Yan Wang
Hello, and welcome to Ask a Scientist, the podcast for both kids and adults to ask scientists questions about anything they want to know. There are so many scientists out there doing a lot of cool scientific research. In the news, we are constantly hearing about scientists and their new ideas and where those ideas are going to take us in the future. But just who are these scientists? In this podcast, we will learn a little more about who they are and what inspires them as scientists.
I’m your host, Victoria. Every other week, I’ll sit down with and ask a different scientist questions written by you, the listeners, and by students from classrooms throughout the country.
Victoria:
Hello listeners. Welcome back to the next episode of Ask a Scientist. Our guest this week
is Dr. Yan Wang. She is a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. She is an evolutionary neurobiologist and she studies the brain structures of different animals like bees and octopuses.
Thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Wang:
Thank you so much for having me, Victoria.
Victoria:
Well, we have a lot of great questions for you today. All of these questions were sent in by listeners through emails and on social media.
Very cool. All right. So we can start off with a question from Della, kind of a good way to start off a conversation with any biologist, I think, I don’t know, maybe not. Della wants to know how many different animals have you studied.
Dr. Wang:
Ooh. Yeah, Della. That is a really great question. So in a research setting, so like in a lab or at a university, I’ve mostly focused on three different animals. I started out by studying hamsters, and then I moved into octopuses, and now I study bees. But I think that all throughout my life, I’ve been curious about animals around me. And I think that anybody can study animals, you know, from ants crawling around your backyard or your kitchen as they are in my kitchen right now, to, you know, a pet dog or a cat or watching birds in your backyard. And so I think I’ve always been curious about the animals around me in that way.
Victoria:
(How do you study them? Do you visit their habitats?)
Awesome.
And this is a great follow-up to that from Chris. How do you study them? Do you visit their habitats?
Dr. Wang:
Ooh, yeah. Thank you for that question, Chris. So traditionally, I think historically scientists who have studied insects as well as cephalopods, which is what an octopus is, they have gone to the ocean or gone to field sites to study them. I don’t do that personally, even though members of the labs that I’ve been in do do that.
And the reason that I don’t is because within the lab setting, we’re able to control many aspects of the environment and we’re able to kind of control the different things that the animal experiences and that makes certain things that we study for their behavior a lot more rigorous. So since we’re able to control things like temperature, then we know that the effect of what we’re actually studying is what is causing the change in the nervous system or in the behavior, and not you know, some environmental factor that we can’t change.
So no, I do not go to these places. We have, we work with collaborators for example, with octopuses we work with an expert in California who dives and catches them, and then we’re able to bring them into the lab, and then we can raise them in the lab, which is very convenient for me.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s awesome. So do you have a lot of like tanks, and bee hives around the lab?
Dr. Wang:
Yeah, in Chicago with where I was studying octopuses and Chicago is obviously you know, it’s in the middle of the United States. And so it doesn’t border any open oceans. And so we had a bunch of aquariums and flow through tanks and that’s how we would keep the octopuses. And with the bumblebees, we do have several nests. And these are really great because you can order a bumblebee nests off the Internet. They’re really useful for agriculture and farming. And so you can order them from websites that primarily service farms and then they arrive in basically a little shoe box at your door. And they’re self-contained and they just kind of take care of themselves that way.
Victoria:
(Besides the octopus and bumblebee, what is the most unusual animal you studied?)
Oh, cute.
All right. And then this is kind of a fun question from Zach. Besides the octopus and bumblebee, what is the most unusual animal you’ve studied?
Dr. Wang:
Ooh, thank you, Zach. So when I was an undergraduate, when I was in college, I worked at a wildlife rehabilitation center. And it was, this is called Wild Things Sanctuary in Ithaca, New York. And we were qualified to rehabilitate rabies vector animals, such as bats and opossums and other animals like that. So they’re not really unusual for being in the Northeastern part of the United States, but I certainly had never been kind of that up close and personal with, you know, these animals that we might see in our backyards. So that was a really exciting experience for me.
