The Science Pawdcast

Episode 16 Season 7: Giant Sloths, Swimming Robots, and Science Whiz Liz on Measles!

• Jason and Kris Zackowski • Season 7 • Episode 16

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We dive into the fascinating world of extinct giant sloths, explore how dogs are inspiring better swimming robots, and discuss the alarming resurgence of measles with immunologist Dr. Elisabeth Marnick.

• Ancient sloths evolved wide body size diversity based primarily on their habitat preference
• Tree-dwelling sloths evolved to be smaller while ground-dwelling species became massive
• The largest ground sloths were predated by enormous short-faced bears and likely hunted by humans
• Engineers created an amphibious robot that mimics dogs' swimming motion rather than reptiles or insects
• The dog-inspired robot achieves better transition between land and water with superior stability

And our guest: 


• Dr. Elizabeth Marnick explains that measles causes "immune amnesia," erasing the body's memory of other infections
• The MMR vaccine is 97% effective at preventing measles infection with two doses
• One in four measles cases requires hospitalization, with potentially severe complications
• Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis can appear 7-10 years after measles infection and is 100% fatal
• Science communicators face significant challenges combating misinformation on social media

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Speaker 1:

Hello science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zukoski.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Chris Zukoski.

Speaker 1:

We're the pet parents of Bunsen, beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.

Speaker 2:

The science animals on social media.

Speaker 1:

If you love science.

Speaker 2:

And you love pets.

Speaker 1:

You've come to the right spot, so put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail.

Speaker 1:

This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 16 of season 7. As we march on to June, the summer looms. For Chris and I I think I've mentioned this we're in the busy part of our time as teachers, pushing kids towards curriculum as it warms in Alberta, canada, and kids long for a hot summer and being outside with their friends. Really, the last thing they wanna do is my chemistry or Chris's math. To be fair, they're sucking it up pretty good. The dogs are all doing great, ginger's doing awesome. So, aside from being really busy, everything is perfect with our family and we ourselves are happy and healthy.

Speaker 1:

All right, what's on the science podcast? This week? In science news, I get to talk about my favoritest extinct animal, my most favorite extinct animal, the giant sloth, or sloth or a slow sloth. And in pet science, we are mixing robotics and dogs, with an amphibious robot that learned a thing or two from watching dogs swim. And our amazing guest this week is Dr Elizabeth Marnick, who's a science communicator, and she's going to tell us a little bit about measles, which is timely considering, especially in the province where I live and most people in North America there are measles outbreaks. All right, let's get on with the show. There's no time like science time. This week in science news I'm excited we get to talk about my favoritest extinct animals ever.

Speaker 2:

Not all of them are extinct that we're going to talk about today, Jason, but there is the one I actually thought you would open up with going to Costa Rica and talk about the parking lot incident where you had all the high school students standing around and and yeah, a sloth fell out of the tree Super high up and plopped right in front of everybody on the ground and everybody thought he was dead.

Speaker 1:

But it shook its head, got up and continued on its way like it was nothing, but it shook its head got up and continued on its way like it was nothing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but even your tour guide thought that was very exciting development.

Speaker 1:

He thought the sloth kept crawling out on this limb and he's oh, we need to go. I can't do a Costa Rican accent and I'm like why? He's like the sloth, it will fall. I've seen this before and I'm like, oh God, because the sloth was going fall. I've seen this before and I'm like oh god, because the sloth was going to fall and die, probably. So we're trying to shove all the kids on the bus but they're looking at the sloth then. Then the branch bends more and the kids stop moving and they're like no sloth, no, don't sloth. And then it just fell. But it was totally unhurt. It got up like the Undertaker from wrestling and started crawling back to a tree. It's crazy. That's the sloth story.

Speaker 2:

That is a crazy sloth story. Now, when you were in Costa Rica, you learned how to say it sloth.

Speaker 1:

No, they say sloth. It's the Brits that say sloth.

Speaker 2:

Oh.

Speaker 1:

And I just love how the Brits say sloth, so I say sloth sometimes.

Speaker 3:

I know you do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and sometimes on Fun Facts with Bernoulli, it actually says sloth.

Speaker 2:

That's so funny, because I thought you had programmed the voice to say sloth and I was like, how did you do that? And then, as it went on, it changed to sloth and it went sloth, sloth, sloth, sloth and I thought, wow, that is incredible.

Speaker 1:

Our science story, of course, is about the sloths, but the ancient sloths and how and why they had such a wide variety of body sizes little small things that could climb trees nimbly, to enormous like hard to believe polar bear, or bigger sized ground sloths. And those are my favorite sloths the giant ground sloth.

Speaker 2:

That contrast in diversity has puzzled scientists for decades, because there was a wide range of body size, but then also their ecological niches. Now you could say niche like niche, or niche, depending on what you say. Sloth, sloth, niche, jason, what does determine, or what did determine sloth body size did determine?

