Hey, oligites. Hi, Alli Ward in your space. Hi, it's me. So, herbs. Let's talk about it. Herptology.

What is it? Okay, it's the study of amphibians, like noots and salamanders and all froggies and toads and reptiles, like tortoises and turtles and crocodiles. Also snakes, what? Huh? Don't worry about them. Don't worry about it.

Okay, listen, if you're afraid of the S word, we will address that. We will sue your fears for real. But herptology, generally, it's a lot of different animals. And technically it's the study of poikilo-thermic ectothermic tetrapods.

What are those words? Are they words? Yes, okay. I had to look it up, but I'm going to break it down.

Poikilo-thermic means an animal whose internal temperature varies considerably. Exothermic is when the regulation of your hot bod depends on external sources, like sunlight or a heated rock surface.

Now a tetrapod means forlegged, although I think of a toad and tell me, tell me those front two-armed arms. Like toads have hands, right?

Just a side note, we have since done a whole small-legged episode on toads called buphology, as well as one about body heat called thermophysiology. And those are both kids safe and linked in the show-nots.

Also, if this is your first ever allergies episode, small-legged are shorter, kid-friendly versions of full-length episodes. So if you are not in need of a g-rated version, the full-length version is linked below.

Okay, so her patology. Now her patology comes from the Greek hair pain. Same word to creep, but once you understand the splendor of green and scaly critters, you'll be like, aw man, I too want a reptile condo in my home. Okay, on theologist.

So I was a fan of this doctor on the website, twitter.com, for a while. I always respected his really swift, kind of somewhat gruff identifications of snakes from these like blurry, probably mid-running away photos that people would send him.

I thought one day I want to hang out with this person. I want to ask about his love of snakes and herbs. It's one of my favorite interviews ever. I love it. We address turtles, snake IDs, the fair of snakes, frog storms, it's great. So get ready to let herbs into your heart with polyologist and herpatologist, Dr. David Steen.

What kind ofologist do you identify with like a necologist, a wildlife biologist, a herpatologist? What do you call yourself?

It depends on who I'm talking to. In general, I like to think of myself as a wildlife ecologist and conservation biologist. So I study how wildlife interact with other species and their surroundings, but most of the work that I do relates to amphibians and reptiles. And that's where the herpatology comes in.

So are you herpatologist? Yeah, we can go with that. Okay. Yeah, I study amphibians and reptiles. So yeah, I think it would be accurate to call me herpatologist.

I became aware of you on Twitter because you're like fire when it comes to snake IDs. Like someone will send you the Sasquatch equivalent of like it looks like a rope from half of a field away and you're like, yeah, that's a copperheaded.

Like, how do you know? How did you get so good at that? Well, I like to think that it's kind of like how you recognize friends and family. You're not necessarily. It's true though. You're not necessarily looking at the length of someone's mustache or the color of their eyebrows.

You're just you just recognize them. And and I think that is how I see the snakes. So you don't necessarily have to. Well, I don't necessarily have to look at for those really specific features. It's just an overall feel.

If someone's like, who's this? And you're like, that's an Janet. It's just boom. That's exactly right.

Well, why are people so freaked out by snakes, reptiles and amphibians? I personally, I'm down with them. I'm totally fine with them.

But why are some people freaked out by them? Like, have you found?

Yeah, we don't have the answer for that. But it's definitely the case. Believe it or not, you're not the first person to tell me that you know somebody that scared of snakes.

Shocking.

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