I think the opossum is such a special animal. You know, as our only marsupial there, just so fun to observe. They have all sorts of weird features of their anatomy, and they have, you know, really, I think, cute little face. And they were really really, really interesting to get to kind of work with up close. And then ultimately release back out into the wild.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s awesome. Are they soft? They look like they’d be soft.
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. Basically, we did to minimize handling as much as possible, but I do recall several orphans that would come in, and unfortunately, a lot of mothers, especially in the spring and early summer, hit by cars. And so we would have some babies around and they are really soft, but their teeth are very, very sharp.
Victoria:
(What is the scariest behavior you’ve studied?)
Oh gosh.
I think that leads in well to the next question from Lily. What is the scariest behavior you’ve studied?
Dr. Wang:
Ooh, Lily. That is a hard question. I think maybe I shy away from studying scary behaviors. Let me think about this. I think I’ve been most scared by bumblebees who I’ve somehow agitated and I’ve disturbed them and they’ve gotten out of their nest in some way and they’re trying to get back or they’re trying to defend their nest. So that’s I think been the scariest for me. And I’m not, I don’t know, you know, somebody who is, I don’t have a fear of bees, but I think it is quite fearsome to be met with an agitated individual who is very, you know, righteously defending their homes. And especially when the individual can fly and you can’t. That can be quite an experience, very human. So even though this animal is, you know, like tiny and I’m protected, you know, I have a bee suit on and I know that the bees can’t get anywhere. It can definitely be a little a little bit fierce.
But I think in terms of other behaviors that we might think of typically as scary, you know, like aggressive behaviors or things like that. I don’t typically study that. And I also don’t regularly observe it in the lab as an, I don’t really see my animals doing that on their own.
Victoria:
(What is the funniest behavior you’ve studied?)
That makes sense.
And this is kind of the opposite of that question. Jane wants to know what is the funniest behavior you’ve studied?
Dr. Wang:
Let’s see. So I think something that I find really funny about working with octopuses is that they develop, well, as you continue to work with individual octopuses, you get a sense of their, you know, quote unquote personalities. So I think something that was always really funny and always endeared me is that we would feed our octopuses a diet that was mostly clams and shrimp, seafood. But we tried to keep it, we would try to rotate them through a variety of seafoods, you know, keep it interesting for them. Sometimes we weren’t able to do that and the octopuses would get kind of grumpy at us. And you would go to give an octopus a piece of shrimp or a clam, and they’ve taken into their arms, but then just fling it back at you, kind of like a toddler having a temper tantrum or something because they were, you know, kind of sick of eating it for the third day in a row. So I always found that kind of funny and sometimes when, when that would happen, they would also use their siphon, which is a funnel that they have, they typically use this to jet swim in the water, but they would use that to blow water at you to kind of like squirt you with water, to express their disgust at you, trying to feed them the same thing. So I always found that pretty funny.
Victoria:
(Why do you only study insects and cephalopods?)
That is funny. I think I can just picture that. That’s so cute.
All right. And then this next question is from Aaron and you sort of touched on this a little bit initially, but Aaron wants to know why do you only study insects and cephalopods?
Dr. Wang:
Well, I guess just because of limited time, Aaron, as maybe not the answer that you’re looking for. But I’m really fascinated by all sorts of animal behaviors. And I think I would love to study way more and interact way more, you know, with all sorts of different animals if you know, there were kind of unlimited resources and time and energy available behind it. I think yeah, I think that that would just be a really, really special thing.
But I think beyond that, the behaviors in animals that I’m most interested in are behaviors that the octopus and the bee are really experts at. So what do I mean by that? So I think what interests me most about all the different types of behaviors that, you know, any animal can do, I’m really fascinated in the processes of reproduction, aging and death. And I promise it’s not as morbid as it might sound. I’m just really fascinated by these processes that kind of unite, they’re kind of a common theme throughout, like all animals’ lives or most animals’ lives. And the octopus and the bee are just, they’re just really unique and exceptional in how they do all of that.
