Late-Night Talk: Nikita Bedov. Rethinking Food Chains: What Happens When Predator Eats Predator?

Students and Graduates!

Nikita is a PhD candidate in Biology at Swansea University who submitted his PhD on the behaviour and ecology of predator interactions, and working at two field sites in sub-Saharan Africa to quantify the famous fight between mongooses and snakes. He also has his YouTube channel, Diary of the Adventurer and the podcast Baffling Biology.

Nikita explores how mongooses and snakes flip the food chain, why threat discrimination is context-driven, and what long-term field data reveal about venom resistance and group defence. Along the way, Nikita shares his thoughts on funding, field logistics, science communication, and making space for creative projects during a PhD.

• mutual predation between mongooses and snakes in Africa
• threat discrimination shaped by movement, learning and context
• venom resistance in mongooses and pup vulnerability
• group mobbing against pythons versus solo risk
• field sites, habituation and camera-trap ecosystems
• self-funding, teaching work and practical trade-offs
• Diary of the Adventurer and Baffling Biology platforms
• science without hype and avoiding dramatization
• choosing supervisors, writing early and skill-building

Follow his YouTube channel Diary of the Adventurer: http://www.youtube.com/@diaryoftheadventurer

Nikita's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikita-bdeov

Baffling Biology: https://bafflingbiologypodcast.weebly.com/

Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

Students and graduates,

Have a break from this session by hearing a late-night talk I had with Michael Gerharz, PhD, about the impact of communication in your PhD and in public.

Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure!

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Chapters

• 0:00 Host Updates And Listener Feedback
• 11:48 Meet Nikita: Biologist And Field Filmmaker
• 22:21 Childhood Roots And Role Models
• 30:01 Why Africa And How The Field Works
• 39:01 Mutual Predation And Threat Discrimination
• 49:01 Venom Resistance And Pup Vulnerability
• 57:31 Group Defence, Hunting, And Python Battles
• 1:06:01 Life In The Field: Lions, Hippos, And Snakes
• 1:14:31 Funding, Self-Funding, And Making It Work
• 1:21:31 Diary Of The Adventurer And Baffling Biology
• 1:28:01 Communicating Science Without Hype
• 1:35:01 Culture, Travel, And Tracking Wildlife
• 1:42:01 Advice For Choosing And Surviving A PhD
• 1:50:01 Closing Reflections And Where To Follow

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 3:42

Hello students and graduates, welcome to PhD Launch, the podcast of late night talks in which PhDs have a drink and talk about their research topics. I'm your host Luigi, and I hope that you are having a fantastic week and going well throughout the first term of university. Which we're halfway towards the end of it. We've gone through the first two weeks of November already, and then comes December and Christmas, New Year's Eve, 1st of January, and exams. Time flies and we can't grasp it. Anyways, today's session is a late night talk with a PhD from Swanzi University. But first, I want to summarize a few things. I've started the first week of November with a new workshop to young people about languages and cultures as an MFL mentor. This workshop was talking about Portuguese food as well as food types around the world. This workshop was to show to Welsh young people that the food that we buy and eat comes from each one of the five continents of the world. And they were really surprised that some of the food they eat has some similarities in other countries. For example, mackerel is used in a Welsh cuisine to make fish dishes such as the baked and stuffed mackerel. Whereas in Portugal, mackerel is a popular fish type. We grill it and eat it with boiled potatoes, or fry it with stuffed food as well. Moving on, I have also scheduled more late night talks at PhD Lounge in the future with several guests with different research topics and side hustles that fulfill their PhD journey and post-PHD journey as well. Those talks are scheduled for December, but obviously they will be added for 2026, or maybe at least one talk that will still be released during the month, nevertheless. Until then, I cannot say much about who those guests are, but stay tuned for them when they will be released. Last but not least, I was checking my PhD Lounge YouTube account and I noticed a username who listened to my late night talk with PhD candidate at the time, David Fentur, about Arnold Bennett. To briefly say that listener gave a great constructive feedback to improve my questions and the flow of my conversation skills, mentioning eventually and appreciation with how the talk was conducted. This is what I appreciate about my listeners, regardless of their educational background, as they also have a voice and the skill to make such constructive feedback. Looking back to the video, I admit that I have no skin in the game in what comes to English literature and Arnold Bennett himself. As I researched about him with some of the bibliography that were at my range. Furthermore, I listened to every talk and individual session to spot some of the inconsistencies and repetitions I may speak, reviewing them and trying a different approach to speak clearly and backed with examples. So far, I think I have improved in preparing my questions and sharing my thoughts right after with my guests, not saying that the day will be perfect, and are subjected to criticism, even from the guests themselves, who sometimes give me feedback as well. Practice and time make better the content I share with you, and to all of you, especially to this listener. Thank you for your constructive feedback and also to tune in into PhD Lounge on YouTube, in this case. And with this small catch-up, it's now the time to introduce my new late night talk. As I said above, this new guest is a PhD candidate from Swansea University who recently submitted his PhD and his research topic is in the field of biology. And specifically, this candidate focuses on the behavior and ecology of predator interactions, focusing on fights between venomous snakes and mongooses. Besides the research, the candidate has been in two field works in sub-Saharan Africa to quantify their standoffs between these two wild animals, and is also a photographer and wildlife presenter, having a small YouTube channel about documenting wild animals called The Diary of the Adventurer, and a podcast about biology named Baffling Biology. I'll add every information on the show notes. As a note, this late night talk was recorded at a different venue as I booked the podcast studio room of Swans University, hoping to use it more often before submitting my thesis with the corrections based on the feedback of my examiners. So, students and graduates, grab yourselves seats, drinks and snacks, and get ready to tune in to my doctoral bout with Nikita Bedov.

SPEAKER_01: 14:31

Hi, thanks for having me. Um yeah, I think I'm as far as I know, I'm the first biologist on your podcast as well. Yes. I think you had one scientist talking about SETI and like astrophysics, which was super cool, but now you're delving into biology for once.