Speaker 1:

sloth body size. There were previous ideas about what maybe influenced the sloth size, or sloth size, like you mentioned, their habitat type. Sorry, those great big sloths. They lived in the plains and the smaller sloths lived in probably what would be similar to Costa Rica today, more ferny jungle areas. It could be what they ate. Also, the climate had a huge impact, as well as what they were predated on. The biggest of the ground sloths I think they're called the megatheriums. They were huge. They were predated by the short-faced bear in what is now the northwestern United States or southern Canada, and the short-faced bear is no joke. If you think about the biggest polar bear, it was like another one and a half times bigger than that. So these short-faced bears ate or predated these enormous, like car-sized creatures.

Speaker 2:

Wow, but also humans had an impact, like humans had a more definite impact on the woolly mammoth, but some scientists do agree, even though that not all the evidence is there, that humans did have an impact as well. The study comes from Buenos Aires and the strongest predictor of sloth body size actually was habitat preference, and the tree dwellers, or the climbers, evolved to be smaller, and then those ground dwellers that you were talking about evolved to be larger.

Speaker 1:

There you go. That kind of goes in line with previous ideas. This study, of course, has some good data. The examined 49 different sloth lineages, both living and extinct. They looked at the fossil morphology, the protein and DNA evidence in their bones, the evolutionary relationships through time and then any correlation with climate change over the years. They looked at the tiny brown-throated sloth to the mega-therium my favorite, the giant ground sloth and of course some of them were extinct. And of course some of them were not like the sloths the three-toed sloth that exists today in Costa Rica or Central America.

Speaker 2:

So the sloths actually have a really cool origin story. They emerged 35 million years ago, in the late Eocene epoch, and they evolved in isolation, actually in South America, which was then an island continent, and, as we know, when you are in an area that allows for like high diversification, there were over a hundred genera evolved and they were adapted to different environments. I'm just thinking of darwin and the finches when I'm speaking of this. So they the adaptations to the different environments included the smaller tree sloths living in the tropical forests and those larger ground sloths living in the open grasslands. And as the climate fluctuated, the sloths repeatedly switched between tree and ground habitats. So maybe they were a slow sloth, as they were switching between their habitats and you know what the size changes followed those switches consistently over time. So that's what scientists found.

Speaker 1:

I teach this, chris. This is exciting that this is accurate to what I've been teaching in my science class, because we look at extinct mammals and, of course, the sloth is one of the ones that I teach because I know a lot about it. In the movie Ice Age there's Manny the woolly mammoth and then Sid the sloth right so, sid the sloth and he is not a megatherium, he's one of the mid-sized giant sloths. So he looks tiny compared to a woolly mammoth, but if you look at him he's about I don't know half the size of a saber-toothed tiger. So he's big. Right, sid is enormous compared to the sloths of today, but he just looks little. And Sid is patterned after one of the smaller ground sloths that would have been around the time that the mammoths were a thing. That's super cool.

Speaker 1:

Back to why this new science news item is so cool is that it does paint a good picture of a reoccurring evolutionary pattern tied to habitat, and it directly ties the environment to how there was extreme body size differences, the last common ancestor of all sloths today.

Speaker 1:

So think of all the sloths that you know that are in the trees and the ones that fall out of trees in front of shocked sleepy high school kids in Costa Rica was likely very large and terrestrial. So not a jungle sloth, not a tree sloth, but a sloth that lived on the ground. Now there's not a lot of direct fossil evidence for between that big sloth and the sloths of today, so the sloth evolution continues to be incomplete. And just one more thing that is quite common to have very little fossil evidence of the creatures that lived in jungles because they decayed so quickly and the bones were not preserved. The same way there's a lot of evidence of those big terrestrial sloths because when they died out in the open it was easier for them to be fossilized or easier for their bones to not decay away.

Speaker 2:

So the study did follow long-term trends and that means a lot of things. It really does show or emphasize how sloths uniquely demonstrate the size environment correlation.

Speaker 1:

Now we come to the sad part of the study how all those giant sloths went extinct. Because they're not around today, right, we just got the slow guys hanging upside down in the jungles they're so slow that moss grows on them it's camouflaged. That would be my excuse if I move so slow.

Speaker 2:

Moss grew on me yeah, is it moss or is it more of a fungus?

Speaker 1:

it's mossy algae stuff, and they're covered with bugs too. Like bugs live in them.

Speaker 2:

Oh, lovely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, they look cute, but if you get up close they're super nasty. I had the Brazilian exchange students that I have every year. Our school has a good, we have a good relationship with Brazil, so we have a bunch of Brazilian kids that come up every year in the first semester and they're wonderful kids and they're always in my science class semester and they're wonderful kids and they're always in my science class and the group.