So in the octopus, the mother, most octopuses reproduce only once and the mother after she reproduces just devotes the rest of her life to taking care of her young. And that means kind of taking care of her eggs, so brooding her eggs, kind of like a chicken might sit on her eggs, and blowing water on them and protecting them from predators. And as she does this, she stops eating and she’ll even start to injure herself and then she’ll die before any of her offspring hatch. And that’s pretty wild. Like that’s just, it’s so striking and unique to me and fascinating that I just had to kind of get to the bottom of that.
And in the bumblebees, you know, the bumblebees are quite famous, I guess, for living in these really complex societies, right? Just like human societies. They live in these large groups where individuals have roles and jobs and they carry out these tasks so that the colony can continue to live. And how that develops, how the nervous system supports all of that, how their brains get them to do all of that, is just so completely fascinating to me.
And so I’ve just been particularly entranced by these two models and that’s why I focus on them.
Victoria:
Wow. Those are both so interesting. And I never knew that about octopuses. That’s crazy.
Dr. Wang:
It’s a pretty you know, outrageous lifestyle from a human perspective, I think. It’s a really, really different from how humans kind of experienced life. So yeah, I am really lucky to be able to study it.
Victoria:
(How did you get interested in insects and cephalopods?)
Yeah. And this next question comes from Ray. How did you get interested in insects and cephalopods?
Dr. Wang:
I think my accident, Ray, I think a lot of things happen when you’re not really paying attention to them. So I, you know, I started working in hamsters, because hamsters are kind of a common lab model. So they are kind of the typical study animals for the questions that I was interested in at the time. And I kind of by accident stumbled upon a researcher who was studying similar questions to what I was interested in, but in the octopus. And I just thought it was such a unique and fascinating opportunity to broaden my research. And so that’s why I went in that direction.
And as I was kind of wrapping up my research in the octopus, I was thinking really deeply about invertebrates. So these are animals without backbones, without bones, without spines, squishy things basically. And the octopus is in invertebrate. And I was thinking about invertebrates and the entire, you know, breadth of social behaviors they can do. And the octopus is really limited in its social behaviors because they live alone as adults. And so they have very, very few chances or rarely do they ever come together to interact socially with another octopus. And when they do, it’s usually in a mating context or in an aggression context.
And so, as I was thinking about invertebrates and social behaviors, I just became really transfixed by social insects. So these are ants and bees and wasps, and many other insects, because they’re kind of on the opposite end of the social behavioral spectrum. They do all of it. And they do it in such an extreme manner that individual social insects will forego their own reproduction for the survival of the colony. And so that’s how I became interested in the bees and because they are just such an advantageous invertebrate again, no backbones, no spines, invertebrate animal to study social behaviors. But like the total opposite end of the spectrum from the octopus.
Victoria:
(Do you keep animals in your lab?)
Cool. That’s awesome.
All right. And, I think we touched on this, maybe I sort of preemptively asked this question, but Jane wants to know, do you keep animals in your lab?
Dr. Wang:
Yes, we do. So we keep bumblebees they come in these cardboard boxes, and inside the cardboard box that has like a giant cartoon illustration of a bee on top of it. And it says like live animals inside of that box is like essentially like a black plastic, like condominium for bumblebees. And inside of that black plastic box, which the bees can’t escape out of, unless you open a really special door, there’s the queen bumblebee. She’s really, really big. It’s really easy to identify her and all of her workers. And I guess I called it a condominium because, but maybe that’s not the right analogy, but I just wanted to portray that it’s kind of like a self-contained home. So the bees have access to food there, through like a little wick that pulls up sugar water for them, and they make all of the cells. So they create wax and they build a wax structure for the new babies. And so that’s how we keep the bumblebees in the lab. They’re totally contained. And it makes it really convenient and really safe for researchers to be able to work with them, and observe their behaviors and things like that.