SPEAKER_05: 14:44

Yeah, so first of all, you look sharp today. You just came on purpose for coming here this time at a different environment, and it's not where I usually record my sessions and my late night talks. But now you came here sharp as always. How do you feel?

SPEAKER_01: 15:02

Like wearing the touching the couch as well.

SPEAKER_00: 15:06

Yeah, no, it's it's good. And no, I think it's it's a fantastic podcast that you're doing. It's a really good idea.

SPEAKER_05: 15:11

Okay, thank you so much for the compliment. And that's that's about it. What PhD Loungers is trying to get many people as much as possible to share their research, but also sharing their experiences that fulfill their journey, not just sitting down doing the research, go home, and that's it, like a nine to five job. But it takes more beyond that, and after all, this is a human work that you are doing. So for sure. And also for whoever is listening at Aruba, we're gonna give a shout-out as well. Because do you remember when we were talking about we were checking on the stats? And oh, you have a listener from Aruba, and we're sort of laughing on that.

SPEAKER_01: 15:50

Yeah, whoever that is, get in touch. Um, would be cool to know. Maybe go visit Aruba.

SPEAKER_05: 15:56

Yes, and uh, I think there's some cool stuff to do in Aruba. I'm not knowledgeable at all. Please don't not bash me for whoever's listening, including from Aruba. But if you are from there and tuning in to PhD Lounge, then yeah, please give us insights on uh what to do there as a tourist.

SPEAKER_01: 16:15

Lots of wildlife there. I mean, they have the reefs and all the ecosystems are fantastic.

SPEAKER_00: 16:20

Do you have uh an example to give so of wildlife over there? I mean, in terms of the coral reefs there and everything, it's a huge diversity in in Aruba and I mean in other places around the equator as well. But uh yeah, no, they have like all the sharks, corals, all the sorts of tropical fish that you can imagine.

SPEAKER_05: 16:36

Maybe that's one I need to ask Jack Cooper. Oh, yeah, yeah, because he's a specialist in sharks, and we can't talk about he can talk about that topic, including shark nado, the few scientific the sci-fi film. Yeah, we'll have a lot to say for that. So, as you said, you're a biologist and you've submitted recently your your PhD thesis. How how do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_00: 17:03

With submitting, it's it's a mix of emotions. I think there's still a lot to do, and I'm aware of that. Also, for trying to get publications out of it, it's a big thing of anyone's PhD. Yeah, because of course to be competitive later on, you need publications, especially in the scientific world. And um, yeah, that's it, that will be a big focus for me. But no, but it's it's it's weird because you've been working on this for so long, and there's still so many things that you know I think I can improve. Yeah, and I think it's something important, I guess, to consider for people that you kind of almost have to hold back and you think, like, okay, this is good enough. It's good enough. You submitted, it's fine, you pass the PhD, you can then work on it more if you want to, and it's fine, and you can kind of move on. And it's just kind of getting into that mindset for me is quite difficult. It tends to be quite a perfectionist or something, so yeah, it's but I mean it's fantastic now, having a bit more freedom.

SPEAKER_05: 17:53

Yeah, and you also think you get entertained because you're doing that, and then you're adding other things as well that fulfills as we were saying initially, to fulfill that doctoral journey, but then that comes and comes to an end and say, Okay, what now? Right? Yeah, so I mean at that stage as well when now I've passed the vibe a month ago and say now I have the corrections, and then okay, what's going to happen now? That's that's the mysterious that's the mysterious journey that comes to us in the PhD context, of course. And so probably you're gonna feel that as well after pa after passing the vibe.

SPEAKER_01: 18:31

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I need to figure out what I'm doing next.

SPEAKER_05: 18:35

Yeah, and so tell us about your background and where this interest in biology and especially the research you have done and about wildlife animals, including your hobby, you said you're a photographer as well. Um, where did this come from in order to decide that you in order for your decision to pursue a PhD?

SPEAKER_00: 19:03

Yeah, I mean, to be honest, my whole life since I was a baby, pretty much, I would you know try to catch animals and I catch lizards and play with them and frogs and things like that. And um also a huge credit, I mean, to my parents, especially to my mum, for allowing me always to keep pets at home. And when I was little, we had, I mean, like a chinchilla, we had a a snake at one point, we had fish and a rat and like a cat and all sorts of different things. And back home in Spain, also occasionally in uh in spring, we sometimes rescue like seagulls if they crash into buildings or something. Uh, we rescued a night jar once, which are these cool little birds, and released it in the mountains. Right. And so I've kind of always been exposed with two animals, and you just can't help but fall in love with them sometimes, you know, and it's really special. Also, when I was young, I grew up watching Steve Irwin. He was by far my biggest hero, was, is, and always will be, I think. He did just so much, and yeah, just no one can compare. Um, but I mean, obviously, there's many others as well. I watched Nigel Marvin, you know, Steve Baxhell, of course, the Sir David Attenborough and all of these people. And yeah, and I really wanted to follow, I mean, particularly Steve Irwin in his footsteps. And then later on as well, I started watching another guy called Austin Stevens, who's a herpetologist from Namibia originally. And he focused on snakes and he traveled the world looking for the most dangerous snakes. And you can see how it's inspired me. I mean, it's it's something fantastic, and that's kind of the sort of thing that I wanted to do. And then I made myself a challenge when I was uh 15 years old to I made a list of like the 15 coolest snakes that I considered at the time and gave myself the following 15 years to find them and kind of slowly have been working through the list. And yeah, so basically things like this that I've always kind of tried to spend as much time as I can in the natural world. And then with photography and filming as well, I think it's just it's a natural part of it because you're there with the animals, anyways. You're if you're working with them or you're finding them, like you you might as well film them, you know, you might as well photograph them. It doesn't really take that much more effort. I mean, obviously, it takes a huge amount of creativity and everything to be good. I don't claim to be a great photographer, but but it's something that really comes with it. And I do think also that most biologists, especially those who work in the field, I think also have a duty perhaps to do that sort of thing, to share the beauty of nature with people. Because most people nowadays are really isolated from nature, and that's the problem, right? Most of the global population lives in cities, you don't get nature, you know, and that's where the problem starts. That's where people are not appreciating nature and they're not respecting animals and not thinking of them as something to care about because they have no experience of them. Why would they? You know, that's why also actually zoos are quite important that you at least can find a connection with animals and showcase them that way. So, yeah, so all of this basically led me to always try and work with animals. That's really ultimately what I want to do. And yeah, then for the PhD, I mean, to be honest, also from a young age, I was always quite good at school. Um, and again, my parents, especially my mom, perhaps almost had the expectation that I would be quite erudite, quite scholarly, and and it worked out quite well in the end. So I always kind of assumed that I would end up doing something like this and going into academia, and it ended up happening and it ended up working out. So I think yeah, it was a kind of a ultimately so far a kind of a happy ending to all of this.