Speaker 1:

This year we're talking about sloths because one of the girls lived deep in brazil, like she wasn't from those big coastal cities they have, um, and she could actually speak like I forget what language it is, but it's like native brazilian, like what the natives of brazil would speak, not necessarily portuguese or spanish, it's native speak of early Brazilians. And she knew so much about sloths because they're all over the place where her house is and she's like yeah, they're gross, don't touch them. Oh, wow, okay, yeah, the main suspect for why sloths went extinct is human activity, not necessarily the change in climate. As humans moved around and took up more space, they lost their habitat and there was a lot of meat in a big sloth if you killed it for your family and the ground sloths vanished about 15 000 years ago and that coincides with the human migration across the Americas during the late Pleistocene period.

Speaker 2:

And some sloth bones from Argentina show cut marks from stone tools and that supports human hunting. But evidence is sparse compared to other megafauna, like the mammoths, like the mammothsoths.

Speaker 1:

it was very obvious, but so there's less evidence about the hunting of the ground sloth yeah, what I've read and it's not in this study is that the ground sloths were not prepared to defend themselves against like human hunting, like hunting in packs and the intelligence that the you know, not necessarily our ancestors, but the early humans of the Americas had. All of those humans came across the land bridge during the ice age and brought with them, like crazy, good hunting techniques that they learned in their treks. And all of the animals, especially the mammals, were just like totally unaware and could not adapt fast enough. A giant sloth could defend itself maybe against a short-faced bear, but not against a tribe of 20 people. Right, it's vastly very different. And then on the mammoth thing cool story, chris, is that mammoths were really hard to kill. So when early people did defeat one, it was a big deal, and maybe that's why there's more pictorial references of early artwork of those hunters taking down a mammoth. Maybe the big sloths were just not that hard to kill, so it wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 2:

It is a big deal if you're able to provide for your family. And putting down that information in pictures be like Fred killed the big mammoth. Look at all the glory that he brought home to the clan.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, that kind of rounds out our news item about sloths. That's science news for this week. This week in pet science, we have a mashup of science, robotics and dogs.

Speaker 1:

Now I picked this one, chris, for two reasons Spark which is the TELUS Science Center in in calgary they have a robotic dog named flint, so we've met flint. Um, in fact, when they first got flint, they wanted some publicity about it and they had us bring bunsen and beaker to meet flint, and that was super cute gosh. That was like three or four years ago, hey we've been twice.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we've been twice once, when it was summer camp and there were about a million children in summer camp and they got to experience beaker and bernoulli, and we have video of that, and the dogs were just so good. So that was the second visit, but the first visit was more of hey, let's see your dog, your dogs, interact with flint with the robot and bunsen was yeah, bunsen could care less, he's whatever.

Speaker 1:

But beaker was concerned. She tried to sniff flint's butt, but the butt looks like its head and she was a little perplexed by him.

Speaker 2:

It is perplexing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, anyways, the other reason is this robotic dog that we're going to be talking about. It's not Flint, so it's not one of those Boston dynamics things. It swims and it learned how to swim better by programming it like a dog and bully all of a sudden has figured out how to swim and it is his favorite thing in the world to swim is. He just loves it.

Speaker 2:

I know it's incredible, it's incredible. And when I was at Waggles on Saturday, the owner, char, she's so amazing. And I and she said, hey, are you? We're going to be going at about 1230 over to put the to the pond side and you can put Bernoulli's life jacket on him. So he's prepared and ready to go. And I cause of course I bring it, cause I'm always panicked that he's going to drown. But I've said he's been swimming at home and I said he's been here at Waggles for doggy daycare. Has he been swimming in the water in the pond side? And she's oh no, he is a shore bird.

Speaker 1:

That's so confusing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah he's, he just likes to go on the shore. But I'm like, okay, maybe then maybe he won't go in, because at home he does in our little beaver created pool. But sure enough, he was so excited to go over to pondside. He zooms down towards the water and in he goes and I said, look, Char, and she's whoa. That is incredible. And she also said that he has excellent swimming ability. Like his body is up and he's doing really well. She said he is a well-developed dog, which makes us proud, of course, because he's such a good boy. But yeah, we watched him like from non-swimmer to practicing, like he'll go in when we go on our creek walks and you can see him just doing circles and laps, and so I'm so proud of him.

Speaker 1:

He goes in and he swims for enjoyment, like he practices. This is the greatest. He just swims little circles. I wish there was more water for him to swim in now, but it was a great place to learn how to swim because when he was a non to learn how to swim because he was, he could. When he was a non-swimmer and you thrash about, he could thrash his way to the shore without us having to jump in to get him it's very deep in places, jay but, let's let's talk about the study yeah, all right.

Speaker 1:

This was published in iop publishing's bio inspiration and biomimetrics journal, and the inspiration for this came from dogs. The amphibious robots that they had before were mostly inspired by reptiles and insects. Those reptile and inspired robots struggle with like agility and dynamic movement and they can't carry things. So they think of a scuttling robot, right, think of a slithering robot, and it just had problems going from, for example, like one type of ground to the other Between land and water. They were being tripped up. Also, they didn't move fast in the water, so the programmers were like reptiles should be able to swim in the ocean. If you've seen those ocean iguanas, they move very quickly and as well insects swim very well too, like they scuttle about.