And then the octopuses we keep in fish tanks basically. So just glass aquaria that we create some artificial seawater and then we adjust the octopuses to the seawater that we make. And they are usually quite happy if you keep them really well fed and keep the water conditions really good for them. I will say that cephalopods are pretty tricky to rear, to raise in general, because they’re so sensitive and because they’re really prone to escape. But I’ve had the good fortune of working with some experts, both at University of Chicago, as well as at the Marine Biological Laboratory out in Massachusetts. And so you know, together with this whole community of octopus and cephalopod researchers, they’ve really optimized the way that we can keep the octopuses in the lab.
Victoria:
(Have you ever been bitten by any of the animals you study?)
That is super cool.
All right. This next question is from Max. Have you ever been bitten by any of the animals that you study?
Dr. Wang:
I, you know, it’s really funny is that when I was working with the octopuses, I don’t think I’ve ever been bitten by them. Octopuses are, you know, they’re soft body, so they’re basically snails without a shell. If you think of a snail or the body of a snail or slug, you know, they’re really soft. And so, I always tried to minimize my contact with them because they didn’t want to inadvertently hurt them.
So I’ve never been bitten by an octopus. But, the kind of you know, the thing that people say in the field is that a bite from an octopus of the species that we studied, which was called the California two spot octopus, it feels about as bad as a bee sting, is what people would say,
But yeah, that’s kind of been my experience with that. Bumblebee has have really strong jaws. Like they can chew through duct tape and paper and plastic and things like that, but they’re much more effective against humans by using their stingers rather than their jaws.
Victoria:
Wow. I didn’t know they could chew through things. That’s cool.
Dr. Wang:
Yeah, it is. It’s really fascinating to watch because you can kind of see it in real time when they’re very determined. They have these really powerful jaws that just, you know, act as like saws basically. Yeah.
Victoria:
That’s so cool.
(Is it true that octopuses can really fit in any space the size of their eye?)
All right, coming up we’ve got a few questions here, all about octopuses. This first question is from Tori. Is it true that octopuses can really fit in any space the size of their eye?
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. that’s a great question, Tori. You might’ve seen some of these behaviors and videos online or on TV. So, because octopuses are totally squishy, the only thing that you’re limited by is by the only kind of hard material in their body and that is their beak.
So they have a beak kind of like the beak of a bird. Most species have two parts, like an upper and the lower, and it’s located in their mouth, which is, if you imagine all eight of their arms, the mouth is located at the point where all of the arms meet. So right, kind of at the intersection of all of the arms is their mouth and that’s where they have their beak. And the beak is used, it’s a hard surface, and also it’s used for eating as well as probably biting, although again, I have not had the fortune of experiencing that firsthand.
And so the only thing that they’re limited by is essentially the shape of their beak. But I have also seen octopuses just be really, you know, like they’re like talented gymnast. So I think also there’s ways in which they kind of are able to flatten, or maybe not flatten but like compress their beaks too, so that they can kind of squeeze through all sorts of places. But yeah, you’re definitely on the right track there, they are, even though sometimes they appear really, really large, they’ve got these huge arms that can stretch, you know, in all directions, but when it comes down to it, when they really want to escape, they can definitely get through that tiny little crack.
Victoria:
(Are octopuses really intelligent? What is the most intelligent thing you have seen an octopus do?)
That is super cool.
All right. And then Tori also has a follow-up question, or I guess the second question. Are octopus is really intelligent? What is the most intelligent thing you’ve seen in octopus do?
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. I think octopuses have really, really incredible problem-solving abilities, and learning and memory. They are just complete experts, and that is what makes them really, really fascinating to study for me because I’m really interested in their brains and how their brains support that. And so, I think, you know, a lot of times when we talk about intelligence in humans, you know, we’ll talk about things like different exams, you know, how well did you do on that exam? Or if you did really well on that math test, you must be really smart. But, you know, I don’t really ascribe to that and certainly we can’t give an octopus, you know, like a written math test or something like that.
