Minisode: Fall Ologies! ... Fallogies?

I'm having this hunger for autumn. So I decided to look up some of the ologies associated with autumn, and I thought i'd tell you about them because they're crazy. Okay, you're ready, So let's just call this ologies October Cool October Ologies pretty soon pretty sot so. So the first ology I want to tell you about cucurbatology. Q. Curbatology is the study You're so not even ready for this. This is so awesome. Cue crebatology, the study of pumpkins

and gourds. This is a real thing. I was researching a little bit because I was like, I don't know anything about cucurb turns out jack o lanterns in Ireland? Do you know that they used to be made out of hollowed out turnips? Like, I don't know what kind of elbow grease it takes to holler out a turnip, but I'm not interested. Also, I looked at pictures of them. Damn they look like mummy babies. They're horrifying. They're so much more scary than pumpkins, very unpleasant. I did look

up some advice from a cue curbatologist. They say, hey, you're gonna carve a pumpkin. You don't want it to rot. Why don't you spray that thing with a weak mix of bleach and water stop that mold? Right? And it's tracks you, guys. Advice from a cue curbatologist. Pumpkins and gords. What else says fall to me than zombies and tomo pathology? What the hell's at well, it's when insects becomes zombies. People love zombies. I can't even look at someone in

zombie makeup without being really actually afraid. I don't know, I don't understand. My ra sees someone who is like an extra in a movie wearing prosthetics and I'm like, no, that's a real dead person. But in the insect world, there's this one fungus zombie maker called cordyce EPs, and

it infests carpenter ant colonies. And what happens is an ant gets a spore on it gets infected by this fungus, and then the fungus takes over its behavior and essentially leads it to crawl up a branch, hop on a leaf, which it never does. It never does this, and then

use its jaws to bite on the leaf. There it dies with a death clench onto a leaf, and then a stalk a fungus grows out of the ants dome like a fungal antenna, and then it rains spores down onto all of the ant's friends and family, like like a fungus bomb at your family reunion. It's the worst anyway, that Aunt wouldn't have done that were it not possessed by a fungus zombie, so deal with that. Another good October type of ology. I don't know, demonology heard of it.

So demonology is a thing people study demons. And I came across one person who says she is a forensic psychologist who specializes in violent crime. She has a PhD in forensic psychology, a master's in educational psychology, and a bachelor's in personality and religion. She literally wrote the book on demonology, and then she wrote a follow up book called demonology too, of course, in differentiating medical illnesses from

spiritual possession. I checked on her Twitter to see what's on her mind, and her account had been suspended, so I don't know, maybe demon hacked it. Another good ology for this time of year. Chiropterology. Chiropterology, So this comes from Cairo, hand in taro wing, so handwing. This is a study of bats. And you know, there's a thousand species of bats, but only three of them are vampire bats. So the rest of the bats are like, I just want to eat mosquitos or fruit, and I have such

a terrible reputation. Vampire bats pretty cool. There's this one called a white winged vampire bat lives in South America, prefers the blood of birds if given a choice, and in one study they find out that they worked in pairs. They crawl like spiders across the floor undetected, and then one of them nuzzles up to a chicken breast and pretends to beat its baby, and the checken's like, oh huh a and starts to incubate it, while the other one pierces its foot and feeds on the fresh blood.

And before you're like, dude, that's not cool, one of them's boguarding a live chicken foot and the others doing all the ruse work. Well, some species of vampire bats, and I'm not sure if it's this one, but either way, we'll feed on blood and then they'll go back to their friends and they'll barf it up and be like,

does they want some of this? I think that's very nice. Now, the ultimate autumno ology phenology, this is the changing of the seasons, So spring phenology, you're studying buds, daffodils, shoots, grasses the like. Fall phonology the changing of the leaves and what changes the leaf color? Well, they're really orange and yellow underneath, but all the chlorophyll that they need in the summer turn some green, so the chlorophyll dissipates.

The leaves turned these beautiful orange and yellow colors. This year though, it's been really warm, so the chlorophyll is breaking down kind of slower than usual. But apparently it's supposed to cool down in November. They do say that twenty seventeen is currently on pace to be the second hottest year on record. When was the first, like in the eighteen hundreds? No, no, it was twenty sixteen, So whatever. Moral the story asks smart people dumb questions before we

all bake to death. Speaking of death, very special episode of Ologies comes out on Halloween, Thanatology Study of Death and Dying. Weirdly, it was one of the most uplifting conversations I've had in my live life. Do come back next week on Halloween for Thanatology. Meanwhile, thank you so much to everyone who's rating and reviewing and subscribing. I read your reviews. I'm a creep like that. I appreciate

every one of them. And because of that, you guys have kept this in the top twenty five science podcasts for the last month, which is so huge, So thank you to all of the ologites over in Patreon who are supporting the show and making it possible, and then the Facebook Ologies podcast group. Also, if you're looking for holiday gifts you want to treat yourself, ologiesmerch dot com

has you quite literally covered. There's shirts and tots and mugs and baby onesies and we just put up just put up today as I record this, enamel pins, So there's ology pins with different ologies on that and they're so dope and they're limited editions, so you're probably gonna want to get them quick. So come back next week and we'll address the hallyween spookiness of death. And also I promise you will leave feeling more badass than you have in a while, So go romp in the sprinklers

or some leaves depending on the weather. We'll see you back here next week for thanatology.