SPEAKER_05: 22:43

So you grabbed all that experience and then uh decide, okay, I need to do something with this, and getting getting inspiration from well, the big names all of it. I would assume did you also when you did when you were doing photography as well and taking pictures of animals, did you also get inspiration from Joel Sartori? Because he's he's a wow, he's a well-known photographer for National Geographic. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And did you also took some inspiration from the the the recent late Janet Goodall? Jane Goodall. Jane Good J Jane Goodall, yeah. Janet Goodall, Jane Goodall. Yes, yeah, she passed away recently.

SPEAKER_00: 23:20

Yes, no, and uh yeah, I mean Jane, especially for Jane, I have a huge amount of respect because she's one of those people that has spent most of her life out in the field working with the animals that she cared so deeply about, studying, yeah, particularly like chimpanzee, bonobo behavior, and dedicating her life to it. And she was working all the way until her death. I mean, she was still there on tour, you know, giving speeches and everything and inspiring people. Yes. And I mean, that's fantastic. Uh it's similar to Steve Urb. I mean, he died also doing what he loves. Yeah. And it's honestly that's like the best way to go. Um, you know, when when you're loving what you do. So, yes, no, for sure. Absolutely. And I think, and also going back to Joel, Joel Sartori and uh the photo art project, yeah, I think it's something really important. And again, it showcases like his aim for that is to try and photograph as many species as possible around the world to try and at least preserve them in in memory if if some of them even go extinct.

SPEAKER_05: 24:19

And even give it a brief knowledge of of the different animals that exist across the world that's never even species that are related to those predators, the mammals and the herbr herbivore.

SPEAKER_01: 24:34

Yeah, there's a huge diversity.

SPEAKER_05: 24:36

There's a huge diversity, and not that it's quite limited and doesn't reach us, at least from my concern, in the in the schools here, not just here, but across across the Western world, that probably we don't even know we even though even are the ones that were quite extinct throughout throughout history.

SPEAKER_00: 24:56

So yeah, for sure. And also in the Western world, to be fair, and really anywhere. I mean, as humans, yeah, which is to really vilify some animals as well, and that's the other problem, of course. Vilify. Yeah, I mean, particularly with with things like snakes. I mean, who likes, you know, most people are either afraid of snakes or they hate them or they kill them, or and it's a big problem around the world. Um with many other animals. I mean, same for sharks, same for uh bats and all these other things, you know, that we don't tend to instinctively like and yeah, and so people like that and efforts like that really help to try and promote it, and that's something that I would really love to do as well. I mean, ultimately, that's kind of the goal. And with the photography with all the filming and stuff that I do as well, it's to try and show these animals, particularly snakes, in a very kind of good light, hopefully, to people. Show that they're not as dangerous, they're not monsters, they just want to kind of be left alone in peace, same as as you and I, you know, same as humans.

SPEAKER_05: 25:52

And I think that's that is still a a long road to to solve this this problem, which is endless realistically speaking. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. And so why uh focusing in Africa? Is it the whole continent or specifically in the in the middle of Africa, eastern, western, and even uh southern Africa? Is it is it where because you said oh we are studying uh mere cats and uh cobras, pythons, different types of uh cobra models, and also uh of meerkats. But why specifically in these particular areas of Africa? Is it because are there a huge amount of meerkat and cobra cobra models population there?

SPEAKER_00: 26:45

Yeah, I mean, first of all, to be honest, I so Africa has always been kind of to me at least personally, sort of the like the last frontier of of wilderness in the in the world. It's I mean you you grow up learning about it, right? About all these incredible animals. I mean, it's really the only continent also still having megafaunas, having like large predators and large animals, right, which have pretty much gone extinct in most other places in the world. So it's you know, it's such a mecca for truly exotic and truly sort of dangerous animals. So I yeah, and and and this is the thing, right? So when I started my PhD, I had never been to mainland Africa before. Wow. My first experience was when I landed in Johannesburg Airport for my first field season. That was the first time I ever like set foot in mainland Africa. I did, I really had no idea what to expect. And honestly, I fell in love with this place. I mean, particularly the Kalahari in Southern Africa, in um South Africa, and you know, you can go across the border to Namibia and Botswana as well. And it's just it's such a fantastic place. I I have really fallen in love with it. I would love to go back if I can, any way I can find for going back. But yeah, and then the thing for for my research is to really understand the behaviors that I was looking for, you need to be able to observe these animals in the wild. And that's really hard because obviously wild animals are not going to let you just sit there and watch them. You know, most of them are scared, and so they will go away and whatever. So, what you need are habituated populations.

