Courtship Rituals and Maternal Care

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Available now wherever books are sold, WNYC Studios is supported by Con Edison. New York, if your AC is always turned up, well, your energy bills are likely to go up too Luckily, C Eedisine has ways to help Try their personalized energy saving tips or explore budget billing, which helps to spread out your biggest payments Visit coned. com slash Bill helpp to get started because taking control is New York. Hey, it's Flora, and you're listening to Science Friday. If you have arachnophobia, consider this your opportunity to try exposure therapy because scorpions ahead A new study suggests that four hundred fifteen million years ago in modern day England and Wales, a scorpion, the length of a golden retriever was scurrying around, complete with six inch pincers. Some of these specimens were discovered long ago, and paleontologists had categorized them as sea dwelling crustaceans But a fresh look at these old fossils suggests they're not an ancient lobster at all. Dr. Richie Howard is the curator of fossil arthropods at the Natural History Museum in London, England and the lead author on this gigantoscorpion study. Richie, welcome to Science Friday Great to be here. Thankk you very much I've seen this these specimens described as chonky Does that sound right to you Yeah, I would say so They are pretty big. They are an order of magnitude larger than any other fossil scorpion that we know of. But it's also worth considering that fossils are incomplete. It's sort of a digsaw puzzle of animal. and So we have multiple parts of its body, but not the whole thing in one place. so it's difficult to say exactly how big it was. That's why it's roughly we're saying roughly about a meter, roughly three feet long. Wow. Okaykay. you know from the pieces you have, does it seem like it looked like just an inflated version of a modern scorpion? or is the morphology different Yeah, it did look really different to one sccorpion. So in A arachnid, the posterior part of the body is called the apistosoma And The epistosoma is divided in scorpions specifically into the mesosoma, which is the fat bit I'm the u Metasoma, which is the tail with the sting on the end On the metasoma of the scorpion, we have what called lateral epemera extending out of these segments. So these are sort of like Wing shaped bits, they're very reminiscent, I think of a horseshoe crab or a trilob bitite Should I picture like those lobster bits on the tail Kind of yeah, yeah These are unique among scorpions. So that suggests it was that this was doing something different to other scorpions I think the most likely explanation for that is that it was att least partially aquatic Were these theseese scorpions, I mean, can we extrapolate what they were with their role in the ecosystem? Were they like the grizzly bears of their time Yes, so this is one of the weirdest elements of the whole study really. So the early Dvonian period when Priarchurus lived is a strikingly alien landscape. So I think people are vaguely aware that there were giant arthropods in Earth's Palon's logical past. Like the two foot dragonfly and the eight foot long millipede, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. But they lived in the carbniferous period. This was fifty five million years after U when pre ararch tourists lived. That's a world where there are jungles because trees have evolved. It's a world where there is a much more complicated, complex landscape in terms of ecology, and the early Divon in life has only really just started spreading onto the land. There's just some gigantic Scorpion running aroundound as well it's kind it's kind of crazy.'s what it's walking around in between all these sort primitive moss like plants and these sort of tall weird fungusy things called prrototax its basically look a bit like standing stones, really really really weird landscape that this animal lived in I'm And of course, to answer the question, how on eararth did it sustain itself? Unless there's loads of other large animals on the land at this point that we just don't have the fossils of, which I think is probably unlikely because How we missed we've missed all of them. I think what's more likely is that It was an amphibious animal. There's much larger prey for it in the water, thingsings like armoud fish. They've been found at some of these sites as well So your work revolves around to me I'll just show my cards. This is terrifying ancient. ancient arthropods What are your feelings on modern ones? Well, I never would have got interested in fossil ones if I hadn't been interested in modernes as well because the modern ones are all around us. I love the modern ones, you know I can't go outside without taking photos. I always want to know what offpots are because they're literally like little Pokemon that are everywhere. So I think if you're not interested in arthropods, you're not interested in life Don't sleep on the arthropods is what I'm hearing. Richie, thank you for being here. No worries. Thankk you for having me. Dr. Richie Howard inverbate paleontologist and curator of fossil arthropods at the Natural History Museum in London, England. After the break, Can you learn to love the scorpion 're gonna try. Stay with us WNYC Studios is supported by Mohonk Mountain House. Mohaunk Mountain House has been providing recreation and renewal for families since eighteen sixty nine. 