(SciShow Intro)

Hank: Hello and welcome to SciShow Talk Show, the day on SciShow where we talk to interesting people about interesting stuff.  Today we are joined by Brit--I forgot, is it Garner?  

Brit: Yeah.

H: Not Gardner.

B: No D.

H: Okay, just making sure, who is the new host of SciShow Psychology, along with me.  Hey.  Thanks for doing that.

B: Yeah, it's awesome.

H: Yeah, it's really exciting.  It's going well.  How do you like it?  I know this isn't what we're supposed to be talking about.

B: Okay, well, between you and me and everyone, it's awesome.  I'm so happy to be involved with this.  My mom's PhD is in psychology and so even though I don't study it directly, it's so near and dear to my heart and I follow it just in terms of like pop science and what's going on, so.

H: Yeah, and I love like, getting the scripts in my inbox and being like, what fascinating thing am I gonna learn about in my brain today?  

B: Totally.

H: But you are also a scientist.

B: Yes.

H: And so we're gonna talk about the science that you do right now.

B: Awesome.

H: You're at the University right now, here in Missoula.

B: Yup.

H: And studying animals.  

B: Just animals.  A degree in animals.  It's gonna look good on the paper.

H: Yeah, yeah, PhD in Animals.

B: In Animals.  

H: But you, so you've studied a bunch of animals.  And well, I mean, it is, like, you're studying all kinds of weird stuff. Like vertebrates mostly, but like, that's broad.  

B: Well, some have said.

H: Yeah, so in a bunch of different ways, and in kind of in new ways, so kind of conservation stuff but with like, hard science.

B: Yeah.

H: Figuring out--it's a kind of a hard nut to crack, especially when you start thinking about it globally, how do we figure out what like, what these animals are doing without like, going in and tagging every single one.

B: Right.

H: And being like, how often do you die?  Who do you have sex with?  Where do you go?

B: We actually just ask them that on surveys.  It's great for data collection.  Hi, yes, what was your recent sexual partner?  And did you die yesterday, yes or no?  

Biology is easy.  

H: It's super easy.  Super easy.  So, what animals are you studying right now?

B: Yeah--

H: There's two main things, right?

B: Yeah, two main things.  So, my background is in conservation genetics, now genomics 'cause we have the possibility of opening up to so much more data, and so that is focused on climate change and (?~2:25), and so trout and salmon out here in the Pacific Northwest.

H: And so you sort of, using genetics to find out things about the populations?

B: Yeah, exactly, and that's, I mean, that'd be pretty much a baseline definition of conservation genetics right?  So, I--my bachelor's was zoology and I just love animals, right?  So many of us, that's the cool thing about kids is that they're pretty much fearless when it comes to animals.  They learn to be scared of things, but I mean, there's just this attraction and for some of us, we never lose it.  I'm one of those people, and the thing is though, I'm crazy about math, crazy about science, and really fell in love with genetics early on and I didn't know that those two could go together and then I found out that they could.

H: Yeah.

B: And I jumped in headfirst and then wound up doing work in it, yeah, so it's using molecula--data from molecular analyses, so on genetics or genomics, so using a ton of genes, genome-wide, um, yeah, to uncover the story, pieces of the story, about populations, usually ones that are in danger or potentially going to be.

H: And what's kinda the story that you're helping figure out?

B: Yeah, so, right now, there's incredible research going on with landscape genomics and connectivity, and  we're actually combining it for the first time, or one of the first times, people right now, the idea of remotely sensed variables.  So we have all this amazing satellite capability and these sensors that are collecting data at a mind-blowing rate and resolution, but they're about things that are abiotic, so non-living.

So what we're doing is combining those abiotic remotely sensed environmental variables--so, things like--variables, variables--things like precipitation, temperature, so ice melting, the, you know, plant composition in terms of actual coverage, you know, not species, and then combining that with genetic data or genomic data, depending on what it is.

H: What's the difference between those two things?  'Cause I don't even--I have no idea.

B: Oh my gosh, what an exciting question!  I was just baiting you hoping you'd ask.  Well, it's just such a caveat, because some of our work is genomics, and so it's like, conservation genetics (or genomics), so the genome is every piece of DNA in your body, right?

H: Yeah.

