Speaker 1: From the lung of a snake. The tongue worm steals
Speaker 1: a blood meal? Has it been so for millions of years?
Speaker 1: What do fossils reveal? They just keep getting.
Speaker 2: Longer and more Shakespearean?
Speaker 1: I noticed, Yeah, I'm trying very nice.
Speaker 2: We nail down light and let the meter chase time.
Speaker 2: Now rulers run late, but the clocks are sublime.
Speaker 1: Kelly, pray, tell what are parasites three that you find
Speaker 1: the most creepy?
Speaker 2: Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's
Speaker 2: Shakespearean answers will set it all right.
Speaker 1: Isn't Shakespearean in like iambic pentameter? Not whatever the heck
Speaker 1: you call what we're doing.
Speaker 2: My criticisms of your poetry may not be entirely accurate.
Speaker 1: I admit, okay, Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary universe,
Speaker 1: not Daniel and Kelly's literate universe. This is listener questions
Speaker 1: number thirty three.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm I'm a particle physicist, and I'm not a
Speaker 2: professor of English.
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Kelly Wiener Smith. I study parasites and space,
Speaker 1: And when I was at a literature festival, I actually
Speaker 1: asked a scotsman. Well, Robert Burns is dead, right, and
Speaker 1: uh he died about one hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 1: So the answer is yes. I married a man with
Speaker 1: a degree in literature, and I embarrass him regularly.
Speaker 2: And I've heard that he's not a fan of our poetry.
Speaker 1: He skips past. Oh oh, yeah, the start of our
Speaker 1: listener questions episodes.
Speaker 2: All right, but today we are not talking in tongues,
Speaker 2: but we are talking about tongues. I've noticed that you've
Speaker 2: licked some very interesting topics for.
Speaker 1: Today, Kelly, that's right, and our first question is by Jacob,
Speaker 1: who wants to know about tongue worms. So let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and hear his question.
Speaker 3: I'd love an episode or chapter on tongue worms. An
Speaker 3: approximately four hundred and fifty five million year old lineage
Speaker 3: is mind bending. I keep wondering what impacts something that
Speaker 3: ancient has had on the evolution of vertebrates. My naive
Speaker 3: intuition is that if a host parasite relationship lasts that long,
Speaker 3: natural selection must have pushed both sides towards some kind
Speaker 3: of stable arrangement, almost like an evolutionary game that has
Speaker 3: found a robust equilibrium with strategies on both sides that
Speaker 3: keep getting re selected.
Speaker 2: Wow, who wouldn't love an episode on tongue worms. That's
Speaker 2: nightmare fuel for sure.
Speaker 1: He was really excited about tongue worms. We had a
Speaker 1: very enthusiastic conversation about whether or not we meant the
Speaker 1: pentastomid tongue worms or the isopods that eat the tongues
Speaker 1: of fish. Maybe those were the tongue worms that Jacob meant,
Speaker 1: but anyway, no, he meant the linguadolids the tongue the
Speaker 1: kinds of parasites that you often find in snakes.
Speaker 2: Oh fascinating. Yeah, all right, so tell us what are
Speaker 2: these things and why have they been around for four
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million years?
Speaker 1: All right, so here we go. All right, so pentastoma
Speaker 1: that means five mouths, but you know what, fun fact,
Speaker 1: they only have one mouth. They've got like five hangy
Speaker 1: things on their head side. But actually only one of
Speaker 1: those things is a mouth, and the other five are
Speaker 1: like hooks. I think we weren't quite so good at
Speaker 1: figuring out what the hangy things were initially, So we
Speaker 1: said five mouths, but only one of them is a mouth.
Speaker 2: All right, but give me a mental picture of this thing.
Speaker 2: How big is it? Is it long? And thin? Is
Speaker 2: it little blob? Is it gooey? It's gooey, isn't it?
Speaker 1: I mean probably kind of gooey. I mean it depends
Speaker 1: depends on what stage you're talking about. So they can
Speaker 1: be as long as like fifteen centimeters. Whoa pretty long.
Speaker 1: They're wormy. They're probably related to crustaceans, and so crustaceans
Speaker 1: we're talking about like crayfish, shrimp, crabs, stuff like that, right,
Speaker 1: But they are like sort of very differently shaped. They're long,
Speaker 1: they're wormy. They've got like a head projection that has
Speaker 1: like hooks on either sides that they can like hold
Speaker 1: on to the inside of the lungs of like snakes.
Speaker 1: And then they've got like a little mouth thing in
Speaker 1: the inside so that they can like suck on blood.
Speaker 2: And so they're basically snake shaped, so like a snake
Speaker 2: might have a snake parasite in it that looks like
Speaker 2: a snake. And then does that just continue, Is there
Speaker 2: a parasite inside that one, a parasite inside that one,
Speaker 2: until you get down to like quark length snake parasites
Speaker 2: add infinitum. Yes, it's snake parasites all the way down,
Speaker 2: all right. So you got a snake with a snake
Speaker 2: parasite in it, and it's got these grabby things on
Speaker 2: its mouth so that it can hook into the lungs
Speaker 2: of the snake. I thought we were talking about tongues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they they don't have that much to do
Speaker 1: with tongues really, but they still get called tongue worms.
Speaker 1: And so they tend to be found in like the
Speaker 1: naso pharyngeal region, so they can be like up in
Speaker 1: the nose, they can be in like the trachea, they
Speaker 1: can be in the lung sort of region. You tend
Speaker 1: to find them in like lizards, turtles, snakes, crocodiles, like herps.
Speaker 1: And essentially what they do is like they use those
Speaker 1: hooks they hold on and then they bite into the
Speaker 1: lungs and they suck out a bunch of blood.
Speaker 2: Wow. So if a snake like has a big sneeze,
Speaker 2: it could like chew out one of these guys.
Speaker 1: Ah. So here's the fun thing. So they're probably not
Speaker 1: gonna hut you out the parasite, but they might be
Speaker 1: hutcheing out the parasite's eggs.
Speaker 2: Oh, gosh.
Speaker 1: So the parasite breeds inside and it produces eggs, and
Speaker 1: sometimes the host will like cough up the eggs and
Speaker 1: swallow the eggs, and then the eggs will get out
Speaker 1: of the body through like the feces of the host.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna think about that every time I cough from
Speaker 2: now on, Kelly, Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're welcome. There's some other parasites that do that too,
Speaker 1: and they infect humans.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yay.
Speaker 1: Well, but sometimes the parasites will get into the environment
Speaker 1: directly because the animal will just like cough them right
Speaker 1: out into the environment. Super gross. The way these parasites
Speaker 1: harm their host, it doesn't seem like they cause anemia,
Speaker 1: which is to say, it's not like they're drinking so
Speaker 1: much blood that that's how the host dies. But as
Speaker 1: you can imagine having an animal with hooks hooking into
Speaker 1: your lungs and then nibbling into your lungs, that causes
Speaker 1: a bunch of like gaping wounds in your lungs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those gaping wounds then get infected by bacteria or fungus,
Speaker 1: and so animals can die from like pneumonia or some
Speaker 1: of these parasites. As I mentioned can get to be
Speaker 1: like many centimeters long, and they literally like can choke
Speaker 1: the animal to death by just like taking up a
Speaker 1: bunch of their lungs or a bunch of their trachea.
