Salamander Snapchats

With the school year starting up again, it means that the undergraduate crew that I work with in the laboratory at Ohio State are back on campus. They are great to work with. Really great. One of my favorite things about them, aside from their work ethic and trustworthiness, is that they have a fantastic collective sense of humor. Because levity is a big part of my own personal work environment, I encourage joking around extensively while doing scientific work. 

One of our salamander caretakers, Paul, is particularly fond of updating me regularly about how the captive salamanders are doing. However, instead of coming to my office or sending me an email, Paul chooses to accomplish this through funny snapchats. If you don't know what Snapchat is, it is a messaging app for phones that allows the sender to create picture messages that are only viewable for a few seconds.

I thought I'd share some of Paul's work (with his permission). These messages are irreverent and silly and very funny to me. I hope you think so too.

Small rattles, big personalities

In the dark recesses of Aronoff laboratory, many are surprised to know that our lab has an entire room filled with rattlesnakes. In fact, most visitors don't believe us until we show them. Behind a plain, gray door lives a group of dusky pigmy rattlesnakes (Sistrurus miliarius barbouri). This group of animals has been one of the main sources of data for our lab's efforts in studying pit viper venom and how it relates to these animals diets and behavior. This work is currently being done by our principal investigator, Dr. Lisle Gibbs, and current PhD student Sarah Smiley. 

Right now, one of our undergraduate students (Hardy Kern) is finishing a project examining how these snakes, which have been eating the same type of food for months (either mice or frogs), differ in their interest in other food items. Since some of the snakes were born in the lab, the question is pretty simple: do these animals prefer the only food they've ever known or do they have a preference? I'm sure Hardy will come by at some point to write about his project here, but until then I thought I'd share some photos of the pigmy rattlesnakes that we took as part of Hardy's graduation gift from the grad students. 

The photos show these venomous snakes as we see them: beautiful, gentle, and curious animals.

If seeing snakes in their natural habitat is more your thing, here are some photos of pigmy rattlesnakes we found last summer during a lab trip to Florida:

Wherever you see one, these reclusive snakes are always a treat.

Scenes from the OSU Museum of Biological Diversity Open House

Earlier this month, I was happy to again participate in the Ohio State Museum of Biological Diversity Open House, our department's biggest outreach event. We had more than 2,200 visitors from all parts of Ohio and elsewhere. This year, Matt Holding and I teamed with two fantastic undergraduates who work in our lab (Meghan Parsley and Paul Hudson) to go even bigger than we did last year. Since this year's theme was all about how scientists use technology to discover and classify biodiversity, we put together a booth that showed visitors how our lab uses technology across all aspects of our science, from catching animals to analyzing their DNA.

We had an absolute blast at this event. Apparently, so did a whole bunch of other people!

Here are some photos I took frantically between showing salamanders to (big and little) kids:

And here are some photos of our booth, some of our materials, and some of the great visitors we met!

 

At the end of the tables, we had a few animals on display that showcased some ways that DNA can reveal biological differences between organisms. Included among these animals was the eastern glass lizard that we brought back from Florida last year, and I was astounded at the number of kids that could immediately identify it! The little "flip quizzes" at the end of the booth sparked a lot of discussions with both adults and children.

 

This is a great event and I highly recommend it if you are a local. All the faculty, staff, and students are so excited to meet the citizens of Ohio and share their passion. For more pictures and information, I'd recommend the Museum of Biological Diversity Facebook page here.