:45

my nieces and nephews, yeah. They

39:48

still play it. We had like a whole era

39:50

where every birthday cake and I was crazy about

39:52

that. Had to be a Minecraft birthday cake and

39:54

a Minecraft pinata. And like I even had Minecraft

39:56

clothes. They had their Minecraft

39:58

pajamas. Right. So Minecraft has

40:00

contributed to this because they have these

40:03

things called mobs in Minecraft and they

40:05

introduced the axolotl mobs a few years

40:07

ago. Like many

40:09

objects in the Minecraft video game universe,

40:12

this axolotl is very blocky with a

40:14

rectangle for a head that looks like

40:16

a shoe box and then a longer

40:18

rectangle for the body. And

40:21

it has jagged lightning bolt-like gills

40:23

and legs that look like upturned

40:26

crucifix. They seem to make a lot

40:28

of sounds, best described I

40:30

think as a sploot. And

40:33

I've even had people who are like

40:35

professional video game players contact me to

40:37

talk about axolotl. So what are the

40:39

differences between the Minecraft axolotls and the

40:41

real life ones? And I'm like, well,

40:44

I know my kids are playing Minecraft, but I

40:46

do not. So I had to like get in

40:48

there and find out, you know, what, you know,

40:50

what's, what's the deal? So yeah,

40:53

that's kind of how I think the explosion and popularity

40:55

for the axolotls is largely attributed

40:57

to Minecraft. But even before that sort

40:59

of, they're just so cute and there's

41:01

these, you know, all kinds of

41:03

stuffed animals with them and they

41:06

have a lot of charisma. It is true. So

41:08

yes, I get a lot of emails

41:10

from little kids and I also get a lot

41:13

of paper letters, which are adorable. Right. They

41:15

handwritten letters about, yeah, about axolotls. And I know

41:17

that most of them know that we're doing this

41:20

for like scientific research, but it's a fine line

41:22

that you have to tow in answering kids questions

41:24

because they want to know the real truth. And

41:26

I don't believe in like not

41:29

telling that, but on the flip side, you know,

41:31

we're doing hardcore medical research here and we,

41:34

you know, it's highly regulated and

41:37

as it should be and highly scrutinized and stuff. I've

41:39

gotten better over the years at what to talk to

41:41

kids about and what not to talk to kids about

41:43

unless they go there, but I will go there with

41:46

them. But I also think with

41:48

kids, there's this added responsibility, which is all

41:50

kids are starting to think about what they're going to do

41:53

when they grow up. Right. I

41:55

try to, I try to respond as much

41:57

as I can. Now, the last couple

41:59

of years. years have been a little bit crazy, but in the

42:01

past what I would sometimes do would be like, oh, give

42:04

me your teacher's email address and we'll talk. Or a

42:06

lot of times the emails will come from the teacher

42:09

and we could set up a Zoom call with like

42:11

the whole class. So I used to do more of

42:13

that than I do now, but I don't really have

42:15

tons of time for it right now. And I used

42:17

to write back like every email I would always write

42:19

back. These days I have to say like, it's kind

42:21

of harder to keep up with it. And so I

42:23

want to get back to like that feeling of like

42:25

always at least responding, but we'll

42:28

get there. But should

42:30

you ever need a scientist to Zoom or Skype

42:32

in your classroom or a book club or Scout

42:34

meeting, hit up Skype a Scientist, which can match

42:37

you with an expert for $0.00. It's

42:39

free. And that's run by a toothology episode,

42:41

squid expert and Philadelphia based artist, Dr. Sarah

42:44

McAnulty. And so if you think it's cool

42:46

that they do that for free because they're

42:48

a nonprofit, why not toss them five bucks

42:50

or 10 bucks? You can go to Skype

42:52

a scientist.com to say, hey, it's cool that

42:54

you do all that to help young science

42:56

lovers get a leg up in the world,

42:59

which was an embarrassment of a

43:01

segue to a question asked by

43:03

so many of you about limb

43:05

regeneration. Patrons Patience Jensen, Sam Wise,

43:07

Kaki Shimodo, Simone Frankour's dad, Melissa

43:09

Ellersun, Odin, Cecilia Morales, Courtney Horowitz,

43:11

Smolajite Rory, Liz, Jeremy Glover, David

43:13

Twin, Afroms, Les Johnson, and Bjorn

43:15

Fredberg, who needed to know in

43:17

Bjorn's words, can they generate additional

43:19

limbs? How many can they add

43:21

on? Could you get an axolotl

43:23

millipede? I think that's a no,

43:25

buddy. But we do have a

43:27

delightful episode on millipedes that we

43:29

will link in the show notes, including why

43:31

one expert recently named a new species after

43:34

an up and coming artist named Taylor Swift.

43:36

And getting to your work, I want to

43:38

ask about that. So many people asked about

43:41

regenerative appendages, all

43:44

of that stuff. Alex Glow wants to

43:46

know what can't they regenerate? Andrea

43:48

wants to know, why does

43:51

their regeneration ability not cause biological

43:53

immortality? How does that work? What

43:55

are you finding out? It's a

43:58

big question. Yeah. So

44:00

if we just back it up a little bit,

44:02

people have known for a really

44:04

long time, at least in the scientific literature, a couple

44:06

of hundred years, that when you

44:09

amputate the limb, then this bump

44:11

forms, it's called a blastema, which

44:13

means to bud in Greek. And

44:16

this blastema contains basically all of the internal

44:18

progenitor cells, so the building blocks that are

44:20

going to be used to make the new

44:22

limb. And so everybody really wants to

44:24

know, well, how do you make a blastema? The other

44:26

reason why you want to know that is because we

44:28

don't actually make blastemas following

44:30

a limb amputation. But I would like to asterisk

44:33

that because we also have to

44:35

remember that if we were to suture the salamander

44:37

limb closed after an amputation, it also doesn't grow

44:39

a blastema and it fails to regenerate, right? So

44:43

my secret hypothesis is that humans are probably

44:45

doing a lot more than we give humans

44:47

credit for as far as the

44:49

limb regeneration program, but they fail to actually

44:52

go through it. So we

44:54

don't see a blastema. We can't yet appreciate all

44:56

the things that might be happening that are positive

44:59

towards the regenerative outcome, but the whole

45:01

process sort of gets halted. So can

45:03

the human body start to grow back

45:06

an organ or a limb we've lost?

45:08

Obviously not yet. Are there little nuggets

45:10

in there trying their best? Dr. Wieder

45:13

thinks it's possible, but for sure axolotls are

45:15

doing it. She sees it with her own

45:17

dang eyes. So after

45:19

the blastema forms, then it needs

45:22

to keep growing and then those new

45:24

cells have to do something called differentiation.

45:26

So the blastema cells all kind of

45:28

look the same, even though secretly they're

45:30

probably harboring memories from where they originated

45:32

from. And then some of them

45:34

go to become muscle, some of them become cartilage, some

45:36

become bone, et cetera. And

45:39

then eventually the new limb has to stop growing when

45:41

it's the right size and the right amount has grown

45:43

back. And then the nerves have to grow back in,

45:45

the blood vessels have to grow back in. All these

45:47

things have to happen and those things are all really

45:49

important and very cool. However, since

45:52

humans don't grow blastemas, we have decided

45:54

to focus mostly on what does it

45:56

take to build a blastema? How

45:58

are the cells computing that there's been? kind of injury,

46:00

right? Because if you were to just give

46:02

a salamander like a skin biopsy or a cut, typically

46:06

those don't just grow extra legs, right?

46:08

And so how does the animal

46:10

distinguish, you know, a cut from

46:13

an actual amputation, right? And

46:16

most people have been studying what the cells are

46:18

doing right at the injury site, which is super

46:20

important to know. That's also really important. But

46:23

what we found was that after an

46:25

amputation, actually cells throughout the whole body

46:27

get fired up as if they might

46:29

regenerate something. And so, yeah, right. And

46:31

so, you know, like the other leg,

46:33

for instance, it's not just an inert

46:35

bystander. We can't just say like, oh,

46:38

it's doing nothing because what we found

46:40

was that cells start dividing

46:42

over there too in response to an

46:44

amputation somewhere else. And in fact, if

46:46

you look inside the organs, if you

46:48

give a limb amputation, then every place

46:50

we've checked, cells start dividing. So the

46:53

internal organs. Wow. Yeah. Right.