Speaker 1: So not cool.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the parasites have an intermediate host in the life
Speaker 1: cycle where they'll like live inside of an insect, and
Speaker 1: so they'll have like a stage where they don't do
Speaker 1: any reproduction. They're just kind of hanging out in the
Speaker 1: insect waiting for the insect to get eaten by like
Speaker 1: a snake or something. And once the snake eats it,
Speaker 1: it will hatch out of the insect, migrate out of
Speaker 1: the snake's gut until it finds the lungs, and that
Speaker 1: migration can cause some damage, and then it becomes an
Speaker 1: adult and does the chewing on the lung thing again.
Speaker 2: All right, so this thing is pretty gross, but you know,
Speaker 2: it's up there in the pantheon of parasites doing its thing, right,
Speaker 2: We're not judge here. But Jacob wanted to know about
Speaker 2: their evolution.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and so this is where it gets a
Speaker 1: little bit complicated. So Jacob was super excited because this
Speaker 1: is a very old parasite. So one of the papers
Speaker 1: that I was reading said that it is the oldest
Speaker 1: metazoan parasite that we know about, and so metazoin means multicellular,
Speaker 1: and you're yawning, And I don't know how you can
Speaker 1: yawn when I am bringing the most exciting facts in
Speaker 1: the world. Dan the oldest multicellular parasite.
Speaker 2: We know No, oh my god, no jet lag.
Speaker 1: No, I totally understand. And so anyway, we have found
Speaker 1: pentastomid larva. So this is like, you know, a juvenile
Speaker 1: stage of the parasite. They were found at the Cambrian
Speaker 1: Ordo Vsian boundary layer. Maybe I said that right, maybe
Speaker 1: I didn't. But this is about like four hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty five million years ago, and the fossils that they
Speaker 1: found weren't associated with any host, and so what does
Speaker 1: that mean. Maybe that means that this stage was just
Speaker 1: kind of hanging out in the environment waiting for a
Speaker 1: host to come by and then it was gonna like
Speaker 1: swim up and grab the host. Or maybe it means
Speaker 1: that actually, a really long time ago they were free
Speaker 1: living and later they became parasitic. But it's hard for
Speaker 1: us to tell because the fossil wasn't connected to a host.
Speaker 2: All right, So we have fossils of the same critter
Speaker 2: from four hundred and something million years ago. How certain
Speaker 2: can we be it's the same critter? I mean, fossils
Speaker 2: don't give you like details often. How sure are we?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So I have looked at fossils of parasites before
Speaker 1: and thought to myself, you really need to like squint
Speaker 1: and believe to think that that is a fossil of
Speaker 1: the thing you think that it is, or other thing
Speaker 1: you're saying it is. So I opened up the paper
Speaker 1: and I looked at it, and I was like, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good fossil, okay, Like wow, And so this,
Speaker 1: I mean, like this really looks like a pentostomid larva.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Okay. But it wasn't munching on snake lungs, So we
Speaker 2: don't know if that's what it was doing. Yet. It
Speaker 2: could be that it was just hanging out, not being
Speaker 2: being a parasite, and then later figured out a new
Speaker 2: life plan.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so here's the thing. It couldn't have been
Speaker 1: hanging out chewing on snake lungs because tetrapods like lizards
Speaker 1: weren't even going to be existing for another one hundred
Speaker 1: million years. Oh, so tetrapods weren't an option, but maybe
Speaker 1: it could have been parasitizing something else. Oh and so
Speaker 1: then we find a four hundred and twenty five million
Speaker 1: year old specimen that's an ostracod. And so this is
Speaker 1: an aquatic crustacean and it's got like a kind of
Speaker 1: hard outer shell, and this time the pentistomid was like
Speaker 1: attached to that. And so maybe it was infecting this
Speaker 1: aquatic crustacean that would be like different than what we
Speaker 1: see today. But maybe it was a parasite of something
Speaker 1: totally different a really long time ago. And so our
Speaker 1: best guess is that maybe what happened is they were
Speaker 1: infecting something totally different and then primitive fish came along
Speaker 1: and they started eating these ostra CODs.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 1: And this is where we are doing some evolutionary storytelling.
Speaker 1: This is our best guess at the moment. We're speculating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, this is speculation. So we think
Speaker 1: that you get these early fish they start eating the
Speaker 1: ostracods and the pentostome It is like you know this
Speaker 1: thing where I get eaten, where my host gets eaten
Speaker 1: is kind of the pits, and so I'm going to
Speaker 1: start infecting the fish instead.
Speaker 2: Oh I see, flip. The scriptrisite is actually a victim here, right, yes, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: what else can you expect it to do. It's being
Speaker 2: munched on. It's going to fight back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, that's right, And so it takes power
Speaker 1: over the situation and it starts infecting this early vertebrate instead.
Speaker 1: And then over evolutionary time, you know, you start to
Speaker 1: get vertebrates that are moving on to land. And now
Speaker 1: you've got some pentistomids that are infecting some of the
Speaker 1: early vertebrates that are moving to land. So you get
Speaker 1: pentistomids in amphibians, which and we find those in amphibians today.
Speaker 1: Then the pentastomids are infecting the lizards and it just
Speaker 1: sort of like radiates with its hosts as they move
Speaker 1: on to land. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Something in the water was munching on tasty
Speaker 2: bits hundreds of millions of years ago, not realizing that
Speaker 2: they were dooming all of their land based ancestors to
Speaker 2: coughing up that bit's eggs hundreds of millions of years later.
Speaker 1: It's incredible yeah, incredible, But again a story, right.
Speaker 2: It's a story. It might be the case, right, Is
Speaker 2: this the kind of thing we could ever know for sure? Like,
Speaker 2: what kind of thing could tell you more about this?
Speaker 2: Is it finding a fossil of one thing inside another thing?
Speaker 2: Do we ever do that?
Speaker 1: Ummm? Yeah? I mean we get lucky in that sometimes
Speaker 1: we will find copper lights and the coprolites will have
Speaker 1: cop right yep, sorry, fossilized poop, and the fossilized poop
Speaker 1: will have identifiable eggs. And so, for example, we get
Speaker 1: pretty lucky because some kinds of tapeworms have very hard
Speaker 1: hooks that they use to hang on to their hosts,
Speaker 1: and inside of the eggs you can sometimes see these
Speaker 1: very characteristic hooks, and so like, you know, an ancient
Speaker 1: shark might poop and you find the ancient shark poop
Speaker 1: and you see these eggs with hooks, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that ancient shark had this certain kind of tapeworm what
Speaker 1: And then you throw a party because it's.