SPEAKER_04: 28:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:20

What me, which uh what this means is that they are used to humans being there. They don't care about the human being there, they're still exhibiting natural behaviors that you can observe. And there aren't that many of those around the world, particularly for yeah, I mean, particularly for for wild animals like like mongooses and things like that. The main ones are in Southern Africa. So you have the Miakat project in South Africa. You there was the dwarf mongoose project also in South Africa that's recently closed, the banded mongoose project in Uganda, where I also worked. So these are quite rare field sites. So you don't really have much choice of where to go, to be fair, if you want to do this sort of work. Otherwise, the other option is you have to set it up from scratch. Yeah. And within a PhD, it's just not feasible. You don't have enough time. It takes maybe decades to set up a field site like this properly. True. And also then gain enough data on all the individuals because that's the other power of this, and something I looked at is you know, what's the actual, for example, long-term mortality? What are they dying from in this field site? And we can only gain that by studying the populations for generations. And the MiaCat project has existed, for example, for over 30 years now. Oh, so you have 30 years of data. So it's quite recent. I mean to an extent. Okay, I guess for someone who studies ancient history, yes. For someone in biology, no, this is a long time. I mean, you know, most field sites you set up for maybe a couple of years and then it dies out because the funding goes away.

SPEAKER_05: 29:49

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

Whereas this has really been a huge effort to establish it properly, keep it running, always have volunteers out there as well that collect all this long-term data. So they go out every day and they monitor all the mere cats, what they're doing, all their behaviors. If any die, then what do what have they died from? You know, if it's predation or disease or something like that. So we have all of this data, and it's a huge, incredible data set to work on. And then you can answer questions like, you know, what's actually impacting the population? What role does predation pray? What role do snakes prey um play on predating them? And and so it's really easy to do this kind of work in a place like that. So it wasn't much of a choice, but I mean, but also as I say, I was always kind of enamored with the idea of going to a place like that. So it just kind of it was a happy marriage of convenience and and just passion to to go there.

SPEAKER_05: 30:42

Wow. And yeah, for us ancient historians, we we take we take we treat um data and well data in sense of archaeological data, literary data. Oh, this is too old. So it's been constantly updating. But from what you said, that has to do with the periodical mutation of the behavi the behaviors of Mirka and their by and their uh biologic their biological uh composition as well, I would I would assume, right? And because you said the study studying the cobras, the pythons, and their interactions. You were talking about predation, which we can we can speak, we can ask that I can ask you that about now because you said mutual predation system. And how what is that? What's mutual predation systems? Could you explain that and then we'll go for the other one as well?

SPEAKER_00: 31:38

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, I mean it's something that's because it's quite central to my work, I will probably keep referring to, so it's good to define. I mean, so the central idea, I think, also to talk a bit about this idea of threat discrimination is also quite key to all this to understand. So, first of all, I mean, this is something universal, really, to all life, is you have to be able to know what's a danger, what's a threat to you or not. You have to be able to distinguish it, right? The same as you and I, you know, if you're trying to cross the street and their car is coming, you have to know if like you can run across or better let the car pass or whatever. So it's the same principle. If an animal faces a potential threat, they have to be able to figure out how to respond to it. And in most cases, it's quite simple to think about. You know, you have prey species, which are pretty much most animals, get hunted and killed and eaten by something else. Sure. There's always something bigger than you, you know. Um, you can think of yeah, any any sort of example in in the world, it's literally anything, including plants as well. They get obviously predated on by by herbivores. Um, so all pretty much all life has to evolve ways to pick up on threats to distinguish them, but also first to just kind of see what the threat is.

SPEAKER_05: 32:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 32:54

You can think of all different ways. I mean, visual, for example, detection of threats, olfactory, so smells, if you can smell a predator or something, if you can hear them as well. All the senses basically that you use, that you and I also use to see the world around us, we are trying to distinguish, you know, what's a danger and what's not. And so animals do the same thing. Everything does this. And you can imagine in this very dynamic and dangerous world where animals live in in the wild, you can get killed very easily. You can, you know, a predator can come along and snatch you up, and that's it, and you're gone. And there's no more survival, there's no more reproduction for you. So that's it. So you're trying to avoid that. And so all animals try to do this, right? But this idea of mutual predation slightly changes this a little. And it's the idea, basically, that you have species that don't just follow this normal idea of uh of a food chain where you have, you know, almost like a ladder with rungs of the of the levels of animals. So, for example, you have the plants at the bottom, herbivores feed on the plants, carnivores feed on the herbivores, then you have like apex predators that feed on the carnivores, right? So you can imagine you can build up a food chain, right? For example, in like in the sea, right? You have like anchovies are really small fish. They get eaten by sardines, sardines get eaten by like a bigger fish, like a barracuda or something. The barracuda gets eaten by a shark. That's the food chain. But you can also find examples, and this is kind of the central thing to my to my thesis, what led to it, what makes it, I think, quite intriguing, is that you have cases where you have species that feed on each other. So there's no this food chain, it's not linear, but it's almost like a circle that you have two species, for example, like mongooses and snakes, that can very easily eat each other and kill each other in the wild. Sometimes a big snake, you know, can can go hunting and can catch a mongoose and eat the mongoose, but the mongoose can also go and catch the snake and eat the snake. So it can go both ways, and this makes it really challenging at first to understand, perhaps. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's actually quite simple that it's still all about this threat discrimination. If you're a mongoose and you see a snake, it can be your prey, yeah. So you can potentially eat it, but also it can eat you, so it makes it a very weird situation.