46:55

And so sometimes when you're working

46:57

on something, you just have to go with your

46:59

gut. Like in this instance, I

47:02

just couldn't ignore that, even though I knew it was going

47:04

to take us a really long time to figure out how

47:06

this is happening and what the implications of it were. And

47:09

so initially we just had to publish that finding

47:11

basically and a few things about it. And

47:14

then it took us many years to figure out how

47:17

do these distant cells get sort

47:19

of awakened by an amputation. And

47:22

also what does that mean to the

47:24

animal that they've become awakened? And

47:26

then thirdly, what can that tell us about

47:28

this sort of logic to go back to

47:30

the philosophy part, the logic of how limbs

47:32

regenerate? I think

47:35

that this is a primary response

47:37

to the amputation. And it's the

47:39

beginning part of how progenitor

47:42

cells might be selected to be used

47:44

for regeneration. And it's that

47:46

they're broadly tapped by this information that a

47:49

limb has been lost and only later do

47:51

some of them go on to become blastoema

47:53

cells. And those are only the ones at

47:55

the site of injury. And I think that's

47:58

intrinsically interesting for us. understanding the logic of

48:00

how limbs regenerate, but also the evolution of

48:02

these processes. Because if you back it up

48:05

and you think about like a planarian, which

48:07

is a totally different kind of animal, it's

48:09

like hundreds of millions of years removed from

48:11

an axolotl and it's not a vertebrate. When

48:15

you amputate a planarian, you can cut that sucker in half

48:17

and like the head grows a tail and the tail grows

48:19

a head. Okay. In planaria, these

48:21

marvels of the flatworm world, they're

48:23

old. They're so old, half a

48:25

billion years old. And for more

48:28

on them, you can see our

48:30

episode, Planariology, very cool worms I

48:32

promise, with one Dr. Oné Bagan,

48:34

who truly and very deeply

48:36

loves his worms, which means yes, he would

48:38

love you if you were a worm, even

48:40

a half worm growing the rest of your

48:42

worm body. And when that happens, they first

48:45

do this thing too, where they awaken all

48:47

the stem cells throughout the whole body and

48:49

they start dividing. And then only after a

48:51

few days does it get refined to the

48:53

site of injury. So I think that kind

48:55

of like methodology that animals

48:57

are using might turn out to be more

48:59

generalizable. So are

49:02

the blastemes just stem cells? Jessica

49:04

says they don't really know yet,

49:06

but there is a process called

49:08

de-differentiation in some cells where they

49:10

go from being a specialized, say

49:12

skin cell or a bone cell

49:14

back into an embryonic form. That

49:16

way they can shape shift depending

49:18

on what the body needs. And

49:20

for more on stem cells, we

49:23

have a whole stem cell biology

49:25

episode with Dr. Sainte Sam-Yamine, who

49:27

is wonderful. But no, Jessica says

49:29

researchers still have to dive deeper

49:31

into that process of de-differentiation. And

49:34

so stem cells are kind of different because

49:36

they never fully differentiate. They're

49:39

kind of just set aside. So adults

49:41

have, yeah, right. And so our

49:43

work really highlights that, hey, actually stem cells

49:45

are also getting activated and maybe we're not

49:47

giving them enough credit in the field for

49:49

what they're probably doing in the process of

49:51

limb regeneration. So they could be serving as

49:53

literal building blocks. So some of those blastemes

49:55

cells could have come from stem cells, but

49:58

also the ones that we've been... Analyzing there

50:00

tend to also be making a lot of

50:02

signaling molecules So like the kinds of molecules

50:04

that cells used to talk to one another

50:06

and so those cells getting fired up Even

50:08

if they don't go on to become a

50:10

blastema cell themselves They might be giving instructions

50:12

to the other cells that do

50:14

go become blastema cells, right? And so I think it's like

50:16

pretty critical to think about it. So

50:18

they're like yo make me some bones I'm

50:21

asking you please but I asked Jessica if

50:23

it ever feels like Answering

50:25

one question just makes you ask 50

50:28

more and she said some grad

50:30

students in our lab have started

50:32

a list of her Midwestern Jessica

50:34

isms. There will be phrases that

50:36

I use and one

50:39

of them probably is can of worms and I swear that

50:41

we Bring up a new

50:43

can of worms like on a daily basis in the

50:45

lab and it's really hard To

50:47

rein it in because like the little thing you

50:49

just wants to keep going But then in reality

50:51

in order to complete any scientific project and these

50:53

are really hard ones, right? You

50:55

have to strain yourself. But

50:58

yeah that whole like activating the stem cells throughout

51:00

the whole body It turns out that the

51:02

way they're doing this is by using the peripheral

51:04

nervous system And so if you take away the

51:06

nerves and these responding tissues and they then those

51:08

tissues can't activate the stem cells anymore so that

51:10

I think was one of our early clues that

51:13

hey, we should look at the nervous system in

51:15

this process and From there

51:17

it became well, what is it about the

51:19

nervous system? And our recent research has really

51:21

highlighted that adrenaline is one of

51:23

the things that they use no Really?

51:27

Yes, no It makes a lot

51:29

of intuitive sense This is the kind of thing that I can talk

51:31

to you like a grade schooler about right like if

51:34

you're in the woods You see a bear and

51:36

then you can run faster than you ever ran

51:38

before then you can think you're you know Add

51:40

your nurge ik system or the your adrenaline right

51:42

because it can make you like do things You

51:44

didn't think you could do a man or bear

51:46

a strange man. You don't know or

51:49

bear and It

51:52

turns out that after an amputation Which

51:54

is kind of not surprising adrenaline in their bloodstream

51:56

increases and we're still trying to figure out because

51:58

there's more than one possible source of that, and

52:00

we haven't really figured all of that out yet.

52:03

But adrenaline can be

52:06

a way to communicate information to

52:08

distant tissues, and those distant cells,

52:10

they express these receptors for adrenaline.

52:13

And basically, if you pharmacologically

52:15

inhibit those signaling pathways, then

52:17

you can inhibit this

52:20

body-wide activation response from happening. And

52:22

then if you inhibit one of them, you

52:25

can actually inhibit limbs from regenerating. So if

52:27

you were to stop that flow of adrenaline

52:29

in an emergency, you'd essentially cut the phone

52:31

lines to parts of the body that need

52:33

the message to get started on regrowing

52:35

a limb. So no

52:38

adrenaline, no regeneration. Which is

52:40

some staggering molecular communication to

52:42

discover on this path toward

52:44

self-healing, in salamanders at least.

52:46

And so I think that's

52:48

pretty cool, right? That

52:50

they're using it that way? Yeah, that

52:52

might be that catalyst for, like,

52:55

all right, mobilize, time to regenerate some

52:57

stuff. We're freaked out. We just

52:59

got bitten in the neck. Yeah,

53:01

exactly. Right. And

53:04

the other thing that's really cool about this is when

53:06

the animal gets into this activated state, so we call

53:08

this systemic activation, when it gets into the state where

53:10

the stem cells all over the body are fired up,

53:13

then if I asked you, let's say, what if

53:15

the animal is like, got a

53:17

second amputation somewhere else in the body? Do you

53:19

think it's going to grow back faster or slower?

53:23

Oh, I would think maybe faster

53:25

because it's already in that gear. But I

53:27

don't know. Exactly. That

53:30

is what happened. Yeah. But we would not

53:32

have necessarily predicted that because this is an area of research where people, there

53:35

aren't a lot of wonderful experiments about

53:37

the cost benefits or like what we

53:39

call the trade-offs to regeneration because I

53:41

get this question all the time from

53:43

kids and adults alike. It's like, why

53:45

don't we regenerate? It seems so useful.