Speaker 2: Awesome and ancient parasite Poopay.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's what my people get excited about, as
Speaker 1: you know. So maybe you could find some similar evidence
Speaker 1: with pentastomids, but it is a little hard because they
Speaker 1: tend to be internal parasites. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: their hard structures fossilize in poop, like their eggs fossilized
Speaker 1: and poop. Maybe, but at the moment we don't have
Speaker 1: all of those connecting bits. But then jake question in
Speaker 1: particular was about coevolution between the vertebrate hosts and so, so,
Speaker 1: first of all, I'd like to note that, like Jacob
Speaker 1: was excited because these are super old parasites that have
Speaker 1: been around for like over four hundred million years, but
Speaker 1: the hosts haven't been around for that long, so coevolution
Speaker 1: has been happening for less long. So, for example, lots
Speaker 1: of folks are excited about these worms in snakes, but
Speaker 1: snakes have been around for like, you know, more than
Speaker 1: one hundred million years, but like around there, which is
Speaker 1: way less than the four hundred plus million years that
Speaker 1: we've had tongue worms around. So that's like a longer
Speaker 1: period for co evolution. But to be honest, so I
Speaker 1: started looking for papers on like coevolution pentastomid and host
Speaker 1: and I didn't find like a lot of reviews that
Speaker 1: had like looked at a bunch of you know, relationship
Speaker 1: between pentastomids and their hosts, and looked at what traits
Speaker 1: were changing. And to be honest, when I was taking
Speaker 1: parasitology or when I go to parasite conferences, I don't
Speaker 1: remember hearing about these paris much. So, like, first, thank
Speaker 1: you to Jacob for asking this question so that I
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to read about this stuff. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I think because these parasites tend to not be a
Speaker 1: big problem for our livestock, at least not in the
Speaker 1: United States. They tend to not be a problem for
Speaker 1: our pets, at least not in the United States. Although
Speaker 1: some dogs can sometimes get these parasites, they tend to
Speaker 1: not be a huge health problem for people again in
Speaker 1: the United States. In some areas where people eat snakes,
Speaker 1: they are a health problem. There in the US, we
Speaker 1: don't tend to spend a lot of money on them,
Speaker 1: and so I think there's not a bunch of money
Speaker 1: spent answering these kinds of questions, And so maybe I
Speaker 1: missed it, but I didn't find the kinds of studies
Speaker 1: that would need to be done to give Jacob the
Speaker 1: kind of answer that he was looking for. What I
Speaker 1: can say is that people have been releasing Burmese pythons
Speaker 1: in Florida, and there's a pentostom parasite from Asia that
Speaker 1: is spreading into our native snakes and is also spreading
Speaker 1: into our non native frogs that have come here from
Speaker 1: like and they have been hitching rides on cars because
Speaker 1: these are tree frogs that kind of stick to stuff.
Speaker 1: And it has been spreading out of Florida and it's
Speaker 1: spreading around the United States, and that's not great. And
Speaker 1: so I don't know, maybe we're going to be caring
Speaker 1: a lot more about this parasite and in your future
Speaker 1: as it decimates our native cryptofauna.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's not a lot of study of
Speaker 2: this topic because it's impossible and the data is just
Speaker 2: so rare, or because people aren't curious about it, or
Speaker 2: just speculator for me about why you think this hasn't
Speaker 2: been explored.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's in species that are not
Speaker 1: not our pets, are livestock or us. They're just in
Speaker 1: like species that are financially not super important to us.
Speaker 1: I guess I mean, like, I love snakes, I love lizards,
Speaker 1: I love turtles, there's not loads of money in them,
Speaker 1: not until.
Speaker 2: We get some sort of snake lovers in congress.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean, like, I yeah, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's a lot of money to
Speaker 1: study avian malaria or malaria in lizards in the hope
Speaker 1: that understanding it there might help us understand malaria in people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is, you know, not a huge global health
Speaker 1: problem like something like malaria is, and so I think
Speaker 1: that there's less money to study it, unfortunately, But I
Speaker 1: hope we learn more about it because it's very interesting
Speaker 1: and very gross.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's hear if that answer scratched Jacob's itch.
Speaker 1: Oh you don't you set us up for a series
Speaker 1: of lick jokes earlier. You haven't come up with a
Speaker 1: lick joke to a because I tried, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: come up with anything that was appropriate and involves licking.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I'm disappointed that that didn't involve as
Speaker 2: many tongues as I was expecting. But let's hear if
Speaker 2: it licks Jacob in all the right places.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, I'm sorry I couldn't answer
Speaker 1: your question, Jacob, I was licked? Is that?
Speaker 2: Here we go?
Speaker 1: There we go.
Speaker 3: All right, gosh, that's kind of gross and yet so
Speaker 3: extremely neat. I think I was hoping to find some
Speaker 3: deeper deeming quality there in parasites, but instead I found
Speaker 3: my favorite thing in the universe, curiosity and a question
Speaker 3: rarely asked. I'll definitely be developing a toy model. Who knows,
Speaker 3: maybe we've just inspired a listener out there to worm
Speaker 3: their way in.
Speaker 2: Also, all right, we're back, and our next question is
Speaker 2: about physics, and it comes from Alka. Alka didn't want
Speaker 2: to read it themselves, and so I asked Hazel to
Speaker 2: read the question for us.
Speaker 5: I recently read about the redefinition of L units in
Speaker 5: twenty nineteen. For the public, a visible kilogram, a visible
Speaker 5: meter was something everybody could relate to. That is not
Speaker 5: the case with the new improved SI. Now the distance
Speaker 5: light travel is in a vacuum in the time it
Speaker 5: takes the season one thirty three autum to change its
Speaker 5: transition frequency. And where the original idea was to have
Speaker 5: a meter be the circumference of the Earth divided by
Speaker 5: forty million within this calculated a bit, why not do
Speaker 5: it correctly now? And how arbitrary is this anyway? What's
Speaker 5: going on here? Is this an academic exercise for physicists
Speaker 5: with too much time on their hands and not enough
Speaker 5: funding for their worthwhile endeavors, or with a previous standard
Speaker 5: so hap hazard that we've had to redo every calculation
Speaker 5: and measurement that was done before.
Speaker 1: Oh this is fun. I am so glad that there
Speaker 1: are people on this planet who get super excited about
Speaker 1: making sure that we have good standards for weights and
Speaker 1: other measurements. I couldn't be that person, but we need
Speaker 1: those people because.
Speaker 2: You're not organized in precise enough or what's the issue?
Speaker 1: I would get bored. I'd be like, we are close enough,
Speaker 1: and that is not I'm not the right kind of person.
Speaker 1: I'm not the right kind of person.
Speaker 2: There is definitely a kind of person who works at
Speaker 2: like the National Institute's for Standards and Technology. They have
Speaker 2: all the standards there. They even have Katrina tells me
Speaker 2: a standard peanut butter what you could buy is like
Speaker 2: an example, this is the definition of peanut butter.