Speaker 2:

So they got their inspiration from dogs like you were saying, dogs have a smooth transition between the land and the water and we've thrown sticks to Bernoulli and Beaker, of course, and they just go right in. And when we took Beaker to dock diving, which she just loves, and it gives her an outlet to swim in a safe place the, the owner there, the trainer, she said, wow, she has good dynamics and speed in her movement, like she has good form, so she has four-paw drive. Some dogs will swim with two-paw drive and they're not as efficient in the water, but Beaker has all four paws going and so this dog, this robot, has been based on that movement and so that overcomes many challenges that have been seen in the insect-based amphibious robots. The engineering features specific to the amphibious robot that's based on dogs is their unique paddling mechanism efficient swimming stroke. She does the four, the four paw paddle, and the robot was specifically designed to mimic that and that allows for both the efficient propulsion and having stability in the water, as well as having structure and balance, so there's precise weight distribution and buoyancy control.

Speaker 2:

So when we're talking about Bernoulli, like he gets his butt up there and his butt is full of hair and it's wow, how is that not weighing you down. But the robot maintains a stable aquatic movement and performance in the water, and what they've done is they've made a double joint leg design which will improve the range of motion and it enables that flexible switching between different paddling gates. So I just think of how well Beaker turns and how they go from swimming quickly to slowly or retrieving something in the water. We watch Bernoulli and he does do this splash and then he tries to bite the splash water. But then we also think he's trying to look ahead to see oh, is there a stick that I can capture?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I think he's trying to get himself up high out of the water so he can see. I don't know, maybe because his big nose is in the way, not sure?

Speaker 1:

not sure yeah, and Beaker. My favorite thing about Beaker watching her swim, because when she does dock diving you can actually see her swim right. When she goes to get the thing, she glides. She gets up so much speed and she just glides. If you push off the wall and you glide like a pencil float, that's how Beaker goes towards the item because she's going so quickly and she's so streamlined. And then she goes and she bites it and just with a little kick of her foot she turns. It's phenomenal, it's really cool. But back to the robot.

Speaker 1:

They tested its gait and performance in three distinct paddling ways. There was doggy paddle one, which was optimized for speed. Doggy paddle two, which was optimized for propulsion. I'm not sure what the difference between speed and propulsion is. Maybe it could carry more stuff if it was having more propulsion. And then there was a trot light gate which prioritized stability in the water, and they found that in the water it had a max speed of 0.57 kilometers an hour with the doggy paddle style, and the trot light gate was the most stable when it was in the water as well. On land, that trot light gate translated to a 1.26 kilometer an hour speed and that showed that it was quite a bit faster on land, but not that much slower in the water.

Speaker 2:

So this has lots of potential applications to things that are in our real world, and I think of our students saying what am I learning? Why is this important? How does this apply to the real world? This robotic swimming dog could help with environmental research, so monitoring wetlands and swamps or aquatic ecosystems, not by remote sensing but by being there actually and experiencing it, so being able to perform search and rescue in flood prone or coastal areas where it is dangerous for live dogs to go, and humans as well.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes nature has the best solutions for us and you need to look. But definitely if you've seen the Flint robot or the spot robot, those Boston Dynamics robots, they are very dog-like in how they move and dogs are incredibly versatile animals that can move quickly, rarely fall over right. That's a huge benefit to a robot not being tipsy. The bipedal robots are much more difficult to get around because on two legs you have only two points of stability versus four and it's not necessarily making it look like a dog, it's making it move like a dog. That was the big breakthrough and it overcame some limitations of the past.

Speaker 2:

So moving forward, we might see more examples of crossover between biology and robotics.

Speaker 1:

If you want a fast robot, we probably shouldn't use the animals of the first study, the sloth. No, maybe if you want a robot that just hangs around all day upside down. That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free.

Speaker 1:

Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger the science cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen too. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast, and I have Dr Elizabeth Marnick, science communicator with us today. Doc, how are you doing?

Speaker 3:

I am doing good. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm excited we found your Instagram. As we moved from the site formerly known as Twitter more and more, it was cool finding your posts and it's a thrill to have you. We love your SciComm.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Where are you in the world? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 3:

I am in Maine, right outside of Acadia National Park.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow, okay, so on the East Coast.

Speaker 3:

Yes, east Coast.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha. Okay, gotcha Gotcha. Have you lived there a lot or have you ping ponged around? Are you from that area?

Speaker 3:

I was born and raised in Connecticut, so I'm a New England born in the US. But I moved to Maine for graduate school to get my PhD, fell in love with the area and my husband and have stayed since then.

Speaker 1:

Two for one, hey.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And yeah, so, speaking of your education, like I introduced you as a doctor, what's your training in science?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I have a PhD and my work was focused on understanding the role of the immune system. So I was interested in understanding a very specific type of immune system cell and how it functions, and that cell is called a T cell.

Speaker 1:

T cell.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and then I wanted to know how does this get altered in the context of autoimmune disease? So I used mice and studied things like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis to try to understand what might be going wrong in individuals who have those autoimmune diseases.