53:47

And it's like, well, in thinking about

53:49

how animals change and

53:51

evolution works, a lot of times we have

53:53

to think about what is the cost to

53:55

the animal to do this amazing thing. And

53:57

so those have been harder questions to get

53:59

at. right? But in this particular

54:01

instance, when we saw that

54:04

the legs regenerate faster, it wasn't necessarily given it

54:06

was going to happen because you might also imagine

54:08

that resource allocation needs to be dedicated to the

54:10

women that was already injured and that it's going

54:12

to deprioritize these other things or it's going to

54:15

cost some metabolic costs that would make the other

54:17

one grow back slower, right? But we saw that

54:19

they grew back faster and I think this actually

54:21

relates to the fact that in the wild, a

54:23

lot of salamanders are really under the

54:25

selective pressure to regenerate more than one

54:27

limb at one time in this really

54:29

short timeframe, right? And so it

54:32

is likely to have some selective advantage that

54:34

if you fire the stem cells up everywhere

54:36

and then you have another injury, which is

54:38

actually quite likely, then you have a jumpstart,

54:41

like you said, a jump start to

54:43

the regeneration process. So we've been

54:45

working on lately is basically this, this

54:48

sort of firing up and how that helps

54:50

the animals regenerate. No pressure, but when

54:53

can I use it on my own

54:55

failing body? I'm not the only one

54:57

who's curious. Patron Will Clark asked, are

54:59

researchers looking for particular scientific lessons or

55:02

potential medical treatments from these creatures,

55:04

which was also on the minds

55:06

of Don W. Robinson Pike, future

55:08

immunology researcher, Renee Kay, and Paul

55:11

McQueen, biologist. And yes, me. And

55:13

ultimately, this research in

55:15

the future, if you had a time machine,

55:17

like, do you see it going toward just

55:19

limb regeneration or organ regeneration or

55:21

nerve regeneration for diseases like

55:24

MS or things like that?

55:26

What parts of

55:28

the healthcare industry are like

55:30

raring to go with this? So I

55:33

like to think of it as there's two applications

55:36

when we've been them. One is the very

55:38

long term application and one of the more

55:40

immediate applications. And I'm here for

55:43

the very long term applications, even if I

55:45

don't live to see them, which I

55:47

hope I do, which is

55:49

that I think this is nature's instruction manual

55:51

for how to regenerate a limb that looks

55:53

like ours that has basically all the same

55:55

parts as ours. As far as we can

55:58

tell, if we understood they

56:00

were doing this, we'll be in a much

56:02

better position as scientists to figure out how

56:04

to stimulate human limb regeneration in the future,

56:06

which is obviously like a holy grail question

56:08

in regenerative medicine, just because it has

56:11

such impacts on people's lives. No matter how

56:13

fancy frost theses get, it wouldn't be the

56:15

same as growing back the limb that you

56:17

lost. So that's the long haul thing. But

56:19

in the meantime, a lot of the lessons

56:21

that we're learning could be applied more quickly,

56:23

I think, to some of these other conditions.

56:26

So for example, when they

56:28

regenerate a limb, they don't scar. Wait,

56:30

what? Yeah. And you can't even tell

56:32

which limb was lost given enough time.

56:35

Super cool, right? And meanwhile, we always scar

56:37

except for like the inside of our mouth,

56:40

or if we're fetuses, like

56:42

halfway through gestation, we start scarring.

56:45

But axolotls just don't ever scar,

56:47

right? And so, you know,

56:49

something like antagonizing scarring, which scientists

56:52

like to call this fibrosis. So, anti-fibrotic

56:55

therapies, not just for like skin

56:57

scars, but inside your body, when

57:00

fibrosis sets in into organs, and you know, a

57:02

lot of deaths, maybe even 45% of deaths are

57:06

attributable to some amount of fibrosis, like after

57:08

a heart attack or pulmonary fibrosis, etc. Just

57:10

a side note, my dad had cancer in

57:12

his intestines, and they cut it out, and

57:14

then they stitched them back together, kind of

57:17

like a garden hose. And then from that

57:19

scar tissue formed, that ended up blocking his

57:21

guts hose, if you will. But before we

57:23

found out that's what happened, he was having

57:25

these gut issues. And I was consumed with

57:27

guilt because I had made him some Brussels

57:30

sprouts. And I thought they were clogging up

57:32

the tubes because he did not like them.

57:34

And I think he swallowed them whole to

57:36

be polite. Anyway, it was scar tissue. It

57:38

can be quite unpleasant internally. A lot of

57:40

the molecular biology, like the cell biology of

57:43

those processes, is fairly

57:45

similar. And so if

57:47

we find anti-fibrotic molecules in the

57:49

process of studying limb regeneration, then

57:51

somebody else can take those maybe

57:53

and apply them towards these other

57:56

applications in the shorter term, rather

57:58

than just, you know, reach. generating

58:00

legs. So that's one possibility. You

58:02

mentioned nerve regeneration, but the central

58:05

nervous system is a big area.

58:07

So spinal cord injury is a

58:09

huge problem. You know, people's lives

58:11

are forever changed and there's really

58:13

not any therapy that results

58:15

in restoration of walking, for example, after

58:18

a spinal cord injury. Whereas salamanders, if

58:20

you do that to them, they will

58:22

just completely regenerate and they can, it's

58:24

like, you know, complete. I

58:27

don't know if that'll happen, if that kind of application

58:29

will happen sooner than limb regeneration, but I would guess

58:31

it might. So maybe some of the insights from that

58:33

will be more quickly

58:36

turned into therapeutic outcomes maybe. And

58:38

so it has the potential to improve and

58:41

save so many lives. I imagine

58:43

across a lot of different species, Freddie

58:45

B wanted to know, like, what are

58:48

the ethics around studying limb regenerations? Other

58:51

people wanted to know if you amputate,

58:53

is there, do they have a painkiller?

58:55

Like, is there anything taken to help

58:58

the little guys? Patron Kelly Guderat

59:00

asked, is this research helping or

59:02

harming these little guys in the

59:04

long run? And Jacqueline Church wanted

59:07

to know what is being done

59:09

to ensure they're not exploited into

59:11

oblivion to feed the gaping maw

59:13

of big pharma. Now, this whole

59:15

episode, I'm honestly, I'm grappling with

59:17

it as I'm making it because

59:19

it's inspiring, but also really uncomfortable

59:21

to consider in terms of animal

59:23

research. Although the reality that

59:25

we should all know is that most

59:27

of us owe our lives to research

59:30

animals in some part. It's just a

59:32

huge factor in medicine. And

59:34

yeah, it's hard to even think about. So

59:36

this is a toughie because I guess

59:39

I will say in full disclosure that

59:42

when you do a surgery on a mouse, you're

59:44

required to give them painkillers for X amount of

59:46

time, depending on the surgery. When

59:48

you do a surgery to an

59:50

axolotl, that doesn't happen. That same

59:53

kind of painkiller doesn't happen. However, they're completely asleep

59:55

when you do the surgery. The anesthesia that's used

59:57

to help you get the painkiller is a huge

59:59

factor. used to put them to sleep also has

1:00:02

some analgesic effect, which is basically like some kind

1:00:04

of painkiller effect. And so I can't

1:00:06

say with certainty, don't feel, we're very interested

1:00:09

in their changes in their brain activity.

1:00:11

We have a new collaboration going with a

1:00:13

guy who developed these sensors that you

1:00:15

literally implant into an animal's brain and they're

1:00:17

used to basically peer into the brain

1:00:19

and see which nerves are firing, which, etc.

1:00:21

And so we do have a new

1:00:23

collaboration to look at that. And we also

1:00:26

have collaborators who work in pain biology,

1:00:28

in rodents and in humans. And so these

1:00:30

are things that we want to know

1:00:32

the answer to also, because we

1:00:34

care about the animals, A, and

1:00:36

B, also because sensation may

1:00:39

be one of the primary inputs into

1:00:41

the limb regeneration program. So when

1:00:43

we think about firing those cells up all

1:00:46

over the body, it requires the peripheral nervous

1:00:48

system, not just in these distant sites that

1:00:50

are going to be responding, but we also

1:00:52

found that if you remove the peripheral nervous

1:00:54

system from the limb that's amputated, then that

1:00:56

doesn't happen. And previously people had

1:00:58

shown like hundreds of years ago that that

1:01:00

doesn't happen on anymore on the amputated limb.

1:01:03

You need the nerves on the amputated limb.

1:01:05

And so I think this is one of

1:01:07

the reasons why historically it hasn't

1:01:10

been demanded of the field, that pain

1:01:13

relievers are administered for weeks on

1:01:15

end, or at least through wound

1:01:17

healing. And I think it's probably because there's still

1:01:19

a question mark about whether or

1:01:21

not some of those sensations are actually part

1:01:23

of the reason why they can regenerate. So

1:01:28

yeah, doing animal research is highly regulated.