And so, I think what makes them kind of the, you know, at the apex of what they are, are these really unique things that they’re able to do that maybe we don’t kind of traditionally think of as intelligence. For example, the story I told about an animal kind of being sick of eating, you know, shrimp every day. That to me is like a really unique personality quirk. And being able to camouflage to whatever your background is. I mean, I think that that’s just totally fascinating.
And as a neuroscientist, I’m more interested in how the cells in the brain and the molecules in the brain are able to do that rather than kind of what this concept of rather than saying, like, you know, this behavior means that they’re intelligent or something like that. I’m much more interested in kind of like how they’re able to do these things, than I’m calling it intelligent or not. So that’s kind of where I’m at on that. I think like the really intriguing behaviors that I see them do are the ones that maybe we wouldn’t kind of typically measure intelligence as in humans, but I think is what makes them just the coolest animals for studying.
Victoria:
Yeah, that’s awesome. I forgot that they camouflage. That’s like people want that as a super power. Like that’s incredible.
Dr. Wang:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s so fun to study because you can see it in your eyes in real time. You know, you can see an octopus appear or disappear basically. And that’s something that as humans, you know, we cannot do innately with our bodies. And I think that’s just a really, really unique.
Victoria:
(What do you study about how octopuses die? Can they live a really long time?)
Yeah, that’s so cool.
All right. And then this is another question about octopuses from Chris. What do you study about how octopuses die? Can they live a really long time?
Dr. Wang:
Yeah, so I think the thing about octopuses that is kind of like a baffling mystery is that animals that have really big brains. So like really heavy nervous systems compared to the rest of their bodies. So think crows and parrots and chimpanzees, primates, humans. These animals are typically really, really long live. So, you know humans lived for many, many decades, as do non-human primates, as do some birds, and that kind of makes sense, right? Because it’s like you have this really huge nervous system, so there’s, you’ve invested a lot in it and that enables you to, to live for a long time.
This is really not the case in the octopus. So the octopus has a really, really large brain to body mass ratio. But the species that I study lives for only a year. And so that’s something that really fascinates me is essentially, you know, why do they die? Why do they die so fast? Why have such a big brain, if you’re going to die so fast?
And the story there kind of begins because at reproduction, so after the octopuses meet, there was a part of the brain that accelerates its death essentially, and promotes its death and really makes sure that it will end up dying. So, to me, that’s something that makes their nervous systems really, really fascinating that there’s kind of this built in mechanism to ensure that they die.
Yeah. So although some octopuses that live in cold waters or really deep waters can live for many, many years. I think for most octopus species, what is true is that they will only reproduce once in their lives. And so whenever that happens, that’s kind of the beginning of the end for octopuses.
Victoria:
Wow. Is it the same for like both male and female octopuses, or is it, you know, kind of nerve neurological, I don’t know, process, is it different because the way that males and females reproduce or like the role in reproduction is different? Did that question make sense?
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. there is little data on males, or there is much less data on males, but what is known is that they seem to fall into the same pattern. So they’ll go through one reproductive season and then die. And the reason it’s harder to study the males is because the males don’t lay eggs and then sit on them. And so when you encounter a male octopus in the ocean, it’s hard to know where in its life cycle it is just by looking at it. Right. Whereas if you come upon a female octopus that is sitting on eggs, then it’s very clear that she has made it and then you’re able to kind of track at what developmental stage she’s in.
Victoria:
(What behavior in your work have you observed that lend itself to understanding human behavior?)
That makes sense.
All right. And we can transition away from some of our octopus questions. This next question comes from Joe. What behavior in your work have you observed that lends itself to understanding human behavior?
Dr. Wang:
Ooh. Yeah. I think that studying the bees has made me think a lot about human behavior, especially this last year during the COVID pandemic. So specifically the question I’m studying in bees right now is because they live in these really complex societies that in which they depend on social interactions to survive. What happens if some of the bees are socially isolated? And that’s obviously something that we’ve all around the globe experience this last year, a really, really sudden transition to an alternative kind of social style that we were not used to or prepared for. And so, I’ve been, I think, just kind of studying in general, how bees interact with each other and how bees alone isolated interact has been really thought provoking for me this last year, in terms of thinking about the different ways that humans have created new methods of coming together, you know, like we are talking over Zoom right now, and these questions came in from social media. Maybe we’ve never met in real life, but we’re still able to like form some type of social connection across time and space.