SPEAKER_05: 35:13

Yeah, but for us that's a bit confusing because we we, as people who are not specialists in biology or have very limited knowledge about biology, with just the external information of the outside snakes have bigger uh teeth, they have two teeth that are comp with that are filled with venom as a defense mechanism, and they are the real predators, and that affects humans. So that's that's that's information that we we receive that they are the predators, but the mongooses or any type of mongooses, you said yellow mongooses. Damn it, I forgot the other one. Yeah, yeah, all the different species, all the different species and uh banded mongooses. That was what I was looking for. We tend to we tend we tend not to know, or we do not have the enough information about okay, this might be predators as well, unless we watch YouTube videos and awakes our curiosity to watch that to watch them because for us as humans, I'm speaking from uh as an as an uneducated person and in the field that you that you've researched extensively and hopefully will be for more years for more decades, that we see to them it's like complimenting the pussy cat from Shrek, for example, or complimenting a cat, say say like the cat, oh he's he's cute, he's docile, until the cat sharps his claws, and the moon gooses should show show their teeth and their and their claws as well. I was watching this now that I'm trying to understand, I was watching recently a video on uh yellow moongooses and like the simplest uh cobras, the cobra cob Cobra Capella, yeah, right? Rattlesnake, right? Oh, oh yeah. Yeah, and like showing the whole thing and the venom. It didn't affect, but uh the animal was a bit scared and got his mind was playing tricks on him because he just hit a bit of the leaf that was in front. He assumed the mongoose assumed that it was uh the venom or the snake bite. So that's what we don't we trying to trying here to understand how can we perceive that whether uh there's a threat on both sides and the food chain, as you said, isn't linear, it always keeps uh changing all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_00: 37:36

Yeah, I think I mean, first of all, that's really interesting to to hear from me as well, because in my mind, even before I started the project and everything, the mongooses were always portrayed as kind of the winners of these interactions.

SPEAKER_03: 37:49

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 37:49

Um, if you watch, for example, any like National Geographic. Graphic documentaries or something like that, or Meerkat Manor, which was a famous production as well. They always show and they over-dramatize this so much. I mean, they show the Meerkats, for example, like swarming and mobbing a cobra together, and they always are shown almost like to win and chase it away and whatever. So to me, it's always was kind of the opposite. The mongoose is always the victors, they're kind of the bigger predators than the snakes. So it's interesting to hear the the the opposite. But I think, yeah, so to I guess to answer your question, it's in terms of threat discrimination. I guess what we've learned from this perhaps is that it's not static, it's very much context and experience dependent for these guys, for the mongooses. So they learn how to interact with snakes. And in the wild, you see this as well. You will see mere cats, for example, the group come and interact with a snake, and the pups will come. Yes. And they will try and interact as well, and they will watch the adults fighting the snake. And so I think there's definitely an element of learning. However, what I've also found, because I did experiments with these model presentations in captivity as well. So I presented captive mongooses and zoos with fake snakes and saw how they interact with them. And even then, they still defended in some cases against uh, for example, the Cobra model, and they try to predate the harmless snake. So even in captivity, they're interacting with these, which means that there's also a genetic component because there's no experience in captivity, they don't have any sort of cultural learning or any prior really experience with with real snakes in a zoo. So it's I think it's definitely both. Uh, what we're showing is that it is quite complex in that sense in how they interact.

SPEAKER_05: 39:35

Does sorry, Nikita, does that also uh happen with cobra models when they are in captivity?

SPEAKER_00: 39:44

Yeah, so that's the thing. Yeah, exactly. So so in captivity it's less, and it depends on the species as well. So that's the other thing. So both in captivity and in the wild, uh-huh, what I also try to do is do these experiments with different species of mongooses. I had three different species in captivity: mere cats, banded mongooses, and dwarf mongooses. And then in the wild, I had the yellow mongooses, bandits, and and mere cats. And comparing the two and comparing between the species is quite interesting because they reacted differently. For example, in captivity, bandit mongooses didn't interact at all with the cobra and the python models. And really, with most of the models, they didn't show much behavior at all towards them. They maybe came and kind of forged around it and they didn't really care. In the wild, it was completely different. In the wild, they came and then they interacted, they tried to hunt the cobra model, they were a bit more alert around the python model, so it works a lot better. So there perhaps there is actually a very strong experience dependence in the species. In Merecats, it was the opposite. In mere cats, in both captivity and the wild, they had basically the same reaction. They defended against the python and the cobra, they tried to predate the harmless snake, they try to predate the bird model, which I had as a kind of true prey control. And yeah, so for them, perhaps it's a lot more innate in how they respond.

SPEAKER_05: 41:00

So quite often a biological inheritance, yeah, exactly exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 41:05

So something genetic, something that they they have from from birth, pretty much, an instinct.

SPEAKER_05: 41:10

But they also are I also saw this, and I was one I was wondering if you can confirm. Are they also the mongooses, the type the those types of mongooses, are they also do they have like an inheritance from hyenas?

SPEAKER_00: 41:23

From hyenas? Um, I mean, okay, so evolutionarily they are closely related to hyenas, you're right. So hyenas are kind of the sister group, as we call it in in phylogenetics, so they're kind of the closest relatives that are not mongooses, right? Are hyenas actually in that whole clade, and you have fossils as well in Madagascar. Um sorry, I laughed because they remember the film. Yeah, yeah. So like yeah, the fossils like from the film, exactly. And they look, and even like from the film, if you remember, they look kind of like a mongoose, right? They're kind of just like weird mix between like a fox and a cat kind of thing, which pretty pretty much what what mongooses are. Um and yeah, so so they're closely related, but but they are different, so they share a common ancestor that existed um more than I think about 15 million years ago, and they split. And so since then, for all of this time, they evolved separately and they evolved obviously into quite different species. Yeah, so there are some similarities overall, but also some major differences. For example, in terms of their interactions with snakes, mongooses, all mongooses share resistance to snake venom, so they can get bitten by a snake and they will survive. If the same snake bit a human, we would probably die because it's actually quite high, highly toxic venom. But for mongooses, there are various different mutations for neurotoxins, for example, which are the venoms of things like a cobra, venoms that attack your nervous system. They actually have a mutation on the neuron, on the like postsynaptic part of the neuron, where you have basically these like neurotransmitters come, the chemicals that send signals between nerve cells. And usually they would come and they would kind of attach and activate the next neuron down the line.

