Hey everybody! Welcome to The Brain Scoop.
Today I'm gonna answer some questions about what my favorite things are,
because in Ask Emily episodes you ask me a lot of what my favorites are and I didn't know.
But now I do.
When I visited the paleobotanical collection, the collection's manager, Ian Glasspool, showed me a vial of ash,
which happened to be the first known evidence of a fire ever burning on the planet—
meaning that some 419 million years ago, when photosynthetic bacteria was forming into a kind of fungus,
it caught on fire and we have the physical evidence of that event happening.
The idea that we can trace such a significant event back to the physical evidence of its happening
opened up my mind to the possibility that we can potentially answer any question conceivable of mankind.
Sauropods! Especially Amphicoelias, which was an enormous dinosaur
only known from a handful of fossils that were found and described in the 1870s before being accidentally misplaced.
If this animal were to have existed, it could have been up to 60 meters, or 200 feet, long,
which seems a little ridiculous that we wouldn't be able to find more evidence of it
considering it was about the length of five and a half school buses put together end-to-end.
Somebody just turned the lights off.
It's hard to beat insect adaptations—like how the bombardier beetle can fire out a cocktail of catalytic compounds in defense against predators.
This vaporic acid comes spewing out of its rear end at about 100°C, or 212°F.
Take that.
I really enjoyed painting class with Mr. Gulbransen because he let me set up an easel in the back of the classroom
and would tell me stories about how after college he lived in a tipi in Wyoming with his girlfriend.
He also helped me get a bunch of scholarships to go to school and had a huge positive impact on my life.
So thanks, Mr. G.
I really enjoyed visiting the International Museum of Surgical Science here in Chicago. In addition to having a rare working iron lung on display,
they also have 20th century recreation of an apothecary shop, and surgically removed kidney stones the size of your fist.
I could say it's access to amazing cultural and scientific institutions,
but really it's grocery stores and their diverse selection and arcade bars where I can attempt to overcome my insatiable desire for pinball.
That would have to be around 4.4 million years ago when early hominids stood upright and became bipedal.
And whether that was for freeing our arms for food- and baby-carrying purposes, wading through marshy bogs,
or in order to cross large distances more efficiently, perhaps it was for dancing,
or the romantic notion that we wanted to walk hand-in-hand with our brethren.
For whatever reason, it was a good thing we did, because now we can do so much more.
Bacon.
I mean, the uterus as an in-house developmental baby-making factory is pretty remarkable.
Probably the one where I started a Tumblr as a volunteer in a small university zoological collection
and it ended up resulting in a full-time job at a major institution. That was a good one.
Is that it exists at all.
Probably that sloths have unique symbiotic relationships with certain species of algae
that are only found growing in the microcosmic environments of their hosts' fur.
I mean - you guys are asking me to pick between some pretty major collections here at The Field Museum.
We've got 3 million pinned beetles and that doesn't include the other 9 million specimens in the insect division.
We've hardly talked with Janet Voight about her work with deep-sea octopuses and other invertebrates,
and let's not forget the major neglect to discuss molluscs on this show.
Seriously, we need more mollusc love on The Brain Scoop.
Diaphonization! Also known as clearing and staining, is a process in which a specimen is injected with enzymes that render the organs transparent.
Then, it's submerged in a solution of dyes that either adhere to the skeleton or the muscular system,
resulting in a "see-through" animal with a highlighted mobility system.
It is so cool.
We got it? [Tom] We got it!
Bam! [Tom] Great.