And yeah. Thinking about being able to work with the bees over this last year has been really, really thought provoking in terms of thinking about human behavior, the different ways that humans come together and form communities and things like that.
Victoria:
(What social similarities are there between some of the creatures you have studied and people?)
Wow. That is incredible. I never would have thought of that, but yeah, just wow.
All right. And you touched on this a little bit in that previous answer, but this is also another question from Joe. What social similarities are there between some of the creatures you’ve studied and people?
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. Well, thinking back to the hamsters, what I studied the hamsters was their biological rhythms. So I studied basically their activity patterns. And they’re, the rodents are really similar to humans, they have or I should say in the context that I studied them, which was after reproduction and during pregnancy and lactation and weaning you know, you. Here’s stories or, you know, the experience of being a new parent is one that’s just, you know, hands down characterized by sleeplessness, right. You’re just up all the time attending here, baby. And so my question was essentially, how to be able to quantify and study this in the hamsters. And we see the same thing, we see the exact same thing, and we see long-term long-lasting effects of their circadian rhythms being really messed up or just totally altered after giving birth and while taking care of their babies. So that’s one major similarity between humans and the animals I studied.
And yeah, I think you know, with the social insects, with the bumblebees, I think one thing that is similar is that the kind of typical vocabulary that we use in the study of social behaviors is that they, you know, are altruistic or they individual bees will act for the service of the greater whole, essentially. And so for example, some of these, these females will give up their ability to reproduce, they will take care of the young like the new baby bumblebees, they will go out and find food for others in the community, things like that. And the altruism that humans have for each other has really really, I think come to light over this last year, as well as we’ve all been experiencing hardship that we’ve never, you know, at least in our lifetimes had never kind of imagined that there are so many communities of care that have popped up to make sure that the needs, the survival needs of community members. I’m not. So that kind of like altruistic tendency between bees and between humans is another similarity that I find.
Victoria:
(What does your research imply about creating gentler and more just communities?)
Wow, that’s incredible.
And on the subject of altruism, this question from Della. What does your research imply about creating gentler and more just community?
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. Well, I guess I don’t know if I have a direct answer to that. My research questions are not directly centered around, you know, how can we be kinder to each other? How can we instill justice in the communities around us? But I see that as really central to my work as a scientist. And what I mean by that is that as a scientist and in particular as an academic researcher, I am responsible, not just for doing experiments or coming up with experiments and research questions, but we all have a hand in kind of creating scientific culture.
And I think this is maybe an idealistic view, but I think that there are ways that we can be conscientious about doing this in which the facts are kinder and more just ways of coming together. And so that means to me personally, making sure that you know, we are welcoming to people of all backgrounds in science amongst other ways of kind of looking at the systems that allow us to do science and do research, and making sure that we’re kind of moving in ways that don’t actively exclude individuals.
And so, I think even though I personally don’t see my research questions as directly focused on the topics of this question, I think the way that I want to approach doing science, so the kind of leadership that I want to emulate as well as the kind of culture that I want to support around me is one that doesn’t just go by the status quo, but is always active in examining you know, how can we do this better, how can we do this in a way that lifts us all up.
Victoria:
(How has your research on insects and cephalopods influenced your pedagogy?)
Wow. That is really great.
And I think that leads into this question from Zach or a little bit, relates to it a little bit. How has your research on insects and cephalopods influenced your pedagogy?
Dr. Wang:
Hm. I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked that question before, which is great.
Victoria:
Real quick, before you get into your answer, I do you want to define pedagogy for listeners who may not be familiar with that term, as a kind of teaching strategy and pertaining to teaching in ways that you teach.