1:01:30

Everybody has to be trained. Every single

1:01:32

thing that you do to the animal

1:01:34

has to be vetted by a committee

1:01:36

and on the committee are

1:01:38

tons of scientists, but also medical doctors and

1:01:40

also quote, lay people, which just basically means

1:01:43

anybody who's not a scientist so that they

1:01:45

can be reality, like sanity checked. So

1:01:48

I think personally I

1:01:50

have decided that I

1:01:52

take it very seriously. I still think about

1:01:54

it all the time, but I

1:01:57

feel like the long-term possible benefit

1:01:59

to humanity. is enough that I

1:02:01

can justify doing this kind of work. Speaking

1:02:04

of ethics, who asked about loving

1:02:06

and keeping and staring at them

1:02:09

for pleasure? Jeremy Alas and

1:02:11

Kylie Smalenberg, first time question answers, both

1:02:13

asked in Jeremy's words, they're so adorable,

1:02:15

is it ethical to have one as

1:02:17

a pet? And John Urich said that

1:02:19

their spouse wants to know how easy

1:02:21

they are to keep his pets. Ton

1:02:23

of you had this question. Emma Furie,

1:02:25

Kara Young, Cara Deidham, Sarah Rayleigh King,

1:02:27

Nahima Miles, Alex Alottle, Kathleen Sacks, Remy

1:02:29

Serapiette, Olivia Eliason, Hannah Nolan, Megan

1:02:31

Walker, Mish the Fish, Chrysalis Ashton,

1:02:33

Maya, Kristen Fuller, Laura, Anastasia Doherty,

1:02:36

Max Veroni, Audrey Hudak, Amanda Panda,

1:02:38

EatingDogHairForALiving, and Jadeline. Some

1:02:40

people had questions about the ethics of keeping them as

1:02:42

pets. A lot of folks who

1:02:44

listen have pet axolotls. Zachary wanted

1:02:46

to know. Hello, my name is

1:02:48

Zachary and I live in

1:02:51

Maine. For the majority of the ones

1:02:53

that you find online or

1:02:55

at pet stores, are they wild caught

1:02:57

or captive bred? If you want

1:02:59

to become a parent of an axolotl. Oh, I

1:03:01

see. I see. Yeah, if you

1:03:03

want to become an axolotl parent, I would say I would not worried

1:03:05

about that just because I'm fairly

1:03:07

certain all of them came from the original

1:03:09

stocks that were taken out and moved to

1:03:11

Paris in like the 1800s, mid 1800s. I'm

1:03:15

sorry, what? So yes, apparently

1:03:17

a guy from France, a photojournalist, journeyed

1:03:19

to Mexico City in the mid 1860s

1:03:23

and somehow nabbed 34 axolotls

1:03:26

as a souvenir and took them back to

1:03:28

Paris to say, ooh la la. And

1:03:30

these kidnapped amphibians were given a home

1:03:32

in a French menagerie, a French zoo.

1:03:35

So apparently France, being

1:03:38

a quite horny and romantic place, did

1:03:40

some magic and they soon reproduced and

1:03:43

people were simply captivated. And this one

1:03:45

biologist received six of that offspring and

1:03:47

then began breeding them and just passing

1:03:50

them out like batches of cookies to

1:03:52

his science friends all over Europe. And

1:03:54

now we have them in pet stores

1:03:57

and labs, but not in the

1:03:59

rivers and the lakes. that they're used to

1:04:01

back in Mexico, as they are critically

1:04:03

endangered in the wild. So scarce are

1:04:05

our little friends that... So I don't

1:04:08

think anybody's getting axe levels in the

1:04:10

pet industry from wild sources these days.

1:04:12

I think they've just been spilled

1:04:15

over from scientific inquiry into the pet industry, would

1:04:17

be my guess. Actually, when my kids were small

1:04:19

and there was a pet store by the house,

1:04:21

and I would go in there sometimes to get

1:04:23

supplies for the aquatics room here, and they had

1:04:25

the axe levels in there. And

1:04:27

I remember the day I went in and realized they had

1:04:29

a whole bunch of GFP axe levels in the pet store.

1:04:31

And it's like, well, there was

1:04:34

definitely probably somebody moved into the

1:04:36

pet industry, pet trade from the

1:04:38

lab, right? So personally, I

1:04:41

don't think there's any ethical problem with having axe

1:04:43

levels as pets right now, because there's no indication

1:04:45

that they're actually coming out of the wild. And

1:04:47

in fact, I think it's really hard to find

1:04:49

a wild axe level right now. I did not

1:04:52

want to interrupt to ask what GFP was, but

1:04:54

apparently it stands for Green Fluorescent Protein. And according

1:04:56

to the 2006 paper, a

1:04:59

germline GFP transgenic axolotl, and it's

1:05:01

used to track cell fate, dual

1:05:03

origin of the fin mesenchyme during

1:05:05

development and the fate of blood

1:05:07

cells during regeneration. Scientists have been

1:05:09

using this jellyfish fluorescent to track

1:05:11

cell changes for decades. But I'm

1:05:14

sorry, what are these? Are these

1:05:16

like stoner blacklight posters, but also

1:05:18

an underwater phallic dragon? What's happening?

1:05:21

How could you tell that they are GFP? Well,

1:05:23

that pet store had them labeled as such,

1:05:25

but also you can see if you

1:05:28

have like a really bright light that's got all the

1:05:30

wavelengths coming out of it, they do actually have a

1:05:32

hue. They look a little different from the white ones.

1:05:34

So like if I took you in the basement here,

1:05:36

we have a lot of GFP animals, and you can

1:05:38

tell which ones they are without us putting it under

1:05:41

the microscope that gives them the blue light. Cause normally

1:05:43

if you put them on the microscope that gives them

1:05:45

the blue light, they're gonna look crazy fluorescent green, but

1:05:47

even an ambient fluorescent lighting, you can tell. Really?

1:05:50

Wow. Yeah, so from a

1:05:52

jellyfish, I mean, that jellyfish gene has been cloned

1:05:54

to so many animals and plants even like, you

1:05:56

know, all kinds of plants and stuff. Yeah. Oh,

1:05:59

that's exciting. Rachel Von Morgan wanted to

1:06:01

know, they always look like they're straight

1:06:03

chillin' but they've gotta have

1:06:05

personalities. Are there sassy

1:06:08

ones, emo ones,

1:06:10

the ones that are chipper in the

1:06:12

morning without coffee? Do they

1:06:15

get the zoomies? Do they

1:06:17

like scritches and tickles? This is

1:06:19

a quality question. And axolotl personalities

1:06:21

were also a subject of curiosity

1:06:24

from patrons Nene, Haley, and Gustav

1:06:26

Golden. Any thoughts on the personality

1:06:28

of axolotls? Yeah,

1:06:31

well, I think some of them are assholes. When

1:06:34

you put them together, there's always, you know, one

1:06:36

of them is usually the aggressor, right? Yeah,

1:06:40

you know, like they have personalities.

1:06:43

I think they have personalities. Some of them like to

1:06:45

be left alone more than others. We have to give

1:06:47

them hides in the lab. So in

1:06:50

the lab, one of the things

1:06:52

you have to do is provide environmental enrichment

1:06:54

to laboratory animals so that you've actually like

1:06:56

accounted for their sort

1:06:58

of wellbeing. You don't want them to be

1:07:00

bored. This is true, right?

1:07:02

And so one of the things we give

1:07:04

them are PVC pipes as a hideout. Aww.

1:07:07

Yeah, they're really cute in there. And so some of them spend

1:07:09

a lot of time in the PVC pipe with just their little

1:07:11

hide poking out. And some of them are like, I don't even

1:07:13

care about the PVC pipe, right? Yeah, so

1:07:16

definitely there are personalities. I

1:07:18

think for sure there are personalities, yeah. Amazing.