SPEAKER_05: 43:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 43:10

What venoms do is they attach themselves and they overstimulate the nerves. And so, for example, if it happens to your heart, you go out into cardiac arrest, your muscles contract and they cannot release. Okay. And so you just die almost instantly because your muscles just cannot keep um relaxing and contracting. And what what mongooses have is actually a sort of like a spike in that place that allows the neurotransmitter, the normal chemical, to still come in and interact with the nerves, but the venom protein is actually blocked and it cannot go into that place and cannot activate the nerves. So it protects them from the effects of the of the venom protein. And so all mongooses share this, for example. We we don't, hyenas don't, so actually, closely related other branches of mammals don't have this, but mongooses do, very likely because of their co-evolution and their interactions with snakes over all of this time.

SPEAKER_05: 44:00

So probably they get bitten quite often. Yeah, when they go to hunting, and then when it comes to that, their their system is so adapted to the wild. I'm not sure if because you said in captivity it is a different story, right?

SPEAKER_00: 44:15

Yeah, but they still have this venom resistance to captivity, so that's purely genetic. So there's no experience based on that. They all they all have it, and that's why all the species, even mongooses that no longer really interact with snakes, they still have retained this this mutation, sure, this trait, because it's still it's still really useful. In case you do get bitten, it's a huge advantage not to die, you know, obviously. So yeah, so it's it's something that's quite important for them. Okay, they still get affected by it. This is another thing that we were able to look at with the long-term data as well, is that if they get bitten, what actually happens? What injuries do they get from snake bites?

SPEAKER_05: 44:51

But from all types of venom from the from the different types of snake?

SPEAKER_00: 44:56

Yeah, so they have. I mean, it's we don't it's not actually known whether they have resistance to all snake venoms. Okay. The one we know about for sure that has been studied is neurotoxins, sure. So which are venoms of elapids like cobras, um, mambas, for example, also are neurotoxic. There hasn't been any study done on resistance to, for example, viper venom, which have hemotoxins, for example, which attack your blood, yeah, or cytotoxins which attack um like tissues and muscles and and parts of your body, like that. We don't know. It is very likely, however, because they do survive those bites as well, and they survive them quite easily, which indicates that they must have, they absolutely must have some sort of resistance, that we just don't know how it works. Wow. And then how that affects pups. For pups, it's different. So for pups, what I've seen from the data is that so there obviously they have resistance, but it works much like our immune system, right? So it's something that becomes stronger as we become bigger, as we become older. Immune response, for example, in babies, even in humans, if you get an illness, it usually affects babies more than adults. They are more at risk of diseases than adults tend to be. With obviously there are some exceptions, but as a general sense, you know, babies tend to be a bit weaker. And it's the same for mongooses. So for pups, what I found from the data is that they have 100% mortality. So if a pup gets bitten by a venomous snake, it will die. There have been no survivors of bites. Whereas in adults, the survival goes up to about 50%, which are actually pretty good odds. So it's basically 50-50 if you survive a potentially lethal envenomation, sure, you know, that kills that would kill a human for sure. You know, among this has 50-50 chance, so it's quite good. So so there is some variation. So what I think likely happens is that yeah, pups are just too weak. They can't their uh their body's not strong enough to survive all the symptoms that they get from the envenimation, whereas adults tend to be better and this resistance helps them. But as I say, it's not bulletproof, so they will some of them will die from it, or they will get major injuries. For example, usually if they get bitten, they have a lot of swelling.

SPEAKER_05: 47:13

Uh they get a they get a defect from as long as they grow up.

SPEAKER_01: 47:18

Yeah, perhaps.

SPEAKER_05: 47:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that could be. So, how long is the time the how long does it take for a mongoose to to grow? From pup till adult face?

SPEAKER_00: 47:28

To adult. So they have different stages of life. For example, for for mere cats, they from the moment they're born until about one month of age, they tend to stay mostly in the burrow. And what they do actually, because they're group living mammals, parts of the group, some individuals will stay behind and they will babysit the pups, which is really cute. And so they'll stay and kind of put look after them and protect them. And so then, and then after that, they will start to come out, they have like first emergence that's recorded, and then they will start kind of trying to forge a little bit around the burrow, and then yeah, and then later on, um, usually by around like three months of age or it varies a little bit, they start forging and becoming a little bit more independent. But even so, really, until much later, until about six months, they will have individuals looking after them, and they will kind of chaperone the pups around and they will feed them as well. So if an adult finds prey, it will give it to a pup. And that's how they teach pups as well. And pups learn from adults directly as well, by watching how they, for example, kind of disembowel a scorpion. Scorpions are also venomous and highly dangerous, and you have to know how to attack it and how to kind of neutralize the scorpion, how to bite its tail off so it cannot sting you. And pups will watch the adults and they will learn from that behavior, and then they can do it themselves later on.

SPEAKER_05: 48:53

But that's also interesting because they start from they start small. Because the small the scorpion is a small is a small is a smaller animal in terms of size than the cobra itself. So they don't go for the for the for the bigger prize, I'd say. And usually and yeah, who does and probably who usually does that aren't female mongooses, the mothers that take the pups to the to to hunt. And then they as you said they hunt for them and the pups observe. So they're probably going to start first with the scorpion and how to retrieve this retrieve the the venomous sting in order for them to okay, let's start off dissecting the scorpions at least in that you can get the share of this or that.

SPEAKER_00: 49:35

Yeah, so that it varies a little bit. So, first of all, actually, most mongooses are insectivores, meaning that their main prey, their main diet, is actually insects.