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. I will say this, I was a newcomer to all of the kind of communities of science that I am now a member of. So, you know, there are people who have studied octopuses their entire lives, when there are people who, you know, have always been fascinated by bumblebees. And for me, I kind of came into these communities as a graduate student, and then later as a postdoc with the Bumble bees. And what I have found through my journey as a scientist is that there are you know, more welcoming, more frictionless ways of bringing a new person into an academic community. And so that’s something that I try to emulate in my teaching.
So I think one aspect of my teaching that I care a lot about is this concept of curb cuts, which is drawn from disability studies. So if you imagine a sidewalk you know, in a city or in your neighborhood, and you’re walking along the sidewalk and when you get to the end of the block, the sidewalk gets down, right. And it meets the road. So you can cross the road. And originally these little inclines which are called curb cuts were the result of a lot of activism from disabled vets who wanted a way of being able to navigate their streets. So even though these curb cuts were kind of originally designed for one subset of people, they actually ended up benefiting everybody. So if you’re walking your bike along the sidewalk, or if you’re pushing a stroller or, you know, a shopping cart these curb cuts make it a lot easier for you to kind of navigate and it can feel, I can kind of instill a greater sense of belonging that you are welcome here.
And so we can kind of like analogize that mechanism and think about the different ways that we teach in the classroom. We can use that, borrow that concept and think critically about, you know, the way that we talk to people, the expectations that we have of students what do we think of as expertise, who do we listen to in the classroom. These are all things that I’m really critical of.
So I’m sorry. I don’t have a direct answer to how the animals that I study in particular influenced my pedagogy, but I think my experience or my former experiences as outsiders to communities have just kind of emphasized to me the importance of thinking about the way that we design classrooms, the way that we approach teaching and learning that can promote success of all peoples.
Victoria:
I liked that curb cut analogy. I’d never, I’d never really thought about anything like that before.
Dr. Wang:
It’s a really evocative like analogy. Right. and there’s a whole history of it that includes, you know, disability justice that I’m not ironically doing justice to right now. But yeah, I do think about that a lot in the other kind of almost it’s like the most useful mechanisms in our daily lives are the ones that we almost don’t pay attention to, or we take for granted.
Victoria:
(Why do you think there are so many people who don’t believe in science?)
Yeah, for sure.
All right. And sort of in this general realm of people and learning and teaching, this next question comes from Aaron. Why do you think there are so many people who don’t believe in science?
Dr. Wang:
Mm, yeah. Tough question, Aaron. A variety of reasons honestly.
I think some of it has to do with the way that when you are a scientist, there is a particular way that you are used to talking about your science, talking about data, talking about your analysis, that can be very exclusive. So it can make somebody who’s not in the community feel like they are an outsider, and they’re not meant to understand. I think about that a lot when I think about, I don’t know, you know, like something that gets any kind of like incendiary headline or something like that.
But I think also people don’t necessarily want to believe in science when it becomes pitted against something else that is really central to their sense of self. I think kind of a classic one is like, you know, science versus religion. And that becomes a really hard thing you know, that becomes a really difficult equation to solve when you’re asking somebody to choose between a part of their self-identity and, you know, quote unquote science. And so, I definitely don’t blame folks who encounter science in that way. Yeah, so I think, a lot of times right now in our society, it always feels like, you know, you have one choice on your left hand, you have one choice in your right hand, or you have, you know, two doors in front of you, like choose one of those. And the way that science gets talked about marketed to us, the expectations of who is a scientist, who can be a scientist. A lot of these practices are really, can be very exclusionary. And I think that can lead to a lot of distrust of science as well as kind of like the scientific endeavor. And I will say too, that for certain communities, this trust is very justified. So, for example, like in the black community, in the African-American community, these are communities that have historically been abused by science and scientists, you know. So I think that distrust that continues today is because there’s a lot of healing that has to be done and a lot of justice that has to be done that has not yet been done.
And so I’m hoping that in general, it’s kind of an improving relationship between science scientists and non-scientists that we can kind of come to an understanding of each other and our world views.