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Just pack your bags and they'll do the rest Mohonk. com WNYC Studios is supported by Columbia University Press, publisher of What Science Says Aout Astrology by Carlos Orsi You may have heard the recent interview on Code Switch with Carlo Sori b why astrology appeals to so many people despite having no backing by scientific evidence What makes astrology so appealing and persuasive Is there any harm to believing in astrology anyway Carlos Orsci explores the importance of astrology to the history of science and the reasons it's been categorized as a pseudoscience both empathy and skepticism OrC illuminates the psychological and emotional mechanisms that cause people to find astrological predictions convincing He also addresses the dangers of irrational beliefs and the risks of applying astrology to serious decisions Wide ranging and entertaining, What Science Says about Astrology is the first book in the new What Science says series. Available now wherever books are sold, WNYC Studios is supported by the New York Hall of Science, a hands on science center and leararning lab in Queens, welcoming families to explore daily demos, interactor science exhibits, a playground, and more Tickets at nyscI dot org WNYC Studios is supported by Poster House, a boutique museum in the heart of Chelsea, now presenting Act Black, posters from Black American Stage and Screen, an exhibition centered on prominent theatrical performances and films from Jim Crow America. These historical advertisements illustrate a hidden era of black cultural development When performers started to reclaim harmful narratives and demands for all black casts signaled a trend toward more diverse mainstream audiences On view until september sixth, learearn more at posterhouse. org slash studios If you are icked out by a scorpion in the length of a Labrador you're likely not alone. A study in the musing section of American entomologists found that people feared scorpions above even spiders And they're like a phobia chart topper in America But my next guest says, we have it all wrong. Here to help us stop worrying and to help learn to love the scorpion is our archnologist, dor. Lauren Esposito, a scorpion researcher and director of the nonprofit Islands and Seas Lauren, welcome back to Science Friday. Happy to be here Okay, give me three words to describe your feelings on scorpions All right, my three words are Caring ancient And I would say like intriguing is the biggest thing that has kept me interested in scorpions for the last. twenty years of my life. intntriguing. Oh my gosh. I'm not hearing repulsion absolutely. Absolute. Okay. well, I'm going to stand in for the vast majority of people who feel the opposite, who would rather never encounter a scorpion And your mission today, if you choose to accept it is to Change our minds with facts. And I'm also gonna to give you categories, kind of like Jeopardy. and I want you to hit me with a story or some facts from the category that you think will make M and mostly our listeners S scorpions the way you do Do you accept? I accept the mission Okay. All right, first category is food and drinks Food and drink? Well, food and drink is a big one because scorpions have the lowest metabolic rate of any recorded land animal which is like move over weight loss drugs because it should be the scorpions that we're studying. Wait, Hilo monsters, I feel like are the poster child for low metabolism I would say that that's true when we think about things that have a backbone like vertebrates. Eelil monsters are great for low metabolism, but scorpions They only need to eat really like once a year or maybe even less frequently than that. They don't typically need to drink water. They get all the water that they need from that their prey items. and they have these like really cool adaptations to be able to restrict the amount of water that they lose. So they have book lungs, the way that they breathe is through these like internalized gill structures. So they don't like actively respire like breathing in and out, which definitely like helps reduce their metabolism Oh my gosh, so book lungs like the pages of a book. like I should be imagining the leaves of a book You should. Like if you think about like a fish skill, like if you've ever seen a fish like, opening their gill slts in and out and there's all these kind of like pages inside there of gills. Imagine if they just took all those gills and they squished them down and they stuck them inside a pocket in their body. So a lot of arachnids have booklgs and it's really a leftover from their ancestors that lived in the ocean. So before they moved on land, these were gills that were functioning in the ocean just like fish gills which we talked about in this last segment with this giant scorpion Okay, I'm I feel like of my wonder meters going But I'm still not, I'm not getting Caring U really? We'll get there. We'll. Okay. Our next category is anatomy Anatomy. Anatomy is a good one One of my favorite things about scorpions and I like to say that we're in the midst of a scorpion Rnaaissance period where we are discovering more information about scorpions than we haveve known cumulatively across all of history