B: This makes up the whole thing.  A gene is a stretch of DNA that has a job.  That's, you know, a basic way of saying it, so when you do a genetic analysis, you're looking at a bunch of genes, so imagine we've got, you know, snapshot here, snapshot here.  Now, to do a genomic study, this is contentious because it's like, well, how many is genomics, right, and we're figuring that out.  We don't have these like, set ceilings, but you can think of it as not only way more markers, like complete genome-wide coverage, but being able to also see the interactions.  So potentially not just this location, but how does this one right next to it affect it, which effects this, which is here and here.  So when we say genomic, it's just the scale of the study and also the questions that you can answer, only some you can do with genome level vs. genetic level.  

H: And so is this, in some ways, like, in a way that we would in the past, like, stick an antenna into a fish and like, track it going around, you can sort of say like, well, this fish, like, this population of fish are all related and they have, and then over time you can see new genetic information coming into that population, which means that it's--that there's some intermixing with other populations or stuff like that?

B: Yeah, so you actually just listed two of some of the most like, basic and direct applications of conservation genetics or genomics, which is how closely related are they, okay?  

So doing either pedigree reconstructions and very easily, too, I mean, imagine trying to figure that out without--

H: Yeah, without--

B: I mean, you don't, you have to sit there and record who screws whom and who gets pregnant.

H: Well, you can't even figure that out with people.  I mean, like, going back very many generations with humans, it's just guessing.

B: I mean, look, yeah, we have Maury Povitch.  I mean, we couldn't even do it on our own, right, so clearly, yeah, the critters, not so much.  Although I would pay to watch that for sure.  Yeah, so certainly who is related to whom and then that, it tells us about the inbreeding level in a population.  Now why does that matter?  Because genetic diversity is the key to moving forward, so what's awesome about studying biodiversity on the genetic level is that instead of saying, here's where we are, we're saying here's the evolutionary potential.  Here's is where this population can go and maybe how long it will take, and why it might be threatened by habitat fragmentation versus climate change, so what we have going on with the trout and salmon out here is they are incredibly, incredibly ectothermic and sensitive, so they rely on their environment for their temperature, like a lot of fish, but they have requirements that are very, very specific and they're incredibly sensitive, so--

H: Yeah, so the rivers get a little warm out here and then the trout populations just crash.

B: Yeah, the--yeah, so they are not resilient to these changes and the whole thing, you know, with climate "change", it's all about how fast.  It's all about rate and it's just what we all have to remind ourselves.  How quickly can these guys, you know, get with it through natural selection or through any form of mechanism, right?  Genetic drift, gene flow, all these things versus the actual changes that are actually occurring.  So, we kinda have an awesome opportunity for this canary in the coal mine, you know, climate change kind of flag with these salmon and trout populations out here.  

So we can overlay that remotely-sensed environmental data with the genetic data over a time series and see what's correlated and what's affecting what, and then, yeah.

H: So how much data do you get?  Like, how m--like, do you go out and like, or does someone go out and just poke a bunch of fish?  

B: Yeah, just, I mean, that's--that's it.

H: Just as they go by, poke, poke, poke.

B: Conservation genetics, yeah, yeah.  So what we have in a lot of the streams is really tiny fin clipping, so just taking the tiniest bit of tissue off of--

H: Do you catch the fish, like you go fish?

B: Yeah, so it's, yeah, electrofishing, so not fishing but electrofishing actually out in the glacier which is a really fun way to spend your summer, interns.  Come on out!

H: Just electrocuting fish.

B: Very lightly.  It's very lightly.

H: Mild electrocution.  Just enough--

B: Just the tiniest bit for them to pause to then net, clip, and back.

H: Oh, oh, so you don't like, you don't like, it's not like you throw some, like M80 under there and they all just float to the top?  

B: Now, I'll just suggest that for next time, next field season.  No, it's awesome actually, you kind of look like ghostbusters, like you have this backpack and you're going and--

H: Just tasing fish.

B: Yeah, just it's a tiny like, it's a kind of tiny electric net that you just put underneath and then goes--I totally did not make the connection, here's a SciShow Psych episode: me electrocuting the hell out of myself because not thinking about electricity going through water.  

H: Oh yeah, nice.