Speaker 1: Okay, is that like the astronaut ice cream that has
Speaker 1: actually never been to space? Is it just a plot
Speaker 1: to get money from parents?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I think you know, there's like a definition of things
Speaker 2: like you can only call it chocolate if it's got
Speaker 2: a minimum amount of cocoa. And so probably they produce, example,
Speaker 2: chocolate that people can use in their like chocolate detectors
Speaker 2: or something. And I'm sure there's rules about what you
Speaker 2: can call peanut butter and what it's called peanut cream
Speaker 2: or whatever, and so they have to produce something that
Speaker 2: they can, you know, put into their measuring devices. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's how this ends up making peanut butter.
Speaker 1: All right, All right, peanut butter is delicious and I
Speaker 1: love it. But let's get back to the matter at hands.
Speaker 2: So Alca is asking about how we measure things, which
Speaker 2: is super fun because there's really interesting history here, but
Speaker 2: also there's deep physics and philosophy about how we measure things,
Speaker 2: what we measure, and what we define and what that
Speaker 2: all means. We're going to dig into all of that,
Speaker 2: and what they're referring to in their question is that
Speaker 2: we've changed these definitions we used to define a second.
Speaker 2: For example, it's one eighty six four hundredths of a
Speaker 2: rotation of the Earth, and you're like, well, that's a
Speaker 2: weird number. Where does that come from? That's twenty four hours, time,
Speaker 2: sixty minutes, time sixty seconds. That's literally the number of
Speaker 2: seconds in a day. So we were defining a second
Speaker 2: to be in terms of the Earth's rotation, right, So
Speaker 2: how long does it take the Earth to spend? Call
Speaker 2: that twenty four hours, and then divide those up into
Speaker 2: little bitty slices which we call seconds. So that's an
Speaker 2: example of how we used to do things. Or the
Speaker 2: kilogram used to be like a rod of metal in Paris,
Speaker 2: and we would say this is a kilogram, and everything
Speaker 2: is measured in relation to that.
Speaker 1: I think the rod in Paris makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: That's like a physical thing, although it probably changes over time,
Speaker 1: But like the rotation of the Earth, that's like not
Speaker 1: something that most of us could measure, and that's probably
Speaker 1: something that most of us can't measure. That seems like
Speaker 1: a hard way to measure a second.
Speaker 2: Well, even the original meter, the rod, it's a reference,
Speaker 2: but it's supposed to come from a measurement of the Earth.
Speaker 2: It's like one ten millionth of the shortest distance from
Speaker 2: the north pole to the equator passing through Paris.
Speaker 1: Oh, Paris is very important in standard measurements.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, French used to be the language of science,
Speaker 2: and a lot of this stuff was done in Paris
Speaker 2: by people speaking French. So these things are defined in
Speaker 2: terms of earth based measurements here, and then you create
Speaker 2: like a rod as an example, and then that becomes
Speaker 2: the reference. And the issue is that, like, this method
Speaker 2: is not super robust. You know, physical objects are not
Speaker 2: great at being perfect references because they're not perfect. They
Speaker 2: don't stay the same way. They're not eternal, right, They
Speaker 2: wear down, they get contaminated, they shrink, they grow, they
Speaker 2: lose atoms, they gain atoms.
Speaker 1: I feel personally attacked right now.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about you. You are the prototypical Kelly.
Speaker 2: You will always be. If you gain or lose atoms,
Speaker 2: you're still one Kelly.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right?
Speaker 2: Does that make you feel better? I'm not sure why.
Speaker 6: But whereas, for example, we used to have an international
Speaker 6: prototype kilogram, which was the cylinder of platinum and I
Speaker 6: ridium that was stored in your Paris.
Speaker 2: But over a century it drifted in mass by fifty micrograms.
Speaker 2: Maybe it gained some, maybe it lost some. We don't
Speaker 2: actually know because it's the reference, right, And so you know,
Speaker 2: we have a bunch of these around the world, and
Speaker 2: then sometimes you bring them back together and you measure them,
Speaker 2: you realize, oh, they're different from each other. Well, what
Speaker 2: does that mean? Which one is a kilogram? Well, this one.
Speaker 2: We've defined the kilogram to be this one, and so
Speaker 2: it's always a kilogram, even if the number of atoms
Speaker 2: in it changes. And so it's just not a great system.
Speaker 2: It's okay when you're getting started and you're like, look,
Speaker 2: let's just write down when this is and start from there.
Speaker 2: But in an era of like high precision measurements, do
Speaker 2: you want your fundamental units to have that much fuzziness
Speaker 2: in them? It limits your ability to measure the universe itself. Like,
Speaker 2: if you don't know the speed of light to better
Speaker 2: than one part in six, you can't measure anything that
Speaker 2: the speed of light is connected to better than that.
Speaker 2: There's an inherent fuzziness in everything. And so people realize
Speaker 2: this and said, all right, let's upgrade it. Let's try
Speaker 2: to come up with a new system where the units
Speaker 2: are defined by properties of nature, things that we think
Speaker 2: are really not changing, or that you know, define the
Speaker 2: context of the universe itself, not just like, hey, some
Speaker 2: guy named Gerard cut a piece of metal this long,
Speaker 2: and now that's the length.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, but I'm guessing the new methods are
Speaker 1: going to be harder to understand by the general public,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the point of the question, right,
Speaker 1: But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go ahead. What
Speaker 1: did we come up with?
Speaker 2: The new methods are more precise, which makes them less accessible. Yes,
Speaker 2: but they are the foundation of physics, which is why
Speaker 2: you get like cool iPhones.
Speaker 1: And stuff, which is inherently inaccessible. Is that your point, No.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that the public benefits from physicists doing
Speaker 2: their job better, right, Okay, yeah, yeah, all right. So
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty three we transition from this old system
Speaker 2: of like physical objects to this new strategy of defining
Speaker 2: units in terms of invariant properties of nature. So the
Speaker 2: second actually got an upgrade before then. The second used
Speaker 2: to be is like slice of a rotation of the Earth.
Speaker 2: But of course the rotation of the Earth is changing, right,
Speaker 2: every year the Earth's rotation slows down. But a second
Speaker 2: is still a second, right, But today's second is not
Speaker 2: the same as last year's second. You can see already
Speaker 2: this is a headache. And when we meet the aliens
Speaker 2: it'll be embarrassing to have like a second defined by like, oh,
Speaker 2: this planet we used to live on a long time ago,
Speaker 2: Like it just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: And this kind of stuff really concerns Daniel.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's important. And so in nineteen sixty seven and
Speaker 2: they redefined the second and they used something they thought
Speaker 2: was really really precise, which is the caesium one thirty
Speaker 2: three atom. And this is basically what goes into atomic clocks.