1:07:21

I have a few more lightning rounds here. Eli

1:07:24

said, I've heard that their skin is super sensitive and

1:07:26

it burns if you touch them. Is this true? It

1:07:29

burns them or it burns the human? I don't

1:07:31

know. It burns them, I guess. Does touching them

1:07:34

burn their skin at all or no? Yeah,

1:07:37

so like all amphibians have a sensitive skin

1:07:39

because they breathe partially through their

1:07:41

skin. So it's not a great idea to pick

1:07:43

your pet axol all up with your bare hands

1:07:45

just because they're coated in mucus and that's a

1:07:47

protective layer. Yum. And

1:07:49

it's probably helping them like ward off infection. And so if

1:07:52

you handle them too much and you remove some of that

1:07:54

mucus, it's not great, but you

1:07:56

could wear a glove which kind of mitigates it. I

1:07:58

don't think picking them up ever. once in a while

1:08:00

is the end of the world, right? But like all

1:08:03

amphibians are more sensitive in their skin than like for

1:08:05

instance we are because the outside of our skin

1:08:08

is actually secretly dead, right? It's like cornified

1:08:10

dead layers, right? But that's not the case

1:08:12

for them. And so you got to be

1:08:14

careful. It's also one of the reasons why

1:08:16

amphibians are, you know, declining worldwide just because

1:08:18

of pollution, etc. And then there's this fungal

1:08:20

infection that amphibians can

1:08:22

get and cellometers can also get that

1:08:24

infection. So, you know, you want

1:08:26

to take good care. It's tempting to want to pet it all

1:08:28

the time, but maybe not the best for its health, but it's

1:08:31

not going to hurt it if you do it once in a

1:08:33

while, you know. Yeah. So

1:08:35

this frog fungal disease is

1:08:37

called ketidreomycosis and it causes

1:08:39

red, peeling skin and temperature

1:08:41

regulation issues, muscle weakness, and

1:08:43

even death. And there are

1:08:45

about 200 species of

1:08:48

frogs and salamanders impacted on every

1:08:50

continent except Antarctica, most notably in

1:08:52

Central and South America. And yes,

1:08:55

touching an axolotl can damage their

1:08:57

very fashionable slime coat or they

1:08:59

can thrash about and get hurt

1:09:02

or a substance on your hands,

1:09:04

even your finger oils can disturb

1:09:06

their very sensitive skin. Are

1:09:09

they going to die on contact? Probably not,

1:09:11

but it's best to transport them by just

1:09:13

nudging them into a little tub or being

1:09:15

very, very gentle. So do not pet

1:09:18

the small mucus monster. Just stare at

1:09:20

them. Well, to discourage

1:09:22

people from doing that, perhaps you can answer Olivia

1:09:24

Lester's question who wants to know, what do they

1:09:27

feel like eels? Do they feel like eels?

1:09:29

Do they feel like slimy little guys? I

1:09:31

don't think I've ever picked an eel up.

1:09:33

Like a hag bitch. I

1:09:36

love the way they feel. I love them. They're not

1:09:38

so slimy that you're like grossed out, but they are

1:09:40

so slimy that when you hold an adult, you need

1:09:42

to use two hands. Or the first thing it's going

1:09:45

to do is just scoot right on out onto the

1:09:47

floor, which usually is, I mean, it's not great for

1:09:49

the animal, but it doesn't kill them. So

1:09:51

you want to use two hands and be firm and

1:09:53

make sure that it doesn't slide out because

1:09:56

your hands will make a tube. It is

1:09:58

pretty slick, but it's not like disgusting. slime

1:10:00

and you can feel like you can

1:10:02

kind of feel its internal structures while

1:10:04

you're holding it because you do have to apply a

1:10:06

little bit of pressure so that it doesn't wiggle

1:10:09

out of your hand. I like the way

1:10:11

they feel. They look like they feel

1:10:15

soft and squishy and fun, but you shouldn't squish

1:10:17

them. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Charlotte Parkinson

1:10:19

wants to know, is it true that their teeth

1:10:21

never develop? And if so, how do they nom

1:10:23

down on what they eat? That's

1:10:26

a great question. So when

1:10:28

we've had pet axolotls, I do remember a family

1:10:31

member getting, quote, bitten and then me going

1:10:33

in and being like, give me a

1:10:35

break. Were

1:10:39

you really aggrieved by this fight? Doesn't

1:10:41

really seem that bad. So they do

1:10:44

have like these little rudimentary teethy things,

1:10:46

but truthfully, they

1:10:48

don't hurt when they bite. I've never seen them

1:10:50

ever draw blood when they bite. They're not trying

1:10:52

to bite. They think your finger is a piece

1:10:54

of food probably. They're not so great at hunting

1:10:56

out food. So in the lab, when we drop

1:10:58

these pellets, you have to drop it right in

1:11:00

front of its face and then it grabs it

1:11:03

while it's coming down, while it's floating down. And

1:11:05

if it doesn't grab it while it's floating down,

1:11:07

it's game over. It just ignores the pellet sitting

1:11:09

there, which is annoying

1:11:11

because then it goes and dissolves and mucks up

1:11:13

the water. But we have all these filtration units

1:11:15

and all this kind of thing to mitigate that.

1:11:18

But yeah, they do

1:11:20

have these little rudimentary teeth and

1:11:23

they're kind of cute the way that sometimes

1:11:25

they do just try to like snap a

1:11:27

little bit. But I think it's because they

1:11:30

think your food, not because they're being aggressive.

1:11:32

That makes sense. Yeah. And Kelsey Lore asked,

1:11:34

are there reflexes that bad? And a few

1:11:36

people including Alex W had questions about vision.

1:11:38

Looking at you, Josh Waldman, Denny, Ashley Mars,

1:11:41

who noted their Kawaii cute wide eyes, and

1:11:43

Andrea, who says, it always seems like there

1:11:45

is nothing going on behind their eyes. How

1:11:47

big are their brains and how good is

1:11:49

their eyesight? And also, side note from Alex,

1:11:52

Alex says, I have a domestic axolotl

1:11:54

named Julio Cortazar because I'm a little

1:11:57

nerd. Apparently Julio Cortazar wrote a poem

1:11:59

about an axolotl. People

1:12:01

asked about that. Have you heard of

1:12:03

that poem? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,

1:12:05

I have. I can't recite it or

1:12:07

anything, but yes, I've heard of it.

1:12:09

I've seen it. People have sent it

1:12:12

to me, yes. Of course. So patrons

1:12:14

Elizabeth Potter Carey overall, Bennett Vanderbosch and

1:12:16

Chandler Witherington, who wanted to know if

1:12:18

she had read this story by this

1:12:20

Argentinian writer about a fateful encounter and

1:12:22

a descent into fascination and

1:12:24

metamorphosis into the axolotl. And yes, she

1:12:26

is familiar and for the rest of

1:12:29

you, now you are. And there's a

1:12:31

short story for your reading list, your

1:12:33

walks. But back to the original question

1:12:35

from Alex, but Alex W wants to

1:12:37

know that he, well, he is the

1:12:39

derpiest derp, but I swear he recognizes

1:12:41

at least that food comes from

1:12:43

people, if not specific humans. But essentially Alex

1:12:46

W wants to know how bad is their

1:12:48

eyesight actually. Do they have really bad eyesight?

1:12:50

I think most people are surprised when they

1:12:52

come into the colony and they see how

1:12:54

sedentary they are and how much they are

1:12:57

just chilling out. They really

1:12:59

are like kind of slow. I don't

1:13:03

know. I'm going to just be guessing,

1:13:06

but they're nocturnal. And so if you

1:13:08

look at some of the ecological studies,

1:13:10

then they have tagged axolotls down there

1:13:12

in the wild and observe them to

1:13:14

be more active in

1:13:16

the night. And we have seen this here also.

1:13:18

And so because they're nocturnal, I

1:13:20

would have guessed that they probably have better eyesight

1:13:22

than we give them credit for because they do

1:13:24

like to feed on live things, but maybe they're

1:13:27

mostly detecting the change in the motion in the

1:13:29

water or like vibrations in the water or something.

1:13:31

I can't really tell you for sure about this.

1:13:34

On that note, Natalie Jones asked about

1:13:36

their blank stares and Alicia Clarkston wanted

1:13:38

to know why are they so derpy?

1:13:40

Or more directly, Gerhard van der Wad

1:13:43

asked, how smart are they? Same with

1:13:45

Monica Alvera, Jamie, Dig and Travis Justin

1:13:47

and bassist Ex Machina, Ryan Brubaker and

1:13:49

M.B. asked in M.B.'s words about their

1:13:51

wild ability to grow brains like new

1:13:54

ones. Some people asked about their

1:13:56

brains. If they have big brains, little brains, if

1:13:58

they're smart, bassist Ex Machina. that wants to know

1:14:00

can they really regrow parts of their brains? How

1:14:02

big are their brains and can they grow them?