B: As I reached down to adjust my weighters, so you know, but apparently that's initiation.  

H: Yeah, you'll get it.  

B: Yeah.

H: Cool.  I mean, my thought was maybe that you just had fishermen do it, 'cause they're catching fish all the time.

B: Yeah, so the interesting thing about that is kind of this idea of citizen science, which we also do--

H: Yeah, just like, have a little Ziploc bag full of tiny fin pieces.

B: Right?  Right.  Did it.  Thank you, sir.  Yeah--

H: Here's your 50 cents.  

B: Much appreciated, yes, it's like a can drive.  

Exactly.  Yes, and no.  So, to be able to do that, you really want to again make sure that the veracity of your data is good.  You've got--you know that they knew what species this was, where they got it, right?

H: Right, right.

B: So, there's a little bit of iffiness, but if you are training citizens and you are making, so like, I make training videos for the biostation for people who go and collect environmental DNA samples, which we can totally talk about, it's very exciting, you know, we say here are all the steps, we're giving you the equipment, but the other thing about DNA is that it's sensitive, so I have a great friend who does paleontology, right, and I'll go out and help him during the summers and things, and you know, I'll come across something and I'm like, nobody touch it.

H: Yeah.

B: And then it's like, you know, they're just like, (?~10:47) paleontology, I could lick my hand and put it on, you know, but with DNA, it's just, you can have contamination very easily, so where cells and DNA can come from--

H: No, but that is a thing with like, archaeology.

B: Yes.

H: Because they wanna do genetic testing on this stuff.

B: Right.

H: And if you like, find an arrowhead and the first thing some people who are collecting the stuff do is they'll lick it, so that they can get a better look at what the rock is.

B: Yeah, yes.

H: They'll just like, shine it up a little bit and then you put human DNA on it.

B: Well, yeah, exactly, and like, and human vs. fish, I mean, that signal is pretty easy to parse out, but if you're doing an anthropology study, human vs human, you know, not so much, yeah.

H: Yeah, not so easy, yeah.  But fish vs fish can be, I imagine, a little hard.

B: Yes, and there are definite examples of people thinking they've found some crazy result and like, being on the verge of publishing and then being like, that was contamination.

H: (?~11:37) fish.

B: That was totally contamination, yeah, and it happens.  The other fun thing, I used to work on ancient DNA, so DNA that's very degraded and really really sensitive, of sea lions and fur seals.  This was for my Master's, and I have cats at the house.

H: Wait, ancient sea lions and fur seals?

B: Yeah, so not that they were old and then I got their DNA, but that they died between like 4-7,000 years ago.

H: Where did you get their DNA from?

B: This was on Kodiak Island, so from bones.  So I actually, like, got into the bones and like, took stuff out.

H: Nice.  That's cool.

B: Yeah, super sweet how far back we can go if it's preserved in the right, in the right place, but the thing is with contamination, sea lions and fur seals are close enough, closely enough related to cats that my orange tabby may or may not have wrecked a nice one of our panels.  Except the other guy in my lab had an orange tabby, too, so I was like, it was him.  It was definitely his cat.

H: It was definitely some kind of orange cat, but it was definitely not mine.

B: Orange didn't come up in the reading, but we knew.  So yeah, contamination is one of those things, yeah.

H: So, um, just a note, we're not gonna get to hear the research, so maybe we should just talk about it next time you come on the show, 'cause I'm too interested in this.

B: You guys, there's gonna be a next time?  This is very exciting.

H: I mean, it's like, we always like to have--

B: It's so fun.

H: Yeah.

B: There's so much to say about this topic.

H: Yeah, so have you got any good trout data?  How are they doing?  How are the fishies?

B: I just imagine that on a t-shirt and you being like--

H: How are the fishies, Brit?

B: Brit, how are the fishies?  I mean, look, it's--this is a hard age to be optimistic in, right?  So, it's, you know, it's not that good, but the beautiful thing about life is that it's resilient, right?

H: Yeah.

B: And it's just how quickly but also how quickly can we inform management policy to get there, and the beauty of using DNA to make decisions, so the idea of conservation genetics is we can do it for less money and faster, so to get in there and have these policies implemented, you know, even at like, the federal scale, so the idea of like, Endangered Species Act, how things get listed, something that actually comes down to genetic data.  As far as looking for invasive species, like, we're doing that, we can detect a single cell from an invasive species out in Flathead Lake and have a presence/absence and know to alert, you know, release the hounds.