Speaker 2: It has this oscillation where the electron switches between two
Speaker 2: energy levels called the hyperfine transition, because the difference between
Speaker 2: them is really really small, and so it just oscillates
Speaker 2: between these two things extraordinarily regularly. Right, This is basically
Speaker 2: a clock of the universe. And in about nine point
Speaker 2: one nine billion oscillations is what we used to call
Speaker 2: a second. So then they redefined the second to be
Speaker 2: nine billion, one hundred and ninety two million, six hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty one thousand, seven hundred and seventy oscillations of
Speaker 2: the electron between these states in a caesium one thirty
Speaker 2: three atom. Wow, that's what a second is.
Speaker 1: And it is there like a sessium one thirty three
Speaker 1: atom doing its transition somewhere that it's being counted, and
Speaker 1: the second start counting according to that is and is
Speaker 1: it in Paris beyond?
Speaker 2: Madam?
Speaker 1: I don't speak French. I don't know what that was.
Speaker 2: Oh, but you do accents.
Speaker 1: That was good in Paris.
Speaker 2: No, all caesium atoms do this, and they do the
Speaker 2: same because all caesium atoms are the same, and so
Speaker 2: you don't need a prototypical French version in a cafe somewhere.
Speaker 2: Anybody can capture caesium one thirty three and use it
Speaker 2: as a clock because it's a property of the universe.
Speaker 2: That's sort of the idea. So that was the upgrade
Speaker 2: for the second I happened nineteen sixty seven. The meter
Speaker 2: has more hilarious history. The first one was seventeen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: They made the prototype meter in Paris. According to that definition,
Speaker 2: one ten millionth of the distance between the equator and
Speaker 2: the North pole if you go through Paris. But in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty nine they realized that they hadn't done a
Speaker 2: great job and they upgraded it. So number one, they
Speaker 2: realized it was a little too short, and like again
Speaker 2: you have to ask, like too short compared to what
Speaker 2: it is The definition of the meter. But they had
Speaker 2: another way to measure this distance between the pole and
Speaker 2: the equator, and they realized it was a little bit
Speaker 2: longer than the basis for the previous measurement, so they
Speaker 2: needed an upgrade. So the eighteen eighty nine up grade
Speaker 2: was supposed to be an exact copy, but instead they
Speaker 2: made it a little bit longer. They also changed its
Speaker 2: shape a little bit. Instead of just being like a
Speaker 2: flat rectangle, they made it an X shape, which was
Speaker 2: supposed to like reduce the flexing during measurements and increase
Speaker 2: its rigidity, you know, rather than just being a blob.
Speaker 2: And they changed it from just being platinum to being
Speaker 2: a platinum iridium alloy to try to make it more durable.
Speaker 2: And you could see already they're struggling against the fundamental
Speaker 2: failure of this system, which is you have a blob
Speaker 2: of metal and you're using it as your reference. And
Speaker 2: it's absurd because it's still getting it longer and shorter.
Speaker 2: You know, it warms up in Paris, the rod gets longer.
Speaker 2: Does the meter change according to this system? Yes, that's insane, right.
Speaker 2: The speed of light goes down when it's warmer in Paris.
Speaker 2: Does that really make sense to anybody.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 2: Eighteen sixty, they tried to get away from this, and
Speaker 2: they redefined it to be the certain number of wavelengths
Speaker 2: of krypton eighty six emission. So remember, atoms have energy levels,
Speaker 2: and electrons can go up and down, and when they
Speaker 2: go down, the emit light, and that light reflects the
Speaker 2: energy level, and so like, that's a pretty basic thing
Speaker 2: in the universe, that gap between those energy levels and
Speaker 2: therefore the wavelength of light that's emitted. So they redefined
Speaker 2: the meter in terms of these wavelengths, and that's cool.
Speaker 2: But then they had another issue, which was that now
Speaker 2: we have a definition of time in terms of ccum atoms,
Speaker 2: and we have a definition of distance in terms of
Speaker 2: krypton eighty six emissions. Fine, and they both seem pretty basic,
Speaker 2: but now we have to measure the speed of light. Right,
Speaker 2: because we have a definition of meter and we have
Speaker 2: a definition of time, now we have to measure how
Speaker 2: fast light is. But light is a fundamental constant, it's
Speaker 2: part of the universe. It's not something we should have
Speaker 2: to measure. And we're pretty good at measuring time, but
Speaker 2: measuring length is hard, you know, being really really peri
Speaker 2: I like, down to one part in ten to the
Speaker 2: eight or ten out of ten in length measurements is tough,
Speaker 2: and so that fuzziness in the length of a meter
Speaker 2: gets translated into fuzziness in the speed of light itself. Right,
Speaker 2: And so now the speed of light is like something
Speaker 2: we're measuring we're not sure about, but we know that
Speaker 2: it's fixed. Right. The physics tells us it has to
Speaker 2: be fixed. So we have a system of units, which
Speaker 2: is a little bit at odds with a system of
Speaker 2: physics which treats the speed of light not as like
Speaker 2: some number we have to measure, but like a conversion
Speaker 2: between time and distance. Right. It's really deeply ingrained in
Speaker 2: our understanding of relativity. So then they had another idea.
Speaker 2: They were like, look, we're good at measuring time, we're
Speaker 2: not so good at measuring length. Why don't we just
Speaker 2: define the second and then we can use the speed
Speaker 2: of light itself to define the meter. Okay, So they said, okay,
Speaker 2: take a second, and now a meter is how far
Speaker 2: light travels one two hundred and ninety seven hundred ninety two,
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty eighths of a second, naturally naturally right,
Speaker 2: because we define the speed of light to be two
Speaker 2: hundred ninety nine seven hundred ninety four hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: eight meters per second. Right, And so you can define
Speaker 2: two of these things and then measure the third one.
Speaker 2: And so we decided let's define time because we're good
Speaker 2: at measuring that, and let's define the speed of light,
Speaker 2: and then we'll measure the meter in terms of that. Right,
Speaker 2: So the meter is not something we define anymore, it's
Speaker 2: something we measure. Instead of measuring the speed of light,
Speaker 2: we're measuring the meter, and that way, the speed of
Speaker 2: light can remain perfect and absolute and invariant. And when
Speaker 2: we measure, like the mass of the top core can
Speaker 2: try to get that precision down. We're not carrying along
Speaker 2: in that measurement somebody's fuzziness of the measurement of the
Speaker 2: length of a meter, which got propagated into the measurement
Speaker 2: of the speed of light, which now pollutes everything in
Speaker 2: our system.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
Speaker 2: So you know, one way to think about it is
Speaker 2: like you can either paint tick marks on a physical
Speaker 2: ruler and hope that it never changes, or you can
Speaker 2: define distance in terms of how long something takes to
Speaker 2: travel at a fixed speed and we chose that second option,
Speaker 2: and we use the most invariant speed in the universe.