Speaker 1:

Lupus is no fun.

Speaker 3:

It is not.

Speaker 1:

That's an awful thing, yeah, and did you answer any of your questions? Is there more to answer? And did you answer any of your?

Speaker 3:

questions. Is there more to answer? There is always more to answer in science. I did get some nice data that really showed us that there's different kinds of T-cells and there's this one kind of T-cell that kind of goes a little crazy in certain autoimmune diseases. So I got to find out some interesting things about how that T-cell works. But there's always a lot of questions that come up from any experiment that you do, so there's a lot more things that need to be answered, unfortunately but also fortunately, depending on how you look at it.

Speaker 1:

Science has never done, asking why, just like a small child.

Speaker 3:

My two year old is in that stage right now, and that is correct.

Speaker 1:

Why, why, how come? Why? It never ends. Were you a science kid? Were you drawn to science or did you have a flashpoint at some point as a teen, or something like that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I was raised in a family that was actually very much anti-science. I was not vaccinated until I was in my 20s, about to go to graduate school. So, I found science really through some really great teachers in 11th grade. I was homeschooled for a really long time and it wasn't until I didn't go back to public school until 11th grade. So 11th grade was my first time ever being in a real science class doing real science experiments.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 3:

And that's when I fell in love with it what an interesting origin.

Speaker 1:

Similar to another scientist I had on my show, debunk the funk, he's got a great youtube channel. Yes, he was a conspiracy theorist and who believed all of these weird anti-science conspiracies, and now he's got a phd and much similar to you like understanding the immune system it happens is I'm really grateful for those teachers I wanted to chat to you with you about measles that some of your latest posts on, uh, your instagram science whiz liz great username, by the way.

Speaker 1:

I love that thank you so measles is in the news. In can and the United States there are outbreaks of measles which are spooky, for me at least. And if we could just chat a little bit about measles, because it is a disease that most people have forgotten about. So I guess my first question is like what is measles?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so measles is a virus, and the thing with viruses is that they can't replicate. They can't copy themselves by themselves. They have to have help, and the way that they get that help is by infecting other organisms and using their own cells to reproduce. So measles does that and unfortunately, along the way, it can cause a lot of problems. So sometimes people will be fine after having a measles infection and have a relatively mild case, but that's not always true. The data really shows that one out of four cases of measles will end up hospitalized and one to two people per every 1000 case will end up dying from measles. So this is a very serious infection that we had eliminated in the United States until vaccination rates have started to decline and now we're starting to see outbreaks like what's happening in Texas and the United States and what's happening in Canada, I think Ontario is currently where the biggest outbreak is there right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And there's been two deaths, two child deaths, or maybe it's more by now.

Speaker 3:

So we had one child in the US die who was unvaccinated, and then we had one adult, who was unvaccinated, die so far, which is very unfortunate because it could have been prevented with vaccination.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I can ask a couple of follow-up questions here. Yes please do so. The COVID vaccine limited. The severest severeness of the disease is the. You could still get COVID even though you've been. You've got the COVID vaccine Like I got COVID. After I got all the shots I bounced back from it. Is the measles vaccine similar to that, Like you limit the severeness of it, or is it more like some of the other vaccines where it's just so mild you don't even know you have it, kind of thing?

Speaker 3:

So the measles vaccine, which is part of the, it's called the MMR vaccination. So it's a vaccine that protects against measles, mumps and rubella.

Speaker 3:

But, for the measles aspect of it. One dose is about 93% effective at preventing infection and two doses which is what everyone should be getting is 97% effective at preventing infection. So it's very different from the COVID vaccine in the sense that it's way more effective at preventing infection in the first place. Now, the more measles that's circulating in the community, the more people are exposed. So it's still not 100% effective. So you can still potentially get measles after being vaccinated. It's just less common. And if you do get measles after being vaccinated then, yes, the severity of the measles would be reduced compared to somebody who was unvaccinated.

Speaker 1:

So correct me if I'm wrong please, because, way more than me, this is the difference between rate of infection and rate of disease, because that's something the COVID vaccine was really good at was lessening disease, If you got it. Is that correct?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a way that you could think about it.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

But this, but measles vaccination is very good at preventing even the infection in the first place.

Speaker 1:

Okay, nice Okay.

Speaker 3:

Now, the other thing about measles that I don't know if your audience is aware of is that it can cause something called immune amnesia. Have you heard of this?

Speaker 1:

Okay, yes, but I would be BSing to try to explain it to you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So it's crazy. And as an immunologist, when I heard about this I was like oh my God, this is fascinating. And then at the other hand I was like oh my God, this is terrifying. So one of the things that measles does is, as it's replicating I mentioned before viruses have to copy themselves in your cells it damages your memory immune cells. So normally after you have an infection, your B cells and your T cells some of them are what we call memory cells, so they stick around and then if you're exposed to that pathogen again, they help prevent you from either getting infected or they prevent you from getting as sick as you did that first time you were infected, which is good. That's why things like vaccination works and that's why oftentimes the second time you have an infection it's not as bad as that first case. But measles erases a percentage of those memory cells for prior infections. So this is why, before we had the measles vaccine, people were noticing that a child could survive measles and then within another year or two could die from another infectious disease.