Like, we are--we got work to do.  So, are things good?  You know, not really.  We are in the middle of what is considered the 6th mass extinction, you know, and that, it doesn't matter, you know, how rich or poor a place is, as far as human economics.  I mean, the fauna are declining, you know, and it's just a matter of how can we be smart about um, the way we approach it.

H: Sorry the fishies aren't doing so good.  

B: I mean, some are, I'm sure, I'm sure that some fishies are just doing great.  But it's hard, they're just, the ones out here, I mean, they're just very sensitive and when things change quickly, it is, it's tough.

H: Yeah, there's not a lot of--

B: And (?~14:51) also with invasive species, too.  

H: Well, fascinating.  Keep doing it, and I want an update all the time, every time I see you.  Tell me.

B: How are the fishies?

H: Tell me how the fishies are.

B: You got it.  You betcha.

H: Alright.  Great.  Well, I don't think we're seeng a fishie, but there is an animal that's going to be coming to visit us.

B: I'm so excited.

J: This is, her name is Kizmit, and she is an African Crested Porcupine.  Now, I'm going to see if she is going to be good on the table.  If she's not, I'll pick her back up and I'll just hold her for a little bit, but I would love if she showed you how she moves.  Now, she is reactive to movements, but we'll see how comfortable she is and may be able to feed her.

B: Ohh, I would like that.  Hi gorgeous.  

J: (?~15:35) table.  You've got that.

H: Oh yeah, I like table.  

J: What do you think?  (?~15:39)

B: I wish my hair did that.  

H: Mohawk!

J: Hi!  This is very exciting.  Here you go.

B: What product do you use?  Ohh.  Is this a juvenile?

J: Um, she is a baby.  She is about five months old.  These guys grow really fast, they mature at two years old, but they're pretty much full grown at about a year, so she is--she's very small right now. 

B: Hi baby.

J: Well, she was smaller when we got her, and then she's like, five times as big and she's gonna get five times as big again.  

B: Very exciting.

J: They can get two to almost three feet long.

H: That's gonna be a big animal.

J: And their quills are 24 inches long, so not only is her body like, gonna be this big, but then her quills are gonna be huge.  They're called African Crested Porcupines because of this awesome crest on top of their head, but also because when they are threatened, they will put all of their quills up, and it'll look like they're wearing like a tutu of quills.  

H: Like a peacock of--

J: Yeah.

H: Like a porcupine peacock.

J: Yeah, and they're not--

B: A porcucock.

J: She's actually being really--

H: A porcuco--

J: A porcucock.

B: I think I read a scientific article on that.

H: Okay.

B: Peer reviewed.  

J: She's doing really good.  Would you like to give her a treat?

H: Sure.

B: Hi, sweetie.  

H: Hey Kizmit.  What's this?  

B: I looked at that eye:face ratio and I thought, yes.  

J: Isn't it awesome?

H: What is the little (?~17:03)

J: That's what they do.  She wears her tail.  So she has modified quills on the tip of her tail, and they're open quills and elongated, and so when she shakes them, it makes this waddling noise, and she does that when she's irritated or annoyed and she's not doing it 'cause she's mad right now, she's doing it because she's saying this is my treat and you are kinda close to me, so I'm--she's just letting you know.

B: Quit taking treats from her please.

J: Don't hold it too far off the table 'cause might try to--

B: Oh, you got it.  You wanna go for it.

H: Leap?

B: Hi baby.  Yeah, that's yours.  That's not mine, that's yours.

J: So they're really fun because these guys are terrestrial, so they hang out on the ground all the time, but they have these cool feet.  They have four toes in the front, five in the back, and then they have a little, a pad on their back feet, but their front feet, they have a--they have no thumb, but they still hold it.

H: Oh my God.

B: Yeah, that's like stupid cute.

H: It's stupid cute.

B: That's stupid cute.

J: It is!

H: And then this, like, with this like pure black adorable eyeball, it's so good.

J: You're doing so good!  

B: I knowwww.

J: So here you can hear her crunching.

H: That's a good crunch.  