like every single year Re H A? Yeah, really Is it because people are just like jumping on the scorpion bandwagon I mean I think that you'll be jumping on the scorpion bandmagon at the end of this conversation. But yes, that's part of it, partart of it is that there are simply more researchers studying sccorpions than there's ever been But I think the other part of it really has to do with a recent revelation that does have to do with anatomy Scorpions have an exoskeleton, so their skeleton is on the outside of their body But what's really cool about scorpions is that they have this pigment embedded in their exoskeleton that fluoresces under ultraviolet light And so if you take like a black light, like a party light, normally you'd shine it on your shoelaces and you'd see they're like really bright and purple. But if you shine them on a scorpion, They glow this bright green color And what that's allowed us to do is to go out at night when they're active and look for them with UV light. It's like a secret weapon for detecting scorpions. And it's allowed us to discover way more species than we ever knew about. So like a hundred years ago we knew about somethingomething like two hundred scorpions on Earth. And now you know about over twenty five hundred What about their venom Okay, I mean, let's get to the brastax, which is a sccorpion venom, right That's the thing that we're scared of. We're scared of scorpions stinging us because that's like the legends that we hear like you're going die instantly if a scorpion stings you And I'm not gonna to say that that's not true entirely, like universally, right? That that's untrue Because there are places in the world where there are genuinely dangerous scorpions, but often the thing that makes them more dangerous is people's access to medical care. So nowadays we have really effective antibvenins that can counteract the effects of scorpion venom very well. And so if you can reach a hospital and get antivenom you'll be able to survive a scorpion sting. So the vast majority of scorpions pose no danger whatsoever to humans. Of the twenty thousand five hundred scorpions on Eth, there's only about fifty or less that are dangerous to humans. Like ninety nine percent of scorpions Don't pause any harm to humans. But that is that's helpful. Go ahead, go on. The one percent are really interesting, not because they could kill you, which It's not actually the scorpiion venom itself that can kill you. It's the effects of your body responding to this like trick that the venom plays on your brain. And so venom is a cocktail. and one of the things in this cocktail is a neuro transmitter inhibitor And so what it does is it goes in and it interferes with the way that your cells signal each other, your nerve cells And so it tells your brain that your hand is like experiencing some severe trauma When all that's actually happened is you got a prick in your finger. like nothing else is going on other than the scorpion venom tricking your brain to think that you're like being smashed with a sledgehammer What happens is that your brain turns on this immune response that raises your blood pressure and that really rapid increase in blood pressure can have downstream consequences like a heart attack And the heart attack is ultimately what kills you. So it's not technically the scorpion, it's you It's me killing me As always. Okay, let's get to my favorite category mating and dating Scorpion dating is like pretty serious business. So here's how it works Scorpions are out at night Checking surying the scenes, seeing who's around A male finds a female approaches her and as he approaches her, he starts kind of doing this like shutdering movement. That's like, Almost like, hey, check me out, look at me Like flashing his his little His pincers or his tail? What like going on. shaking his entire body. L his whole body's shaking. Yeah, cool as if she doesn't react aggressively or run away. He keeps making slow movements towards her And eventually he reaches out and grabs her hands with his hands and bes hands like their claws are grabbing each other. So they're facing each other, they're holding hands and they start to dance And we call this like in a scientific term, we call it a pas d du, like a couple's dance, a ballroom dance All Aachnids do some kind of mating ritual, like all of them kind of dance for each other or do some kind of thing that's interactive Scorpions are like the ballroom dancers of arachnids. So when I say it's like dating, it's really like kind of a courtship is Picky. They continue this dance for a while and eventually if the male does like a good enough dance, thenen he'll finally deposit sperm onto the ground that you deposited on this kind of jelly stock that they comes out of their body. And at the top of the stock they put a little package of sperm And he'll guide the female towards it because they're still holding hands. Oh, I forgot to say that they sometimes they kiss each other And they do occasionally sting each other in what we call sexual sting. On the mouth? Yeah? Like they're facing each other and they'll put their squish their little scorpion mouths together and they'll like kiss each other with their mouthress I feel like you're making this up, Lauren. And we'd never know because no one studies scorpions but There's like twenty five of us. come on.