Speaker 2: And so what al could referring to is a recent
Speaker 2: change in twenty nineteen. In twenty nineteen, they slightly redefine
Speaker 2: the length of a meter to include the definition of
Speaker 2: a second. Before that, they referred to a second, but
Speaker 2: they didn't expressly say what a second was than another
Speaker 2: definition of a second, so they just updated it a
Speaker 2: little bit to make it like more complete. It's no
Speaker 2: real change in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it wasn't an academic exercise for physicists with
Speaker 1: too much time on their hands and not enough funding
Speaker 1: for their worstwhile endeavors.
Speaker 2: No, it was an important exercise for physicists who are
Speaker 2: doing important work and don't have enough time for other
Speaker 2: worthwhile endeavors. But took some time out to do this anyway.
Speaker 1: And could use more money.
Speaker 2: And could use more funding exactly. But it goes to
Speaker 2: show you how important it is to think clearly and
Speaker 2: crisply about these really foundational questions. You know, what is
Speaker 2: a meter? What is a second? You might blow these
Speaker 2: off as like silly philosophical endeavors, but if you don't
Speaker 2: do it right, then you're spreading fuzziness through all of
Speaker 2: your physics, and that has real consequences. You know, how
Speaker 2: are we going to make chips in your iPhones if
Speaker 2: we can't measure things down to the nanometer? Right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's important that we get these things right.
Speaker 1: That's right, all right, So let's see what our listener
Speaker 1: had to say. Are they still disappointed in physicists or
Speaker 1: are they convinced by your argument?
Speaker 2: Oh wait, I didn't get to make my Bob Dylan joke.
Speaker 2: The times they are a changing? Oh good, that's the
Speaker 2: only reaction. All right. Well, in this case, both the
Speaker 2: length and the times have a changed. But I think
Speaker 2: we have a good system now. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 2: send this off to Alca and see if Alca is
Speaker 2: satisfied with our answer. I heard back from Alca. He
Speaker 2: didn't want to record his own voice, but here's his response. Hi, Daniel,
Speaker 2: thank you for your effort. I decided a year and
Speaker 2: a half ago that I wanted to know more about physics,
Speaker 2: and then I found your podcast. I don't think I
Speaker 2: will ever have an understanding of biology. It's just one
Speaker 2: weird fact after another gross fact. But I have learned
Speaker 2: so much about physics during this time. Therefore, I love
Speaker 2: the answer, Thank you very much. It completely measures up well.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Alka. Really glad you're enjoying the podcast.
Speaker 1: Last question of the day is a super fun one
Speaker 1: from Mark from the greatest of our fifty states.
Speaker 2: Asking again about parasites and tongues.
Speaker 1: You have a question.
Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel and Kelly, This is Mark from Virginia. I
Speaker 4: recently read about a parasite that attaches itself to a
Speaker 4: fish's tongue, consumes the tongue, and then becomes the fish's
Speaker 4: new tongue. And I thought to myself, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: how horrible for that poor fish. But it got me
Speaker 4: to wondering, as a parasitologist, what do you think are
Speaker 4: the three most nightmare inducing parasites that are out there?
Speaker 4: I mean, the things that really make your skin crawl,
Speaker 4: you know, perhaps literally. I look forward to being repulsed
Speaker 4: by your answer.
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, Kelly gets to be creepy today,
Speaker 1: so I should say that the answer to this question
Speaker 1: kind of varies depending on the day that you're talking
Speaker 1: to me. And we've already talked on the show about
Speaker 1: screw worms, which totally creep me. Out. We've already talked
Speaker 1: on the show about Askris lumbricoid's also known as round worms.
Speaker 1: We talked about them in dirt Worms episode. Those really
Speaker 1: are very high up on my list of nightmare inducing parasites.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to talk about three other parasites that
Speaker 1: creep me out. And I don't mean to glorify these parasites.
Speaker 1: Some of these are like really horrible for people. But
Speaker 1: these are parasites that, like, when I hear about them,
Speaker 1: they make my skin crawl and they make me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Does that mean that you don't root for them? You know,
Speaker 2: it's the classic like Cheetah Versus Antelope Woods documentary? Are
Speaker 2: you watching who you're rooting for? Are you? Do you
Speaker 2: find yourself incapable of rooting for these parasites.
Speaker 1: When the parasites that I'm talking about are not in humans,
Speaker 1: I am able to root for them. But I am
Speaker 1: a big fan of the humans, and so when they're
Speaker 1: in humans, I am not rooting for them.
Speaker 2: Well, even though Kelly doesn't seem to care, I feel
Speaker 2: bad for all the other hosts that have to suffer
Speaker 2: through these parasites. All right, So what's the first nightmare
Speaker 2: topping parasite.
Speaker 1: Loa loa, which is a kind of beautiful sounding name,
Speaker 1: but it is the African eyeworm. I think loa means worm,
Speaker 1: so it's actually wormworm and you find this in Central
Speaker 1: and West Africa. This is a neglected tropical disease. It
Speaker 1: is a nematode that gets injected into you when you
Speaker 1: are bitten by a certain kind of fly. The adults
Speaker 1: migrate through your body and they have babies that end
Speaker 1: up They're like tiny little worms that you know, move
Speaker 1: through your blood and they get sucked up by flies
Speaker 1: when they take a blood meal. But the adults are
Speaker 1: what causes the symptom that really kind of makes me
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable, which is that they can migrate, including they
Speaker 1: can migrate through your eye. Oh and so sometimes people
Speaker 1: will be able to see a worm moving around the
Speaker 1: outer part of your eye, like.
Speaker 2: You can see it from the inside, like it's part
Speaker 2: of your vision. Is this like worm like swimming across
Speaker 2: your field to vision?
Speaker 1: I don't think it's moving across the part where you
Speaker 1: detect things, but like people can see it in a
Speaker 1: white part of your eye.
Speaker 2: Wow, imagine a worm though, like looking back at you
Speaker 2: from inside your eye.
Speaker 1: Not cool. It's not cool at all.
Speaker 2: And so wait, I have a question first about the
Speaker 2: earlier part of the life cycle, because this is something
Speaker 2: I never understand. A fly bite to you and it's
Speaker 2: previously taken some blood that has these worms in it,
Speaker 2: and now it's biting you and the worms get into you.
Speaker 2: So number one of the worms says to be really
Speaker 2: really small because they're going through a fly bite.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: And how did the worms go from the fly to you?