1:14:05

Yes, these are great questions. So before we answer

1:14:07

the questions about the size, I don't like to

1:14:09

think about whether things are smart or not because

1:14:11

actually I think everything is

1:14:13

just perfectly evolved for what it

1:14:15

does. I was just listening to

1:14:17

this plant book recently called

1:14:20

The Light Eaters and it was like, the

1:14:22

case is pretty well made that maybe plants

1:14:24

have some kind of ability

1:14:26

to, I wouldn't want to say think,

1:14:30

but like make decisions and stuff, right? So like, I

1:14:33

don't know if I would say that they

1:14:35

don't seem smart when you see them not going after

1:14:37

the food, you're like, huh, maybe.

1:14:40

But the interesting thing about their brain is

1:14:42

it is tiny compared to their head. Cause

1:14:45

they have big heads. They have huge

1:14:47

heads and then inside the brain is like, it's

1:14:50

not even that much longer than my

1:14:52

pinky fingernail. It's pretty small considering especially

1:14:54

the size of the head. And

1:14:57

it's different than our brain in some ways and similar in

1:14:59

other ways, but one of the ways it's different is that

1:15:01

it doesn't have this layering, the cortical

1:15:03

layering and like those involutions that

1:15:05

are characteristic of things like humans,

1:15:07

for example. And so a lot

1:15:10

of neuroscientists will say that

1:15:13

there's a correlation between how smart something is, or they

1:15:15

wouldn't use that term, but you know, basically

1:15:17

that, and then like the brain folding

1:15:19

or the cortical folding. These

1:15:22

animals don't look like that. The lamination or

1:15:24

like the layering of those layers

1:15:26

in the brain isn't really there, but if you

1:15:29

look at the gene expression that defines the

1:15:31

different kinds of cells in there, you can

1:15:33

still see regionalization of those genes. So I

1:15:35

would say juries

1:15:38

out on how quote smart they are. And that kind of

1:15:40

depends on how you define it, but it is true. They

1:15:42

can regrow parts of their brain. Nuts.

1:15:44

Yes. Nuts. The

1:15:46

fact that that can happen. Yes. So you can like

1:15:48

give them a partial lobotomy and then they grow part of the brain back.

1:15:51

I don't want to do that. I mean, absolutely

1:15:53

bonkers. And I can see why this

1:15:56

field is like so exciting. I mean,

1:15:58

did you see Godzilla? I did

1:16:00

not do that. Godzilla

1:16:03

is somewhat amphibious in it. And

1:16:07

I don't want to spoil too much, but there is

1:16:09

regeneration involved. I feel like maybe it would be exciting

1:16:11

for you. I need to watch that Godzilla version. Yeah,

1:16:14

you need to watch it. If you can

1:16:16

deal with subtitles instead of the dubbed version,

1:16:18

definitely watch Godzilla minus one in Japanese and

1:16:20

just read along. Tiny spoiler alert, but it's

1:16:23

been out a few months, so don't blame

1:16:25

me, blame yourselves. I'm telling

1:16:27

you, it's pretty bonkers, and I

1:16:29

feel like it's maybe Godzilla's part

1:16:31

axolotl. I don't know. But a couple more

1:16:34

questions. Alexander Von Fittibits

1:16:37

and his mom, first time question asked first one, I

1:16:39

know how long do axolotls tend to live? Oh, God.

1:16:43

Ooh, if you scour all the sources, you might

1:16:46

come up with a number that says 25-ish years.

1:16:49

What? However,

1:16:51

I don't know if we really know how

1:16:53

long an axolotl can live, but I do

1:16:55

believe there are documented cases of 25 years. Could

1:16:59

be longer. Could be longer, yeah. I have some in

1:17:01

the colony here that are like 12 years old. And

1:17:04

do they stay an adult size or do they get bigger and bigger

1:17:07

and bigger and bigger? So this

1:17:09

is also interesting. This kind of segues

1:17:11

with this idea of something called indeterminate

1:17:13

growth. So you probably are aware there

1:17:15

are some fish that will just get as big as

1:17:17

the tank will allow them to get. There's

1:17:20

room for a little more. And

1:17:22

axolotls, some people say axolotls are indeterminate

1:17:24

growers. I think there is actually some evidence

1:17:26

this may be the case, but the plateau is it's

1:17:30

not that steep at the end. So if they are secretly

1:17:32

growing a little bit bigger, it's a little bit. But

1:17:34

I have met people who have axolotls that appear

1:17:36

to be twice as massive as even the biggest

1:17:39

ones that I have in my colony. What?

1:17:41

Yes, I have seen them in person. Yes.

1:17:44

Twice as big as her biggest ones. How

1:17:47

big are we talking? Like an

1:17:49

arm? Not

1:17:53

like most people's arm, but like a child arm.

1:17:55

Yeah, I would say, you know, like pretty

1:17:57

big. Of course,

1:17:59

there are other... salamanders in the world like the

1:18:01

Chinese giant salamander. I don't know

1:18:03

if you've ever seen a photo. I've seen a picture

1:18:05

and it looks photoshopped. But I

1:18:07

understand. Yeah, you can lay

1:18:09

both of your arms out and then put

1:18:11

the salamander on there. There's a guy at

1:18:14

this hospital around here with Brigham and Women's

1:18:16

Hospital who had a really cool paper a

1:18:18

few years ago, back to the mucus question.

1:18:20

And his colleagues because some of them were

1:18:22

in China, they milk the mucus, they scrape

1:18:24

it off of the Chinese giant salamander. And

1:18:26

they actually showed that it can accelerate

1:18:28

wound healing in a mouse model.

1:18:30

The mucus alone, which I

1:18:33

think is really cool because probably some

1:18:35

of how they are such amazing super

1:18:37

healers is probably due to their skin

1:18:39

and the stuff their skin is making.

1:18:41

So I think that's actually quite cool.

1:18:43

And yes, Chinese salamanders are huge with

1:18:46

the London Zoo reporting them to be

1:18:48

around the size of a fully grown

1:18:50

man at 1.8 meters in length or

1:18:52

six feet for those of you in

1:18:54

America. And also if you're doing the

1:18:56

math, 1.8 meters is actually

1:18:58

180 centimeters is actually

1:19:01

just five nine. So if you're a

1:19:03

short king getting discriminated against on American

1:19:05

dating apps, put your height in centimeters.

1:19:07

Let them figure it out. But back

1:19:10

to mucus. In previous episodes such as

1:19:12

hagfish and rhinology, about noses, I have

1:19:15

bleeped the word mucus to

1:19:17

take a stand about how gross I

1:19:20

find it. But I have matured and

1:19:22

I bear with it now. Perhaps the

1:19:24

best type of exposure and response prevention

1:19:26

therapy I could undergo would be a

1:19:29

mucinology episode. I'm going to do my

1:19:31

best, no promises. And Jesse asked, is

1:19:33

there a possibility in the future that

1:19:35

Hollywood doctors would use axolotl science to

1:19:38

keep celebrities looking even more freakishly youthful?

1:19:40

On that note, we had a

1:19:42

great question about this. Olivia Lester, given

1:19:45

their regenerative abilities are axolotl facials

1:19:47

a thing yet in the Kim

1:19:49

K household, will these

1:19:51

properties be used for very expensive facials?

1:19:54

Honestly, I do think they will be but I think

1:19:57

I think that you know, the day is going to

1:19:59

come someday but I would actually say that it's really

1:20:01

important to distinguish if

1:20:03

it's insights from these animals or actual stuff

1:20:05

from them. And I would not be in

1:20:07

support of actual stuff from them. I think

1:20:09

that's horrifying. With some exception, actually,

1:20:11

I do know of a company that is

1:20:14

making like a temporary skin

1:20:16

covering out of decellularized axolotl skin. And

1:20:18

I think, honestly, I feel like from

1:20:21

an ethical standpoint, even though personally, I

1:20:23

wouldn't want to do that research, I

1:20:25

can get my head around it.

1:20:27

But I think anything that you're going to

1:20:30

do for cosmetic reasons is

1:20:32

not going to be predicated on using

1:20:34

the actual material harvested from the

1:20:36

actual animal. However, the insights from

1:20:38

the animal and then use those

1:20:40

insights to synthesize those kinds of

1:20:42

molecules in the lab. And I

1:20:44

wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. Hey, does

1:20:46

an axolotl want to hang out

1:20:48

with you or anyone? Patrons Alex

1:20:50

Nelson, Hannah Johnson, the joyful Spitfire,

1:20:52

Violet Lux Vega and Patrick Duffy

1:20:54

asked in Patrick's words, do they

1:20:56

have best friends? What's their family

1:20:58

group like? And Earl of Graham

1:21:00

Milton noted that these neotenous creatures

1:21:02

look innocent of all wrongdoing ever.

