Welcome to the show. I'm Mackin. This is Species. The episode 100 Ask Me Anything extravaganza. It is truly

amazing to get to episode 100. I started this show over a year and a half ago. I remember writing the first

episode on the iPhone Notes app. So trust me,

I never expected to have thousands of people tuning in and to have such engaged and active listeners

that's just incredibly gratifying. Thank you so much to the donors for making this show possible.

Words really can't express how grateful

I am to you for giving me the opportunity to do what I love. And now for the 100th time.

Thank you, Eric and the Animals for playing me in. And now, without further ado, I present to you,

episode 100.

On this episode, I'm going to be answering several listener questions.

I picked out some that you guys sent me, I'm not going to read all of them, because this episode could easily become longer than intended, and while all the questions were really good, some have more entertainment value than others.

I didn't ignore any of them, but the ones I didn't answer here, I just answered with a private

message. All right, so let's get started. So the first question is from a Twitter user named

at Cold Mud, who asks, could the world survive without ticks? That's an interesting question.

The world will be fine. The animal kingdom would take a hit, I think, but I'm not sure how big

that hit would be. Myself and Tyos Williams actually had a version of this conversation with

mosquitoes instead of ticks. It was very interesting to think about. Ticks cause a lot of problems for humans,

and I know they're an important food source for many animals. In fact, speaking of the first episode,

as I mentioned in the intro, opossums actually eat ticks. So when you ask, could the world

survive without ticks? Though the answer is almost definitely yes,

I think there could be a surprising cascade up the trophic levels, where we lose ticks and then we

lose some of the animals that eat ticks, maybe their populations wane and then get taken out by

...