SPEAKER_05: 49:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 49:47

Uh, most of them don't tend to go for snakes anyway. It's more on these kind of rare occasions where they see that they can overpower the snake than they can try. But it's also, as I say, it's a huge risk. So that's where all this like threat discrimination, all of this comes into play because it's a lot more dangerous. If you have all of the safer food to eat, you know, like crickets and worms and scorpions and things like that, then you obviously focus on that more. You don't really want to risk and try and overpower a big dangerous snake. So most of their food comes from insects, especially termites, for example, in in southern Africa. That's a big food source. But scorpions, I mean, compared to a mere cat pup, which is maybe kind of like when they're born, I mean, when they emerge as well, they're kind of the length of maybe like your index finger, not much bigger than that. Yeah, a scorpion they can grow quite big as well. It can almost be the same size as a pup, you know, um, a really big scorpion. So it's actually quite a big prey item for them. Um, so they start they try to start even smaller than that and build up to a scorpion. Sure. And then, yeah, but it's that I mean, that's even as for adults, that's one of their favorite foods. Scorpions, for some reason, are super tasty to them. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_05: 50:55

I I didn't try that myself. Well, I think we we ain't gonna even try that. Because I mean when you see Scorpion that thing is ugly and then he's so venomous. I'm gonna even try because we can also we can also die. I mean, it's like the human assumption of it, as we were saying initially at at the beginning of the uh of the of our talk, but and then saying well scorpions can stink and kill humans as well. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Right? Yeah, yeah. Tell tell us a time that you went to when you went to Africa in South Africa or somewhere in the in the continent where you had to study it to study uh these behaviors, the the snake bites, the captivity mongo capta uh captivity mongooses.

SPEAKER_00: 51:47

Habituated mongooses, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 51:48

Yes. And just tell us about that experience and then how you tried to make that uh understandable for your feet. I know you haven't the Vival yet, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 52:03

Yeah, I mean, so first the experience itself, as I say, I mean it was it was magical. I really yeah, have have truly fallen in love with the place. But it was difficult. I mean, on the organization side of things, yeah, it was quite tricky as well. And I think this is something perhaps quite important to bring up for PhD students in general, especially in sciences and in more practical sciences and like like biology tends to be. There is also this whole consideration of you know trying to organize experiments and how to conduct them. And and it's difficult. It's it's it's tricky, especially if you don't have much funding or you don't have much experience or something like that, then it can be quite difficult. You also have to deal with all the ethics, of course, because well-being of the animals is really important to us. For well, at least some animals still ethics hasn't caught up with like insects and stuff like that. Sure. As far as ethics is concerned, they don't have feelings.

SPEAKER_01: 52:53

But anyway, um, let's not go into that.

SPEAKER_00: 52:56

But um, yes, but for things like mongooses, of course, they are mammals, they're sentient. So, you know, so you have to pass all these checks, and field work itself is really hard to organize because it's really unpredictable. They're wild animals at the end of the day. You know, you don't know when you're gonna be able to find them or do your experiments. The weather might change, you know, it might start raining or something, they will hide in the burrows, sure, or they're just having a bad day or something, or an eagle, an eagle flies overhead and they just all freak out, and then you can't do your experiments. So it's all these are really make it quite difficult, but very dynamic. For me, it's something that I love. I mean, this is what makes it interesting.

SPEAKER_04: 53:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_00: 53:32

But I'm aware that it's not for everyone, and it is something that you need to consider. Uh there's more difficulties, perhaps, in this way with experimental science. Um, that tends to be a lot more unpredictable, perhaps, than having already well-established sources that you can go to, you know, like your, you know, or you can go to like Almira or or like a big city and study the the history and find the resources that they had and everything. Whereas, yeah, this tends to be slightly more unpredictable. But yeah, then for the experience itself, it's yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was, as I say, some tricky aspects, but in the end, we had I managed to reach some good agreements with uh the managers of the field sites. I was allowed to go out there and do my experiments. I worked in exchange part-time for them. It helps them to collect their long-term data, which honestly also was a fantastic experience, and yeah, just gives you more opportunity to spend time with the animals, and that was really good. And yeah, I think in general, it's as I say, it can be a little tricky and can be a bit scary at first, seeing like, oh, how do I organize this for a PhD project? Um, but I think it came together and yeah, it it worked quite well. And for building up the thesis, also, I mean it's it's it's tricky because you go from kind of running around in the fields chasing after snakes and and mongooses and everything, and then suddenly you have to put this together into a thesis that's cohesive, that makes sense, that presents all these findings in a way that you can then yeah defend in in the vibe as well and tell other people about. And that's also quite difficult, and that's a skill that's yeah, I I had to learn. I can't say that I was particularly good at it, but it's something that's obviously you you improve through the experience.

SPEAKER_05: 55:20

But you had to you didn't have to run after the mongooses, right? You just like going in, going. No, you do, you do.

SPEAKER_00: 55:25

I mean, especially for yellow mongooses, man, those things go you have to run, like really going after them. I mean, okay, so so with mere cats, technically you're not uh you're not allowed to run around them because it can scare them. Okay. With the yellow mongooses, however, yeah, you have to like if a yellow mongoose starts going off into the bush, if you don't run after it, like if you don't move fast, okay, you're maybe not running, you're trying not to run, not to scare the animal, but like you have to move fast, otherwise it's like it's thick a bush. You're gonna lose the mongoose, and then good luck finding it again. Then you have to get out your like what we'll use as telonics, so it's like a big radio antenna that you carry around with you. And the mongooses have a radio collar which emits a radio signal, and the antenna picks it up, and you have this receiver, so you can move the antenna around and you can pick up the direction of the individual, sure, and the intensity of the signal increases the closer you are, so you can know basically your distance away and where they are. Yeah, so that's how we find them. The in the old days when they didn't have those radio callers, that was even harder. Then you just kind of go into the bush, and how do you find like a small mongoose in in in you know in the African savannah? It's it's it's hard. That's why they habituated them as well, so that you can actually even call them. They have this like yum-yum scall that they do. Okay, uh, so you go like yum yams, and and the mongoose will will run up to you because it will expect a bit of food. They give them like a little bit of egg, for example. Okay, you boil the eggs in the morning and you take them with you, and you give it a bit of egg as a as a reward for for coming. And yeah, and then it eats the egg and then it forgets about you, and then it starts forging. So, yeah, so sometimes you have to run.