Speaker 1:

They didn't understand why. Sorry, could they die from measles again? I apologize if I missed that part.

Speaker 3:

No, they were dying from other infectious diseases that were not measles, because measles had erased that memory that they had.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'm sorry, doc. Thanks, that's okay. Yeah, oh man.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, oh man, yeah. So that's. The crazy thing about measles is that we don't know of another virus that can do this type of thing.

Speaker 1:

So if you think about covid, let's say you're unvaccinated against covid, you've survived covid measles and you get measles. You could. That could eliminate some of the memory for covid, which is an infectious disease. Is that correct okay? And of the memory for COVID, which is an infectious disease. Is that correct Okay?

Speaker 3:

And then the next. So then if you get COVID again, it's your immune system won't remember it. Potentially so it would be like you were having it for the first time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's fascinating but also terrifying. I can see what you're thinking there.

Speaker 3:

Exactly. And then this is why, after the measles vaccine came out, scientists started noticing that children were surviving, and that they were surviving measles. But their survival rate was increasing even more than that, and that was because, by preventing a measles infection, you were also helping save lives from other infections they could die from after getting measles.

Speaker 1:

So these reports of parents I don't know how true they are right Because this is like I'm hearing from social media the reports of in, I believe, Texas of parents having a measles party where you're getting all the kids together to get measles, kind of like the old school chicken pox party idea.

Speaker 3:

It's an extremely bad idea for many reasons, but immune amnesia is definitely one of them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I grew up at a time where chicken pox was a thing and I remember my parents but it was like the weird thinking at the time. I think they took one of my sisters to a chicken pox party back in the day.

Speaker 3:

And that was probably yeah, because I remember chickenpox parties from when I was little as well, and that's because the vaccine wasn't out yet. Plus, my mom didn't vaccinate me anyway, so she wouldn't have vaccinated me if there was a vaccine. But I know the chickenpox vaccine didn't come out until sometime, I think in the 90s, but I'd have to look at the exact time that it came out Isn't that wild?

Speaker 1:

Like I was. I'm sorry, let me start that again. My day job I teach high school chemistry. I'm a school teacher and our grade nines. In Canada they get immunized for HPV in grade nine. So we were having a discussion because they're being called down to the office by or to the inoculation room by last name, and then I was telling the kids about chickenpox and I was like how many of you know somebody that had chickenpox? And nobody, none of them knew somebody who had chickenpox. And I had to tell them that every kid got chickenpox when I was young and some kids got it and it wasn't bad and some kids got it so bad A lot of my parents age. And an offshoot of that is they have the like they get flare up, flare ups of shingles. I'm like, have you guys ever heard of shingles? And they're like we don't even know what you're talking about. So I had to tell them about shingles. They're like that's horrible. I'm like, yeah, that's why there's vaccines, guys.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I had chickenpox as a kid. It was not great.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 3:

I remember I think I was eight at the time it was not fun.

Speaker 1:

And measles is magnitudes worse, because I'd imagine some people probably died from chickenpox not like measles, for sure.

Speaker 3:

Measles is definitely significantly worse because besides death and besides immune amnesia, measles can also cause inflammation of the brain during an active infection. So that can obviously lead to death as well, but also other complications rare complication where it causes a neurological damage that doesn't start showing up until seven to 10 years after somebody had measles.

Speaker 1:

Like post-polio syndrome.

Speaker 3:

It's like that. Yeah, it's subacute. Oh, actually, let me pause.

Speaker 1:

It's okay.

Speaker 3:

I always remember the abbreviation and not the full name, so this complication is called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

And it shows up seven to 10 years after somebody has had a measles infection and it's 100% fatal. There's nothing anyone can do once you start developing this condition.

Speaker 1:

God, that's bad, that's not good.

Speaker 3:

It's very bad and it's more likely in children who are infected very young. So again, forgetting that measles vaccination not only is preventing measles but it's also preventing all of those complications that can happen to people who get measles.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my goodness, so can we bust some measles myths before we move on. All vaccines, all treatment comes with risk. So I'd imagine there's a very small chance of some kind of serious reaction to the vaccine, but it's not like a 1% chance like what you just mentioned.

Speaker 3:

Correct. The measles vaccine is considered very safe. We have tons of safety data about MMR, which is the vaccine that contains measles, and we know that the risks from that vaccine are magnitudes lower than the risk from those infections themselves.

Speaker 1:

One more question. Let's say you were like yourself. You didn't get vaccinated until your 20s. Can you get this vaccine whenever? You didn't get vaccinated until your twenties? Can you get the this vaccine whenever you want, is it not? Is it age dependent or yeah?