1:21:05

And Natalie, I don't want to know,

1:21:07

do they live solo or in pods? They

1:21:09

eat each other sometimes, but maybe just juveniles. Do

1:21:11

they tend to just be like chilling in their

1:21:13

own PVC pipe or they're under their own rock

1:21:15

and just like, I'm good. Yeah. So

1:21:17

if you have a whole bunch of them in one

1:21:19

tank, it's kind of all bets are off.

1:21:22

I mean, usually they're kind of just chilling by themselves.

1:21:24

Although I would say, I think I remember reading

1:21:26

that in these studies where they microchipped them and

1:21:29

then figured out where they were hanging out at

1:21:31

different times of the day, that there was evidence

1:21:33

that they do get together occasionally. But

1:21:35

I don't think we know that much about like

1:21:37

what their social life is when they hang out

1:21:39

in the same vicinity. That doesn't mean that they're

1:21:41

like having a beer or something, you know? Yeah.

1:21:45

Apparently tortoises have preferred associates. They'll go

1:21:47

visit one tortoise's burrow more often than

1:21:49

another. I think that's very cute. That

1:21:51

is very cute. Yeah. They can tell

1:21:53

from one another, I think, because like

1:21:55

tiger salamanders are super closely related to

1:21:57

axe levels and there's this really cool.

1:22:00

literature on tiger salamander cannibalism,

1:22:03

whereby if you put a bunch

1:22:05

of them together and then they

1:22:07

start to become cannibalistic, only one of

1:22:09

them will turn into a changes

1:22:11

jaw shape and make it bigger so it can

1:22:13

turn into this cannibalistic morph and then it inhibits

1:22:16

the others from doing that. That's

1:22:18

crazy. For an absolute pitcher

1:22:20

of tea on this, please see the

1:22:22

1983 paper, Head,

1:22:24

Shape and Size in Cannibal and Non-Cannibal

1:22:26

Harvey of the Tiger Salamander from West

1:22:29

Texas. Texas, interesting.

1:22:31

But another thing that they found was that

1:22:34

they prefer to eat more distantly related, yes,

1:22:36

animals rather than like their direct siblings.

1:22:39

So they can, I would

1:22:41

not be surprised if salamanders can kind of

1:22:43

distinguish these relationships and how it happens, no

1:22:45

one knows. But you can force

1:22:47

a salamander like an axolotl and a

1:22:50

tiger salamander in the lab, you can

1:22:52

make hybrids of them. And

1:22:54

all of the axolotls that are now

1:22:56

in the laboratory setting, at least in

1:22:58

the US maybe everywhere, they actually are

1:23:00

secretly 6% of their

1:23:02

genome is tiger salamander DNA because this was

1:23:05

done in one of the stock centers a

1:23:07

long time ago and it sort of got

1:23:09

lost. The lineage information.

1:23:12

Why? But yes, I have a colleague who has

1:23:14

published this and he's the director of the axolotl

1:23:16

stock center. So there's an axolotl stock center in

1:23:18

Kentucky. He's a very cool dude.

1:23:21

Yeah. That's so interesting. Hawkins, first

1:23:23

time question asker, asked what's up

1:23:25

with that genome size. I get

1:23:27

it's most likely from repetitive DNA, but

1:23:29

damn, why, how? Do they have a

1:23:32

ginormous genome? They have an enormous genome

1:23:34

compared to humans. It's 10 times bigger

1:23:36

than the human genome. What? Yes, but

1:23:38

they had a similar number of what

1:23:41

we would annotate as genes, but the genes

1:23:43

are not all the same, but there's like

1:23:45

a lot of overlap. But every time we

1:23:47

do a regeneration study, there's like

1:23:49

usual suspects, genes we've heard of in humans

1:23:51

and then there's always like a third or

1:23:53

something of complete mystery genes. And I'm very

1:23:56

interested in what those are doing. They're harder

1:23:58

to work on, but. But I

1:24:00

think it's really cool to think that maybe some

1:24:02

of those mystery genes are part of the reason

1:24:04

why they're such awesome regenerators, right? So

1:24:07

as of 2019, the axolotl had

1:24:09

the largest genome of any organism

1:24:11

ever sequenced with 32

1:24:13

billion base pairs, as opposed to the human

1:24:16

genome, which has about 3 billion

1:24:18

base pairs of AT or GC. So

1:24:21

axolotl, way to go. You win. Wait,

1:24:24

no, you don't, because since then, bigger genomes have

1:24:27

been sequenced. And I know you're thinking like a

1:24:29

whale or an octopus, but no, the Japanese

1:24:32

canopy plant has 149 billion base pairs

1:24:34

of DNA, nearly 50 times that of

1:24:36

you. Boring,

1:24:42

simple ape. And

1:24:44

last listener question, Amy Lee,

1:24:46

first time questioner, wanted to know what,

1:24:48

if anything, we can help to protect

1:24:50

them in the wild, or if

1:24:53

the future relies more on captive populations. But

1:24:56

how can we help the axolotls of the world

1:24:58

that are endangered? Yeah, so I'm going to give

1:25:01

a plug for this really excellent New York Times

1:25:03

article that came out right after Christmas this past

1:25:05

year. And this article is

1:25:07

titled What It Takes to Save the

1:25:09

Axolotl, and it was written by Jenny

1:25:12

Aaron Smith, and it explains that the

1:25:14

home region of the axolotl lies in

1:25:16

what are now canals that make up

1:25:19

a 1,000 year old wetland farming system

1:25:21

called chinampas. And the axolotl once thrived

1:25:23

in these conditions. So Dr. Luis Embrano,

1:25:26

known for his work in axolotl conservation,

1:25:28

we talked about him earlier, he's working

1:25:30

with this team of scientists to study

1:25:32

and bring back these ancestral ways of

1:25:35

farming as salamander sanctuaries.

1:25:38

And side note, the very colorful party

1:25:40

boats that celebrate the axolotl in these

1:25:43

canals also contribute to the trash and

1:25:45

pollution that's killing them. And

1:25:47

many of the axolotls in fish

1:25:49

tanks on display for tourists are

1:25:51

just from pet stores and they

1:25:54

bear little resemblance to the wild

1:25:56

ones whose population has taken this

1:25:58

steep decline. and

1:26:00

colleagues are releasing a really small number

1:26:03

of axolotl from wild stock into

1:26:05

canals that are designated as sanctuaries

1:26:07

and are safe from invasive predators

1:26:10

and are closely monitoring everything from

1:26:12

pollution to oxygen levels and plant

1:26:15

life and crustacean life. And so

1:26:17

far of the 12 in a

1:26:19

recent pilot study, 11 have

1:26:22

survived and the article says that

1:26:24

they're fat and happy. And

1:26:27

our donation this week went to that program. So

1:26:29

you are helping out just by listening.

1:26:32

And I would say that's the really

1:26:34

amazing very recent source for

1:26:36

all the conservation effort information and some

1:26:38

of the actual scientists in there, the

1:26:41

ecologists working in the field, they have

1:26:43

conservation programs that you can get the

1:26:45

link right in that article. Great. And

1:26:48

I know they're declining populations are

1:26:50

a bummer, but in

1:26:52

general what about your job

1:26:54

sucks the most? What's the

1:26:56

most annoying thing, the most

1:26:58

tedious thing, the biggest bummer? What is one thing

1:27:00

about your job that is like not fun? So

1:27:05

I don't know, I don't want to speak for all

1:27:07

scientists, but most of us who get into this are

1:27:09

sort of dorks and nerds and everything and we're in

1:27:11

it for the science and and we like

1:27:14

doing the science, but after you get to be

1:27:16

like the professor you're not the one like sitting

1:27:18

there getting to do the fun part anymore. Instead

1:27:20

you're advising the people and that's also kind of

1:27:22

you know of course that's exciting, especially when stuff

1:27:24

is working, but one of the things that a

1:27:27

lot of us aren't trained

1:27:29

for that super great at is sort

1:27:32

of like managing. Yeah. I

1:27:35

always say the same thing about creatives. I live in LA, I

1:27:37

have so many friends who are creatives and artists and stuff and

1:27:40

if you're lucky enough to make a living out of it then

1:27:42

you have to run a business and you're like oh I whole

1:27:44

reason I got into this because I don't know how to run

1:27:47

a business. So so much of

1:27:49

it is like these business skills and I

1:27:51

think some people are learned

1:27:53

it by osmosis and they have people in their

1:27:55

family or but very few scientists are trained in

1:27:57

both of the realms and then suddenly you become

1:27:59

the professor and you just have

1:28:01

to do this whole set of

1:28:03

other things. And most of us,

1:28:05

for me, it was just trial

1:28:07

and error, trial by fire, right?

