Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode 145 of just the zoo of us. This week I'm talking with

one of the hosts of the We Out Here podcast, a zookeeper and storyteller who's joining us to talk

about a unique and mysterious creature bouncing around rainforest canopies by the light of the moon.

Owl Monkeys.

We talk about how owl monkeys have adjusted to thriving in the twilight,

what's going on behind those big, beautiful eyes,

and what it's like to work with these little fluffy forest sprites.

Just the Zoo of Us presents Owl Monkeys with Alex favorite animal review podcast. It is just the zoo of us. And this week, I am so excited to bring to y'all. Alexi Grusis. Say hi, Alexi. Hey, howdy? Thanks for having me on, Ellen.

Thank you so much for being here. Can I get your pronouns real quick? Yeah, my pronouns

are he, him, and his. Thank you so much. And Alexi, I know you from Twitter. I think a lot of

people who frequent science. Twitter have probably seen you on there because you're just about the

funniest person in the universe. Nah, shucks. Aside from that, you're also an animal professional and a nature storyteller.

Before we talk about her really cool animal for today, what got you started down this path

of like animal and nature fandom, I suppose?

Yeah, yeah. So I was a kid who was lucky enough to have green spaces around the neighborhood that I lived in, though I didn't necessarily have like

forests nearby. My friends and I as kids would, you know, we run around the neighborhood

playing spies, which I don't know how many of y'all actually had

that game as well. But it really was just a bunch of kids being weird creeps. But we would run around

like quote unquote spying. And then what we would do is we'd also, you know, go into the bushes

and go into anywhere where there were things that we could turn over. I had a big backyard.

And so this one is actually like horrifying as an adult.

But my brother and I would dig these trenches and would make these very complex routes through the dirt in my backyard, creating like these roads.

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