Speaker 3:

So I got measles for the. I got the MMR vaccine for the first time in my twenties and if you haven't been vaccinated for measles, or you don't know if you've been vaccinated for measles, you can go ahead and get it at any time. If you've been vaccinated for measles.

Speaker 1:

you can go ahead and get it at any time, so an extra one's not going to do you any harm.

Speaker 3:

Correct.

Speaker 1:

When the COVID vaccines were out. You might get a kick out of this, liz. Canada had the. We had, let's see. There was the AstraZeneca, there was the Pfizer, there was Moderna, there was another one, there was a fourth one, the jj one. Remember the jj one? Oh, I do, yep, yeah, okay. So I had three vaccines, but they were different ones. Canada had astrazeneca. I don't know if the states did, um, no, and then there was the pfizer and moderna. So I got the pfizer, moderna and I was like I was really hoping the jj one would be approved, be approved in Alberta, because I was collecting them like the stones on Thanos' gauntlet and I was like if I get all five, I will be vaccine man and be invincible. I was just there was a fifth one or something some other country was using. I'm like, yeah, bring it to Canada, they can collect them all like Pokemon.

Speaker 3:

Now Canada has Novavax right.

Speaker 1:

That's it. It was Nov. Right, that's it. It was Novavax. That's it. There's a fifth one. That was it. Yeah, but by the time I had three, I was good Anyways. So thanks for talking to us about measles, yeah, so one more. One more kind of big question before we move into our end there. Social media is bad for science. Sometimes takes spread like wildfire. I don't know how many misinformation reels I see, or TikToks where it's like absolute nonsense and it's got millions of views. So I think it's really easy for folks to be exposed to all this misinformation. And I guess, as somebody who's on Instagram and I love your infographics, by the way like I read them every time you post one what kind of advice can you give to the average person using social media If they're interested in good science? What should they do? And I know that's a big question, but I'd love for your take on it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think the hardest thing is that it can be really challenging to know what information is good versus bad, and I think one of the most important things to think about is who is it that is presenting the information?

Speaker 3:

So try to do some digging into what their background is and who they are, but then also try to verify the information that they're providing you.

Speaker 3:

So if you hear this wild claim in a TikTok or in a post, go to other websites, open up a tab in your computer browser and start to search for information about that topic, and sometimes you can even add a fact check.

Speaker 3:

So, say, if you wanted to know about the risk of measles or something, or you hear a weird measles rumor type in the rumor plus fact check, and sometimes it will pull up information that can help you figure out is what you're listening or reading true or is it not? The other thing that can often be helpful is do they provide references for the information that they're providing and what type of references are they using? This is not always easy to figure out, but, for example, when I am posting about something, I try to make it very clear what references I'm using to make the statements that I'm making, because I don't want people to necessarily just trust things that I say. I want them to go and fact check and I try to cultivate that with everything that I do, providing the actual references for the information. That's in whatever I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

I do notice that with your posts. I think we need to do, like my account, the Bunsen and Beaker Bernoulli stuff when we're talking about more serious science. I think I need to do a better job of that, of having a reference link somewhere in our video or in the comments. I do see that with a ton of your stuff. Sometimes it's like in the lead with picture. I'm just going through your Instagram and it's yes, yeah. Yeah, so you do a really good job, yeah it depends, yeah, but I think that's important.

Speaker 3:

And then I think too, is seeing. I think sometimes you have to go off social media and do some digging on your own to see if the information that's being presented to you is accurate or not.

Speaker 1:

And that's a tough spot because people want to scroll right.

Speaker 3:

It is a tough spot, but it is, and then, once you figure out certain accounts, you can start to trust what they're saying more. But it's still always good to be skeptical, and that's really what I have now cultivated in myself is that anytime I see something I am automatically skeptical, no matter what it is, and I try to go do some digging on my own before I make any conclusions.

Speaker 1:

That's what I tell my kids. I'm like, if you're on social media anything you see your first thing your brain should say is that's crazy, that's bananas. Like no matter what. Oh, the sun came up, that's bananas. And then you should fact check it because it's probably AI also. Oh yeah, like being skeptical is a really good tip there. I love that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and then it's just. It's hard, and I do believe that scientists and medical professionals do need to be on social media, because that's where the people are, but it is also. It does social media itself presents a problem and unfortunately I think it's here, at least for now. Maybe eventually we'll be back to no social media, who knows, but it's here for now, so we have to figure out how to live with it as we can.

Speaker 1:

And I, for us, we see it to not probably near as much as somebody who's all science like yourself, but it is not a kind place where people are cordial to one another when there's disagreement. I can't imagine some of the stuff that you would get as a science communicator, because we get it and we're gently talking about science with cute, cuddly dogs.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it's wild and definitely I block liberally for people who are like threatening or combative. Like I always want to engage with people and answer questions but at some point like it's not helpful for me if they're like attacking. Like I had one person come after me and say that my kids should be taken away from me because they were vaccinated. So I immediately blocked that person and I was like that's not helpful for anybody.

