Butterflies Have Hearts In Their Wings. You'll Never Guess Where They Have Eyes

Short Wave

NPR

News, Life Sciences, Nature, Daily News, Astronomy, Science

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2020

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Adriana Briscoe, a professor of biology and ecology at UC Irvine, studies vision in butterflies. As part of her research, she's trained them to detect light of a certain color. She also explains why they bask in the sunlight, and why some of them have 'hearts' in their wings.

Plus ... you'll never guess where their photoreceptors are.

She's written about the importance of teachers and mentors in diversifying the STEM fields.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. Maddie Sifaya here and Emily Quank a few weeks ago.
0:04.1	We hosted a virtual shortwave themed trivia night with trivia master Terry Simon.
0:10.2	700 of you attended.
0:11.6	700 21 of you got a perfect score.
0:15.5	You smarties, but there was one player who really stood out.
0:19.6	Noah Cowan from Free Silver.
0:21.9	You're up there. Noah. All right. So let me tell you about Noah.
0:25.2	So Noah flubbed Maddie's tiebreaker question about bugs.
0:29.0	It's a probiscus. That doesn't start with an S.
0:32.5	But like a true champion, he congratulated Nina from team that's so Ravenclaw who nailed it.
0:40.0	Oh, I'm still unmuted.
0:44.0	I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It just went so bad, but I'm so proud of you. That's so Ravenclaw.
0:50.0	Shout out to teams high fidelity and fish bowl. That also won. Noah, you lost.
0:55.3	But you won something even more precious than free NPR coffee.
0:59.7	You won our hearts. Yes. And because of your indomitable and generous spirit today,
1:07.3	Noah Cowan, the honor of kicking off the show is yours. Take it away.
1:12.4	This is Noah from Washington DC. You're listening to shortwave.
1:18.0	From NPR.
1:21.2	Adriana Briscoe has probably forgotten more about butterflies than you or I will ever know.
1:28.0	Probably. Yes. That's a fair assessment.
1:32.3	She's a professor of biology and ecology at the University of California, Irvine.
1:37.1	And my lab studies the evolution of coloration and vision in butterflies.
	...

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