Speaker 2: Like the fly is drinking the blood? Is it backwashing
Speaker 2: into you? Like, how does that happen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when the fly takes a bite from somebody
Speaker 1: who's infected, the parasites go into the gut of the
Speaker 1: fly and then they like infect the fly and they
Speaker 1: go through like multiple different stages inside of the fly.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in what happens inside of the fly.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in what I'm about to say either,
Speaker 1: but I know a little bit more about it. But
Speaker 1: like when malaria gets into a mosquito, it also goes
Speaker 1: through multiple stages and then it moves into the salivary
Speaker 1: gland of the mosquito. And so when the mosquito goes
Speaker 1: and takes a blood meal and injects a bunch of
Speaker 1: like chemicals into someone so that you maybe don't feel
Speaker 1: the bite. So like mosquitoes inject like anesthetics and stuff
Speaker 1: in there so that you're less likely to feel it,
Speaker 1: you get the parasite injected in. Also, I don't think
Speaker 1: that when flies bite it's exactly the same, but it
Speaker 1: could just be that, like some of it gets left behind,
Speaker 1: or you know, some saliva gets left behind, and then
Speaker 1: the parasite sort of move their way in. We talked
Speaker 1: about how with kissing bugs, they just kind of like
Speaker 1: poop and then you scratch it in. So there's a
Speaker 1: variety of different ways for insects to make it into
Speaker 1: your body after a blood meal has been taken.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it gets inside your body, and then what
Speaker 2: does it do when it's in there.
Speaker 1: If you get two adults, they find each other, they mate,
Speaker 1: they produce these tiny little offspring called microfilaria, and they
Speaker 1: start moving through your bloodstream. And they are small enough
Speaker 1: that if a fly I bites you, they can get
Speaker 1: picked up by the fly and the cycle starts again.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, the adults are sort of moving
Speaker 1: around your body, including sometimes into your eye.
Speaker 2: And is that the thing that freaks you out? Is
Speaker 2: that the part that makes the nightmare is the eyeball part.
Speaker 1: The eyeball part is what freaks me out. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean imagine looking in the mirror and seeing a nematode
Speaker 1: moving around in your eye.
Speaker 2: And does that mean that they have to like pull
Speaker 2: the worm out of your eye, like eyeball surgery to
Speaker 2: remove worms.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So actually it's like moderately good news if
Speaker 1: you see it in your eye, because now somebody can
Speaker 1: get it.
Speaker 2: Now, somebody can put a knife on your eyeball yay.
Speaker 1: And extract the parasite. So now it's not in your
Speaker 1: body anymore, and so it can be removed surgically. So wow,
Speaker 1: that is uh, that's parasite number one that Kelly finds creepy.
Speaker 2: All right, So we wake up screaming from that one.
Speaker 2: We get ourselves somehow back to sleep, and then we
Speaker 2: have in that mirror about parasite number two. What's a
Speaker 2: nightmare number two today, Kelly.
Speaker 1: Nightmare number two we can enjoy a little bit more
Speaker 1: because it's not infecting people. This is a copa pod,
Speaker 1: So this is another crustacean so another thing that you
Speaker 1: can think of is being kind of related to like
Speaker 1: crabs and crayfish and stuff like that. It has a
Speaker 1: name that I will absolutely butcher Learneoh, Sarah Brancialis.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is with biologists and Latin names,
Speaker 2: Like why do you guys have to share Latin names?
Speaker 2: They mean nothing to anybody. Nobody can pronounce them. They
Speaker 2: don't help anybody understand, Like, seriously, why are we carrying
Speaker 2: all this baggage?
Speaker 1: Okay, some of them have common names. There's a system
Speaker 1: for this. I actually went through all of the paperwork
Speaker 1: once to register a common name for a species so
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't have to bother saying the Latin name.
Speaker 1: It has an official common name now, But anyway, this
Speaker 1: one doesn't have an official common name. It has a
Speaker 1: Latin name. We are gonna call it the uh what
Speaker 1: are we gonna call it? Blood sucking copa pod?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: A lot of them are bloodsucking copa pods. But anyway, here,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna move war moving on. It's a
Speaker 1: marine copapod that infects a bunch of different kinds of fish,
Speaker 1: including Atlantic cod. Part of why we know a lot
Speaker 1: about it is because people eat Atlantic cod, and so
Speaker 1: it's a you know, fish of importance. We're gonna skip
Speaker 1: a lot of the life cycle. It has like a
Speaker 1: free living stage, it has a stage where it lives
Speaker 1: on a different kind of fish. But what you need
Speaker 1: to know is that at some point males and females
Speaker 1: mate and then the females go off in search of
Speaker 1: a final fish to parasitize. And when the females go
Speaker 1: off in search of that final fish, she finds and
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how she finds the host. Other
Speaker 1: and other copopods we've looked and it has to do
Speaker 1: with like chemical cues stuff like that, but we don't
Speaker 1: know in this case. But she finds the gills and
Speaker 1: so in fish, the gills are you know, the way
Speaker 1: that fish extract oxygen from the water. But she finds
Speaker 1: the gills and she attaches to part of what's called
Speaker 1: a gill art. So the gills kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they have this like arch shape. She finds a part
Speaker 1: of the gill arch where there is an artery that
Speaker 1: goes from the gill arch to the heart. Oh, and
Speaker 1: she has this appendage that she sticks into the artery.
Speaker 2: No, she doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yes, she does, Yes, she does, and she doesn't.
Speaker 7: And it grows into the artery until it ends up
Speaker 7: in the hearts and she starts drinking the fish's blood
Speaker 7: from its.
Speaker 1: Heart, straight from the heart. And so she's got like
Speaker 1: she's got like a mouth in the heart and she's
Speaker 1: drinking blood from the heart. And then she's got like
Speaker 1: her back end sort of sometimes outside the fish's mouth,
Speaker 1: but like the back end has a bunch of eggs,
Speaker 1: and like every two weeks she produces a clutch of
Speaker 1: eggs that then she like you know, she's able to
Speaker 1: produce because she's drinking all of this fish's blood and
Speaker 1: then she releases these eggs to produce more of her babies.
Speaker 1: And she can do this like almost every two weeks.
Speaker 1: And so anyway, she gets her energy from the fish's
Speaker 1: heart directly.
Speaker 2: And what do you think it feels like for the fish?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Awful? So like, uh, these fish, I know, it's so
Speaker 1: so they you know, they have anemia, which which means
Speaker 1: they're like low on blood, which is not surprising. They
Speaker 1: lose weight, they have sores, they have like fewer babies.
Speaker 1: A lot of them die. If you're a smaller fish
Speaker 1: when this happens, you're even more likely to die. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the fish can't close their mouths because the like the
Speaker 1: you know, the moms are so big that they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, their back ends are like making it harden
Speaker 1: to close their mouths, so their mouths will become kind
Speaker 1: of like deformed. This parasite is like really gnarly and
Speaker 1: creepy and wow. Yeah, so that's number two.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, he made me feel bad for fishies. Yeah right,
Speaker 2: so that's number two. And then we're gonna shake that off
Speaker 2: and ready to get freaked out about the next one.
Speaker 2: What's the next one?
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 1: The next one is raccoon roundworm, And I know how
Speaker 1: you feel about me saying Latin names, so for your
Speaker 1: sake and mine, I won't bother. So this is a nematod.
Speaker 1: It reproduces sexually in the guts of raccoons.
Speaker 2: What a romantic place to hang out. Wow, I know, man,
Speaker 2: Friday night and the gut of raccoon. That sounds great.