B: Little nums.

J: She's, so she's a rodent, and so she has two incisors, ever-growing in the front, and then she has no canines in there, and then she has four molars on either side, so she's got nothing in the middle but these nice big chompers in the front, and they will rub them together to keep them nice and sharp so that she can eat hard foods if she needs to, but they also do this really interesting behavior where they will chew on rocks and bones.  So these, they're bone collectors.  So they'll go out and they'll travel.  They're big wanderers in Africa, and they will just travel and travel and travel and they will come upon dead animals and they will gnaw on the bones and then they'll take their bones, pick them up, and carry them back to their lair, and they build these big dens underneath the dirt and they will collect thousands of bones over their lifetime.

H: Bone lair!

J: Totally, totally, bone collectors.

H: That's--

B: Yeah, that's uh, pretty badass.

H: Yeah, and then you can like, when you find one, you can do a bunch of genetic analysis.

J: There ya go!  There ya go!

B: Um, yeah.

J: They could be your collectors.

H: Yeah.  Citizen scientist right here.

B: So we could, uh, yeah, I like it, I'll send you a video.  

J: Yeah, good job, Kimmy.  

B: So yeah, so she's gettin', so we've got some of these coming up more than they were.

J: Some of them are coming up there, yeah, and she has some that have been damaged on the sides there, so um, so she's still really awkward and getting used to things and figuring out life.

B: Teenagers, am I right?

H: This little rattle is the--yes!

B: Isn't it so cute?

J: Way too cute.  Okay, it's super cute when she's just like, mildly annoyed 'cause of that, but like, when she's mad, it's--

H: Does it really go?

J: Brrr, it's like going, and then she will take her back feet and she'll stomp her back feet.  We're gonna give her a big treat right here.  What do you think?  Big one?  It's a monkey biscuit.

B: Ohh, nummies.

J: I will take that.

H: It's like, I'm gonna turn away from you.

J: Oh, totally, always.  She's like, it's mine.  

B: So are--so the adaptive purpose here is for warning?  

J: Yes.

B: So does this sound like something else in the system that--

J: Yes.  Well, it sounds like a snake.

B: So is it mimicking--right, so I was wondering, in their habitat, in the native zone, is that--

J: Is it mimicking something?  I think it's kind of like a general warning for the animal kingdom, like, I'm making a noise.

H: Yeah, yeah, I think the, yeah, if anybody is gonna--like, somebody else might mimic that, but like, this has a number of protections.

B: I was gonna say.

H: Hey, by the way, I'm a porcupine.  I don't know if you noticed, but I just wanted you to know.

J: So she'll--

B: You maybe didn't see all of this, all this right here.

J: Just, and by the way, by the way, so yeah, she'll rattle, mild annoyance, 'cause I'm like--oh yeah, see, I put my hand near her while she was eating, so all of her quills--

B: She moved it that way.

J: --turned that, toward, yeah, they have very flexible skin.

B: So like, sensory, right?

J: So after they rattle, then they will stomp their back feet and then they'll turn and all their, it's cool, because their skin has all these really cool muscles in it, so they can like, turn their quills sideways and then she'll walk sideways towards a predator.  Say it's like a leopard or a lion or a hyena or a human, she'll encounter all those guys.  Let's say it's a lion and that lion wants to mess with her.  She'll be rattling her tail, stomping her feet, and she'll put those quills towards it and then if it keeps messing with her, she can sprint backwards, and she's not trying to get her big quills, she's trying to get these sharp ones right back here, and she's trying to impale them, so porcupines cannot shoot their quills, and she's considered an old world porcupine, so she does not have any barbs on the tips of her quills, and actually, I have some quills here to show you.

B: So is that a modified, like, (?~21:29) muscle that's doing it? 

J: Yes, yep.  

H: Like our goosebumps?

J: So hair, and then...

B: Right, that's what I'm wondering.

J: A little muscle underneath the skin, there, yeah, so you can pull these out.  So these are--this is like a typical, one of those, those nice medium sized quills and then she's got some really sharp ones right in the middle here.

H: Yeah, it's interesting.  It's more like these big ones are like, warning, like, I have--

J: Show, definitely.

B: Show, yeah.

H: Needles on me, but then like--

J: Did you finish?  