Victoria:
Yeah, I think so, too. That’s part of the reason why I do this podcast, is to introduce scientists to nonscientists. And, you know, even though it’s not a direct face-to-face meeting, it’s listening through a podcast, it’s a way for the non-scientist to get to know the scientists, and the scientists to answer questions that non-scientists might have.
Dr. Wang:
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think when we think about some, you know, like, I can’t think of a better word than old timey right now, but you know, when I think about some of like classic scientists that we learn about in school, these people, they did other stuff too. You know, they were philosophers, they were readers, they were writers, they were artists. I think it’s really, really great what you’re doing because it’s breaking down those barriers between like, you know, what does a scientist to, yeah, you’re just breaking down that divide that maybe you shouldn’t even be there to begin.
Victoria:
Yeah, exactly. Like scientists are regular people, just, everyday people just like all the listeners. And so I think hearing that and getting a chance to, you know, hear a scientists and conversation can kind of help break that down.
Dr. Wang:
And everyday people can also be scientists and.
Victoria:
Exactly.
Dr. Wang:
Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria:
(What was the most interesting thing you learned about the octopus?)
All right. And then this is our very last question. Good, come full circle, have one more question about an octopus. And this is a question from Chris. What is the most interesting thing you learned about the octopus?
Dr. Wang:
Hmm. I think the more I learn about the octopus, the more I realize that, the more I feel like I will never understand the octopus. I think, I mean, honestly, I kind of think the coolest thing I learned was is what I’m hoping to study for like the rest of my career, which is this, that there is a part of their brain that triggers a behavioral sequence and a molecular sequence that leads to death. I mean, that is, it feels like the stuff of science fiction, you know, but it’s not, it’s right here in our oceans, on our Earth. And that’s just so interesting to me.
Victoria:
Yeah, that is really fascinating. I’ll be interested to hear all about your research about it, as throughout your career as the year go on.
Dr. Wang:
Awesome. Awesome.
Victoria:
All right. Well, I actually do have one more question for you. It doesn’t come from the listeners, but this is how we usually end our Ask a Scientist episodes. And that is, do you have any questions of your own for the listeners?
Dr. Wang:
Mm, yeah. My question for the listeners is, over the last year, as people have been kind of spending more time at home or in one place, what is one new way of engaging with the natural world that you didn’t do before. And I’ll, I can start by saying one thing I’ve started doing is just naming all of the animals in my backyard, which was not a behavior that I did before the pandemic. But I’m really interested to learn, you know, did you start birding? Did you watch meteor showers? How did your relationship with the outside world, the natural world, change over the course of this last year?
Victoria:
That is a really good question.
Dr. Wang:
What about you, Victoria?
Victoria:
Oh man. I feel like I’ve got a bunch of different answers. I think the biggest one for me is there’s a park near my house and there’s, you know, a river that runs through it. And there’s like if you didn’t, you know, if you were just looking at the river and you didn’t look kind of up the banks of the river, you would never know that it was in a city. And so I think, through the pandemic, I have gone for walks in that area, you know, during the warmer seasons every day, during the colder seasons, like once or twice a week. And I’ve never spent that much time routinely in the same part of the natural world. And so I think being able to see how everything changes with the seasons, and like being there for every moment of like, you know, leaves are changing color, leaves are falling off of branches, and being able to see all of these seasonal changes has been my new pandemic way of connecting with the natural world.
Dr. Wang:
That’s beautiful. It’s like a whole new relationship that you’ve cultivated.
Victoria:
I’m so glad you asked that question. I like that.
Dr. Wang:
I’m so curious to find what the listeners have to share.
Victoria:
Do you have a professional social media that they can send their answers to?
Dr. Wang:
Sure. My Twitter is at Z like zebra Yan Wang. So that’s zyanwang. And I would love to hear from you.
Victoria:
Awesome. Well, listeners sending your answers, and thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Wang:
Thank you so much for having me, Victoria. It was such a pleasure.
Ask a Scientist 