Speaker 1:

No, yeah, there has to be. This conversation doesn't start with threats and there's no conversation that can happen if that's the way it starts. Exactly Because we do it like very softly and the amount of nonsense we get is incredible sometimes and I can't believe what the average science communicator who does it all the time gets.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and it's. I also have a full-time day job. That isn't science communication, so I think a lot of us are doing it on the side, but we do it on topics that are a lot more controversial, and the more controversial your topic is, the more the trolls and the bully accounts come after you unfortunately.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for keeping your chin up. I appreciate it. Yeah, hey, one of our last questions before we end our interview is we ask all of our guests to share a pet story from their life. I was wondering if you could share a pet story with us.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so growing up, the only pet I had was goldfish.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

Well, we had these two goldfish that we called Goldie and King Kong. You can maybe guess. You can maybe guess. I named the one, goldie, when I was little. My brother named the other one, king kong. But we had one of them that ended up living for five years. What?

Speaker 1:

it was insane it was insane.

Speaker 3:

But then by the end of this, we think it was maybe king kong that lived this long, at this point by the end of his life. It kept jumping out of its tank and my mom would find this goldfish on the side of the tank, like on the outside of the tank, and then we would put it back in the tank and it somehow still survived oh my god for the whole last year of its life it kept jumping out of it tank.

Speaker 3:

It was the craziest thing I've ever had happen. Unfortunately, he or she did end up dying, but it was about five years of having this one goldfish, which was crazy.

Speaker 1:

That's impressive. Now you're sure you're not doing, you're sure you weren't a victim of what parents do. Is they just like? When the thing dies that has a short lifespan, they just get a new one and replace it.

Speaker 3:

I am positive because my mom didn't have a car, so there was no way that she could have went and got a new goldfish in that period of time.

Speaker 1:

I apologize for putting that out there, but I teach kids and they have stories they like to share when we're talking about pets and they're like yeah, that's what my mom did. We had three different gerbils and they looked different. I was like I think that's a different gerbil, and they're like nope, that's Penny.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, if it was a very good con, that still convinces me. So who knows?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a tough fish. I think when our oldest son was a little guy, we got goldfish because we didn't have a lot of money starting out as a couple and fish are really cheap they are. It lasted a week maybe and it was very sad and we had a whole funeral for it. So four years is very impressive for goldfish. That's wild.

Speaker 3:

It was impressive. But yeah, we still don't have any pets. I don't have any pets yet, but we do plan on eventually getting a dog once our kids are a little bit older. We're just still in the kind of thick of it, so we're waiting for them to get a little older.

Speaker 1:

First when our first boy was, I think, 10 or 11. And then our youngest Adam was like four, and there's yeah, I don't know how we would have handled dogs when they were toddlers or babies. Wow, I have a lot of respect for parents that have a dog and they've got little kids.

Speaker 3:

I'm like wow Me too, because it's hard enough.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's like you already have dogs, literally, because toddlers are like puppies. They're like they're the they're in. There's so much work a lot of and they're a lot of fun like puppies too.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yep, I would agree with that.

Speaker 1:

Well, thanks for sharing your story about. You're going to make you're going to make a lot of people jealous or listening and they're like, wow, my goldfish last at a month. That's wild. Thanks for being a guest on our show today, doc. You have a really fun instagram account and you're at science whiz liz, and that's w-h-i-z correct or z for the americans, w-h-i-z liz, l-i-z correct. Okay, perfect, perfect. Is there anywhere else you'd like to point people to, or are those cool?

Speaker 3:

Instagram is where I have my most active. I also have a sub stack which is called from the science classroom with science with Liz, where I go into longer information with easier to click references, because Instagram doesn't make referencing easy. So, both of those places are the best place to find me.

Speaker 1:

We'll have a link to your sub stack. We also have a sub stack. I think I've actually subscribed to your sub stack. Thank you so much for being our guest, taking some time out of your busy life. Really appreciate it. And a very timely subject on measles.

Speaker 3:

Yes, thank you very much for having me, and let's hope that by the time this comes out, there's less measles cases. I don't think that's going to be the case, but we can hope. We can hope. Yeah, we can hope. Okay, bye.

Speaker 1:

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to us. Thanks to Dr Elizabeth Marnick, who was our guest, and also, again, a shout out to the Top Dogs, our top tier of our Patreon community on Circle. If you want to hear your name, check out that link in the show notes. We would love your support and that's a perk. All right, Chris? Who are the Top Dogs?

Speaker 2:

Amelia Fettig, rhi Oda, carol Haino, jennifer Challen, linnea, janet, karen Chronister, jennifer Challen, Linnea, janik Karen Chronister, vicky Otero, christy Walker, sarah Bram, wendy, diane Mason and Luke Helen Chin, elizabeth Bourgeois, marianne McNally, catherine Jordan, shelley Smith, laura Steffensen, tracy Leinbach, anne Uchida, heather Burback, kelly Tracy Halbert.

Speaker 1:

For science, empathy and cuteness.