1:28:09

Which doesn't feel great, but yes.

1:28:12

I get it. I get it. There are certain reasons

1:28:14

why some people are like, I don't think I'd be

1:28:17

good working for a company. So I'm going to go

1:28:19

out and muck around in boots and stuff or go

1:28:21

out and paint murals or whatever. And then before you

1:28:23

know it, you're like, I got to

1:28:25

figure out how to pay health insurance and how

1:28:27

to order stuff and whatever. Exactly. And

1:28:30

of course, another bummer is finding funding.

1:28:32

And she says that's because the axolotls

1:28:34

need care for at least a year

1:28:36

until they're breeding and that axolotl science

1:28:38

is already inherently pretty risky because so

1:28:40

many things don't work in a salamander

1:28:43

that work in a mouse or a

1:28:45

fly. And she adds that most of

1:28:47

the times the people reviewing the grants

1:28:49

are not salamander people. But I don't

1:28:51

know, maybe all the Minecraft pop culture

1:28:53

clout will yield some kind of pay

1:28:55

dirt of grant gold. What about your

1:28:57

favorite thing about what you do? Oh,

1:29:00

God. There's so many favorite things. But I mean,

1:29:02

sometimes I'm just walking in here and I'm like, even

1:29:04

if this shit is hitting the fan at home and

1:29:07

it often is, I'm just like, pinch me. I am

1:29:09

literally doing this thing that when

1:29:11

I was five, if somebody had told me this

1:29:13

was going to be my job, I would be

1:29:15

like, hell yeah. I can't wait, right? So most

1:29:17

of the things I really do love. But the

1:29:19

favorite thing is when somebody in the lab has

1:29:21

a new result. And it's not just like,

1:29:23

oh, I think this is happening. It's like they come in,

1:29:25

they show me the pictures and the graph, and it's significant.

1:29:27

And I'm like, oh my God, we are the only people

1:29:29

in the whole world that know how

1:29:32

this works, right? And it doesn't happen every

1:29:34

single day. But when it happens, it's like

1:29:36

this amazing feeling because humans are

1:29:38

just trying to figure out how the natural world

1:29:40

works with what we got, which is like our

1:29:42

senses. And we're going in there just

1:29:45

tinkering in a way. And we

1:29:47

don't really know. We don't

1:29:49

know so much, right? And so the idea that

1:29:52

for a hot minute, like the two of us

1:29:54

know something that nobody else has ever appreciated, even

1:29:56

if it's tiny, I love that. That's

1:29:59

so exciting. It's like solving

1:30:01

mysteries all the time and

1:30:04

then having more questions and more cans of worms. Yes,

1:30:06

yes, yes. And I also really enjoy mentoring because

1:30:09

it is something that I think you can't really

1:30:11

want to be a professor unless that's really important

1:30:13

to you. It's like raising up the next generation

1:30:15

of people who are going to go on and

1:30:18

carry on this kind of work later, or maybe

1:30:20

they're not. They're just going to use the skills

1:30:22

that they got in graduate school to go and

1:30:24

conquer some other kind of professional world. But they're

1:30:27

still really important because graduate

1:30:29

school teaches you supposedly how to think

1:30:31

about problems. And so it's always really

1:30:33

cool to see them go off and

1:30:36

achieve their dreams. I'm

1:30:38

so glad that you have achieved this dream and we

1:30:40

got to ask you so many questions about axolotls. I

1:30:43

feel like I know them better now. And

1:30:45

also I'm in wonder of them. I wonder

1:30:47

how many people are going to get axolotl

1:30:49

pets after this. Honestly, do a lot of

1:30:51

reading before you even consider one. And

1:30:54

because they're now so rare in

1:30:56

the wild, most of the pet

1:30:58

trade actually descends from that Parisian

1:31:00

population that was taken from Mexico,

1:31:03

but many countries and states ban

1:31:05

them or require a permit to

1:31:07

own them because like bull frogs

1:31:09

and red eared sliders in California

1:31:12

and pythons in the Everglades and

1:31:14

iguanas in Miami, if

1:31:16

a species, especially a pet, is

1:31:18

introduced, it could outcompete the already

1:31:20

struggling natives. So consider all the

1:31:22

implications. But if you already have

1:31:24

one as a pet or you

1:31:26

have always dreamed of owning one

1:31:28

responsibly, any tips? Joey's wig said

1:31:31

from my mom, my niece's pet

1:31:33

axolotl seems to lead a dull

1:31:35

life. Is there any way to

1:31:37

entertain her? What else? Any

1:31:39

pet care tips? Oh, I would say,

1:31:42

you know, you got to watch the water quality because that's

1:31:44

the number one thing that can stress your axolotl out if

1:31:46

it gets too hot. So like if you're

1:31:48

going on vacation, don't turn the AC

1:31:50

off because that's like the thing that they hate

1:31:53

the most is they don't like an elevated temperature.

1:31:55

It will stress their whole, all their body systems

1:31:57

out. So be careful about that

1:31:59

would be like my. one of my number

1:32:01

one tips I would say. And I also think

1:32:03

they love to eat nightcrawler. So if you just

1:32:05

get one styrofoam container from the tackle, like

1:32:07

the bait shop, you can keep

1:32:10

it in your fridge in the last like six months

1:32:12

because they also breed in there. And then you just

1:32:14

take a nightcrawler out and they're so happy. It's like

1:32:16

candy to them. Oh, a

1:32:18

literal can of worms. Those

1:32:20

are my pet axolotl tips, I would say. That's

1:32:23

amazing. Thank you so, so much for doing this.

1:32:25

And yeah, this was a dream come true. When

1:32:28

you asked me the question about do I get back to all

1:32:30

the kids always, like it breaks my heart to say that now

1:32:32

I can't, which for like,

1:32:35

otherwise I wouldn't sleep. But doing things like

1:32:37

this makes me feel like it's so much

1:32:39

more efficient. And I feel like so lucky

1:32:41

to sometimes get these kinds of opportunities. So

1:32:43

thank you, Ellie. Oh,

1:32:46

good. So

1:32:48

axolotl smart people, a lot of not

1:32:50

smart questions, because that's how they learned

1:32:52

what they know. And now you know.

1:32:55

And for more on Dr. White, it's lab

1:32:57

and the work of Dr. Luis Zamrano and

1:32:59

the Adopt an Axolotl program. You can find

1:33:01

links in the show notes and also linked

1:33:03

to our social media at ologies on Instagram

1:33:05

and X. I'm Allie Ward with 1L on

1:33:08

both. Thank you to Erin Talbert who admins

1:33:10

the ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes

1:33:12

our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the

1:33:14

website. Our scheduling producer is Noelle Dilworth. Managing

1:33:17

director of so many things is Susan Hale.

1:33:19

Jake Chafee is an outstanding editor, as is

1:33:21

the marvel of lead editor Mercedes Maitland of

1:33:23

Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music.

1:33:26

And if you stick around till the end

1:33:28

of the episode, I'll tell you a secret.

1:33:30

And when I was in Mexico City, I

1:33:32

went with my friend who saw one

1:33:35

of her best friend's husbands at

1:33:39

a pool with his

1:33:41

mistress. My friend looked like

1:33:43

she was frozen and ice. She just went stiff all

1:33:46

of a sudden. And then she had to text me

1:33:48

from two feet away to tell me what was going

1:33:50

on. And his wife already

1:33:52

knew that he had stepped

1:33:54

out with someone. They were in the process

1:33:56

of separating. But wow, that was a spicy

1:33:58

encounter. I would have rather seen

1:34:01

an axolotl if I'm honest. Okay, bye bye. Pack

1:34:03

a dermatology, omeology, cryptozoology,

1:34:06

litology, nanotechnology,

1:34:09

meteorology, phatatology,

1:34:12

phatology, seriology,

1:34:15

phatatology. That beautiful

1:34:17

creature right there.

1:34:25

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