Speaker 1: I know, if only we were nematodes.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: So, raccoons tend to poop in places called latrines, which
Speaker 1: essentially what you need to know is that they poop
Speaker 1: in like the same place, and often groups of them
Speaker 1: will poop in the same place over and over and
Speaker 1: over again.
Speaker 2: They're so organized.
Speaker 1: Well they're they're like sort of clean. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: These are the animals that like wash their food, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And I think they're super cute. I like
Speaker 1: racord cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but never take them as a pet.
Speaker 1: And we are going to get back to that at
Speaker 1: the end of this discussion. So they poop in the
Speaker 1: same spot, but the eggs produced by the nematodes are
Speaker 1: depart in that poop, and if a squirrel or like
Speaker 1: a rabbit consumes that poop accidentally, like you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a nut falls by the latrine and a squirrel picks
Speaker 1: up the nut, and when it eats the nut, it
Speaker 1: accidentally consumes some of the eggs. Those eggs will hatch.
Speaker 2: Pro tip. If your nut falls by the latrine, let.
Speaker 1: It go, man, let it go, mane gone, find another nut.
Speaker 1: There's another nut out. That's right, that's right. But it
Speaker 1: hatches and it starts migrating, and it can migrate through
Speaker 1: the eye, it can migrate through organs, it can migrate
Speaker 1: through the brain, and it starts causing like tremors and
Speaker 1: like just sort of nervous system symptoms. And it could
Speaker 1: be that that makes the squirrels more likely to die
Speaker 1: so that they get scavenged by the raccoons. But that's
Speaker 1: what it does. But unfortunately, every.
Speaker 2: Raccoons will eat dead like infected squirrels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot.
Speaker 2: Of bad decisions going on here. I'm feeling less and
Speaker 2: less sorry for these hosts. Yeah, well, you eating poopy
Speaker 2: nuts eating dead squirrels, Like, what do you expect to happen?
Speaker 1: And Daniel, I think you shouldn't learn any more about
Speaker 1: nature because you're gonna stop being sympathetic about anything, and
Speaker 1: maybe you should know less about nature. But every once
Speaker 1: in a while, unfortunately a human will get infected because sometimes,
Speaker 1: for example, the raccoons will set up their latrine in
Speaker 1: a kid's sandbox and a kid will play in the
Speaker 1: sand and then stick their hands in their mouth and
Speaker 1: the parasite will migrate through their eyes or through their
Speaker 1: organs or through their brain. And I know and cause there.
Speaker 2: Was no bad decisions there. That's just a kid in
Speaker 2: the sandbox.
Speaker 1: That's just a kid in a sandbox, right, And so
Speaker 1: that is very upsetting to me. And I learned about
Speaker 1: this parasite like a few years before I had kids,
Speaker 1: but it really stuck with me. And so anytime my
Speaker 1: kid wanted to play in a sandbox, I would like
Speaker 1: first dig through with my hands and look for anything
Speaker 1: that looked like poop. And my kid was like, I
Speaker 1: am I know. My daughter was like, Mom, you're embarrassing me.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I won't be embarrassing you if
Speaker 1: you've got parasites migrating through your brain. And she's like,
Speaker 1: you are absolutely embarrassing me. But uh oh wow, And
Speaker 1: to be okay, So just before people start like absolutely
Speaker 1: freaking out, there have been fewer of twenty five cases
Speaker 1: according to the CDC of this disease documented in the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 2: Only because moms have been cautious and careful, like you were. Congratulations,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 1: Yes, some cases might have gone undiagnosed, you know, probably
Speaker 1: not a lot of cases. Good news is that eggs
Speaker 1: take two to four weeks before they become infectious, So
Speaker 1: like if you see a raccoon latrine being like formed
Speaker 1: in your sandbox or in your attic or something like that,
Speaker 1: you've got time to do something about it before it
Speaker 1: becomes infectious. The CDC has instructions for how to deal
Speaker 1: with this safely. The instructions include using a propane flame gun.
Speaker 1: So it could be fun.
Speaker 2: That's definitely more fun than getting raccoon roundworm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have way more fun, way more fun. But again,
Speaker 1: do that safely or call in a professional.
Speaker 2: Make good choices.
Speaker 1: People make good choices. And if it's a latrine in
Speaker 1: your attic, probably you shouldn't use the propane flame gun. Again,
Speaker 1: make good choices. But another thing that was kind of
Speaker 1: well funny but not funny, morbidly funny. The CDC website
Speaker 1: said you can get raccoon roundworm when you consume infectious eggs,
Speaker 1: usually accidentally. And I was like, usually, CDC, usually who
Speaker 1: are the people who are consuming these eggs not accidentally,
Speaker 1: but not.
Speaker 2: People making good choices, that's for.
Speaker 1: Sure, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, bottom line here, I see a lot of
Speaker 1: Instagram videos of people who are like feeding twenty raccoons
Speaker 1: in their backyard with like cat food every night, and
Speaker 1: they're like, look at all my cute raccoons, and dudes,
Speaker 1: raccoons are super cute, but if you're bringing them to
Speaker 1: your backyard, they're going to be pooping near your house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you really like wildlife should be respected at a distance,
Speaker 1: And I get it, because I really love wildlife. Raccoons
Speaker 1: are super cute, but you need you need to keep
Speaker 1: your distance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you really want a nightmare, you should
Speaker 2: google raccoon eats baby's face. And yeah, that maybe already
Speaker 2: tells you everything you need to know. Don't let raccoons
Speaker 2: into your house.
Speaker 1: What the heck? Daniel, that's horrible? What a horrible note
Speaker 1: to end on? Well Mark. I think what I had
Speaker 1: to say was pretty creepy, but what Daniel had to
Speaker 1: say was even creepier. Let's see what you have to
Speaker 1: say about all of the creepiness that we just brought
Speaker 1: your way.
Speaker 2: I hope that was the nightmare you were looking for.
Speaker 1: How could it not be?
Speaker 4: Hi, Kelly, thanks for that truly terrifying answer. Every time
Speaker 4: I look in the mirror now, I will be checking
Speaker 4: to make sure there are no worms wriggling through my eyeballs.
Speaker 4: I will not be googling raccoon eats baby's face. And
Speaker 4: I'm kind of excited about taking a flamethrower to any
Speaker 4: raccoon latrines I come upon to make sure I don't
Speaker 4: accidentally eat the poop and get nematodes in my brain.
Speaker 4: As always, thanks for making such a truly awesome show.
Speaker 2: All right, thank you very much to all of our
Speaker 2: questioners and everybody who writes in. We love, love love
Speaker 2: hearing from you. We are like parasites, and we suck
Speaker 2: energy out of your curiosity.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's not the energy that I thought you were
Speaker 1: going to go for, but let's lean in. Thank you
Speaker 1: everyone for sharing your questions. You don't suck. Daniel and
Speaker 1: Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you.
Speaker 2: We really would. We want to know what questions you
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