H: The danger ones are down below.

B: Have they noted any rattle-less, if you will.  

So we're seeing a lot of this adaptive down with rattlesnakes here.  I don't have any, baby girl.  I have some now.  Um, you know, where the ones that--so they're losing their rattles, basically, a lot of rattlesnakes.

H: Huh.  Rattlesnakes.

B: Yeah, so, because of the roundups and things.

H: 'Cause, 'cause like--

B: So the ones that happen to have--

H: Yeah, announcing that I'm a rattlesnake is not a good idea anymore.  

B: Right, because we're the worst.

H: It's easier to find them and get rid of them.

J: We're the worst.

B: Right, so yeah, we're finding it, and it's extra, you know, dangerous if you're out.  It's like, yeah, by the way, there are snakes that don't warn you anymore, so I'm curious how, yeah, it'd be interesting to see if they find that--

J: Uh, they are a least concern.  They are a semi-invasive species in themselves.

H: They do well.

J: They do really well, and so they're been studying these guys a lot more and realizing that they have just continued to expand and they're displacing the other native species of porcupines and so these guys are really robust, and they like, so they could eat--they could kill a lion or a human by impaling them with their quills.

H: Whaaat.  Like, just infection over time?

J: So yeah, oooh, well, they would impale them.  Like, completely impale.  So like, they--

B: Like put you on a stick.

H: Like, you get like, organ damage?

J: Like if, like, yeah.  Like, this is a short one.  Like, she's a baby.  

H: Ohh, I'm gonna back up a little.  So I think of porcupines as like, I've been given a warning and I'm not gonna mess with that animal anymore.  But you're saying like, this thing could kill ya?  

J: Yes.

H: Wow.  Are you gonna take this to birthday parties?  This like 300 lb porcupine?

J: Uh, yeaaah, yeah.  Well, you know, I hope to do more school presentations but, yeah, sure, we'll do birthday parties, too.  Yeah.  Not a 300 lb porcupine!  (?~23:44) quills.

H: I'm picturing like a cow, but with quills.  Basically what (?~23:48)

B: Accurate, that's gotta be accurate, yeah.

J: That's terrifying.  I'm wondering if there's like a prehistoric animal that was like that.

H: Oh, there must be, must be.

J: Oh, that'd be cool.  That'd be cool.

B: For sure.  

H: How many?

J: She's gonna get to be about 50.

H: Okay.  That's big.  

J: Yeah, so she's a very big rodent.  

So let's see if we can get her to walk across.  

B: Awww.  She's like this isn't my habitat.  

J: Did you see her back feet?  It's like, this like, pff, floppy back lag.  

B: I'm meant to have terrain.  

H: This is very slippery.  

J: It's so cute.  

H: Well, these are very beefy.  Like, they are not--

J: Aren't they?

H: Like, strong.  

J: Yep.

H: They are, it's much more substantial than I would have expected.  Don't break it!

J: Don't break that.  

H: You got a literal spine factory.

J: Yes, but it's not like, it's not ever--

B: You are user and abuser.  You are more than a factory, you are beautiful.

J: Each one is precious.  

B: Don't you listen to him.

H: Don't break that.  But I guess they can break, 'cause there are a number of broken ones on there.

J: Can I give you a pet?  Can I give you a pet right there?  She's like, no, no, absolutely not.  

B: Side swipe.  

H: No, I don't think so.  

J: We'll work on that.  

H: Alright, well, I would love to see Kizmit come back when, 300 lbs.

B: Growing!  

J: Might be a while.

B: We want six times the max.

J: We should have a reunion.  A reunion video.  

H: Yeah, I definitely wanna see that progress as you become a massive spine factory.  Very, very cute and excellent hair.

J: She's doing so good.  

H: Thanks a lot.

B: Done good, kiddo.  Thanks so much.  

H: It's great.  Jessi is at AnimalWondersMontana on YouTube and also Animal Wonders on Patreon if you wanna help pay for Kizmit's food.  

J: Mhmm, she's a lot.  

B: Snacks.  

H: And Brit, you can see on YouTube.com/SciShowPsych along with me, talking about your brain.

B: Yeah!

H: And all of our brains.  So thank you for watching.  It was so fun.  Bye.  

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