Hey there, friends, and welcome to episode 157 of Just the Zoo of Us. This week, I am joined by a special guest,

the podcaster and invertebrate enthusiast behind Grubbing in the Filth, an invertebrate podcast,

here to help us leap into the world of the tiny menace fleas. We discuss the intersection of entomology and

Pokemon, blind leaps of faith, tiny little cowboys riding their trusty steeds up cave walls,

the history of fleas on leashes, and so much more. It is time to get to know thy enemy.

Just the Zoo of Us presents Flee's with Tom Sharp. Hello, everybody, it is Ellen Weatherford. This is just the zoo of us, your favorite animal review podcast. And this week, we have a brand new friend. This is Tom Sharp. Say hi, Tom.

Hello. It is so nice to finally meet you. I really enjoy listening to the soothing sounds of your

voice on your invertebrate podcast. So before we get into our really cool animal for this week,

let's talk about you a little bit. You work on this podcast about invertebrates. How did you get into doing this work?

Well, in terms of the background with sort of my fondness for invertebrates, every person who's into

invertebrates seems to have the same answer to this, which is going back to childhood and sort of finding

things crawling about in the grass and in bushes and fond memories of knocking things out of trees

onto big sheets and looking at things. And of knocking things out of trees onto big sheets

and looking at things and in particular pictures of beetles and encyclopedies and stuff.

So my fondness for invertebrates and insects in particular goes back to childhood.

I then sort of dropped off for a while, which my dad ascribes to the rise of Pokemon Blue in my life.

Ah, yes.

He thinks that kind of killed off any kind of academic interests I had to his mind. But then years later, after I sort of started rediscovering that interest and got back into invertebrates and started reading books about invertebrates and about insects, ants in particular quite often. And then during lockdown, two years ago now, I guess, we didn't have any outdoor space, any significant outdoor space but we had a little kind of patch of grass out by the bins where we used to go and sit and it became quite a nice thing for me to just sort of lean into a hedge and see what was knocking about and take photos of things and i had this interest in invertebrates that i wanted to sort of make tangible and if you're an academic which i'm you can do that. You can make invertebrates a part of your life in a quite a meaningful way. But I wanted to do something with that fondness. So I thought, well, I like podcasts. I'll start a podcast. So I started recording grubbing in the filth and talking about different kinds of invertebrate and having a chance to talk to experts and learning more. And it's, it's been a wonderful thing.

Yeah, that is so parallel to what my experience with making our podcast has been, you know,

just like out of a sense of passion and being like, I just have to get this out there.

Like, I just have to express this interest and this love for these animals.

So I could definitely relate to that experience.

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