SPEAKER_05: 56:57

I mean, it's so it's a kind of a mini cap uh captivity aspect then. I would be no so I not say to the extremist way, but like in a in a sense of okay, this yum yum timing, yeah, you get the yum yum, and then in order for them to memorize the where the to to know where they at to catch the sounds and not and all of that, they have to they have to give them a yum yum and then yeah, or use the video.

SPEAKER_00: 57:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, it's it was super fun. I'd be a little bit careful about phrasing it that way. I mean they're not captive, they can go if they want to. Yeah. And equally they don't need to interact with with the researchers, they don't have to do that. They, you know, they they get absolute freedom of what they do and what happens to them as well. I mean, if a predator comes along, you're not going to stop the predator either. So you're allowing nature to take its course as much as you can. However, obviously, there is very naturally an effect of you being there. So I do believe also that you know, all the volunteers and everyone being there with the mongoose groups and following them around does reduce, for example, predation a little bit, particularly from aerial predators, because a bird is not gonna come and attack them if there's like big scary human next to them.

SPEAKER_05: 58:10

But then increases the the the the threat discrimination. Does that increase?

SPEAKER_00: 58:15

I don't think no, so I don't think it affects that that much because they don't perceive us as a as a threat, okay, and they still perceive all the natural threats as they would. So I don't think their behavior changes that much in general. So that's I think it's the good thing. That's why we can do all these experiments. We're still getting very wild and very natural responses, just that they are used to the humans being there, right?

SPEAKER_05: 58:40

But they also when they put the uh the radio communicators, as you said, don't does that also carry a camera a camera.

SPEAKER_00: 58:52

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_05: 58:53

So no GoPros at all.

SPEAKER_00: 58:55

Um so we have camera traps um in some of the boroughs, and also now what they did recently at the Kalahari field site is they they've put up a whole grid system of camera traps across the whole field site, spaced out, I think it's one kilometer between each camera facing um east and west. Um so you can cover the whole reserve, and the idea for that is actually just to get um some sort of idea for what other animals are out there and at what numbers. So actually to start building up this image of the whole ecosystem together and the more general processes that may be going on, how these animals may be interacting, building actually into mutual predation as well, into all these is really getting this wider picture of what's going on in the food web as a whole, like all of these different interactions, what other animals there may be, other predators, other prey items that we may not otherwise observe because they are shy, and all the other animals there are not habituated to humans. So they will run away and they will hide away from you. It's only the mongooses that we can observe. So this will help a lot. But no, in terms of putting cameras on mongooses, I think for now it's it will be way too tricky. They have put actually uh microphones on them though. Okay. So they have put uh like yeah, literal little little microphones, and you can record their vocalizations.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:18

True.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:18

And because they're social, they do use a lot of different vocalizations. Wow, they have almost like their own language for for for communicating, and you can record this and you can play it back to them as well. So you can record an individual, for example, giving an alarm call, and then you can play it back on a speaker and watch the group's reaction, and they will react in in many cases as if it was that individual calling. And they will like scatter or whatever the the correct response is, they they will do that. So that has been done.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:48

Oh, that's nice, and uh isn't it's quite advanced in terms of trying to do the research, but also they do that not just to communicate but see how they behave towards one another, isn't it? But how how does that also uh influence do they also communicate when going in a group hunt towards cover models or any other sorts of any other sources of food?

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:16

So in a way, mongooses don't well at least mere cats don't tend to hunt in groups, as in so they go foraging together in the group. But in terms of catching the prey, it is kind of a you know a zero-sum game in the sense that like if one finds a prey item, he will just catch it and eat it himself. There isn't really a group hunting strategy, but there is group defense, so this is really the main power of living in a group, is that if you encounter a danger like a snake, they do come together and defend the group as this like massive mob against the snake. So that does happen. And for that, yes, they use vocalizations and they have very specific snake alarm calls that cause this mobbing response, okay, and all the individuals will stand up and they will come together and they will move in unison. It's almost like a wave, they will come towards the snake and like antagonizes and try to chase it away. And yeah, in in many cases, it is just more antagonism, they will try and scare it off so that it doesn't try and attack their pups, for example. Yeah, so try and defend the group. But obviously, in some cases, they will overpower it. In other cases, for abandoned mongooses, for instance, they are much bigger, they're one of the biggest mongoose species in the world, and they're a lot more powerful, and still they do most of their foraging on their own, but they can overpower snakes as a group, so that's where it becomes hunting, and this is where this kind of mutual predation flips back and forth. With pythons, for example, you have these one of the biggest snakes in the world, the African rock python. Um, it can grow easily up to five or six meters in length. You can imagine it's a powerful and they're just pure muscle, you know. Um they can constrict you and squeeze you very easily. Even a human they could kill easily if they if you know if they went for it. Um, so they are a major predator and they do kill and eat um mongooses. But the thing is, if it's a single mongoose, yeah, it has no chance against the python. As a group, they can overpower them. And so what they do is yeah, they come together, they start biting and tearing at the python from all directions, yeah, and they kill it, and then they can eat it. So this is where these roles can reverse and they can flip back between them. So this is where you get the mutual predation, right? Okay. Sometimes the python wins in certain conditions, if it finds a single mongoose or something like that. In other cases, if you have a group of banded mongooses, and they can have huge packs as well. They have one of the biggest numbers of individuals, they can have up to 50 individuals. Can you imagine? Like 50 big like mongoose that weighs more than a kilo, like the size of a small dog. Yes, 50 of them swarming a python. I mean, you stand no chance.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:49

So that's an interesting insight because if we tell talk this to the non-biologists and non-specialists and who have a limited capacity of understanding this basic biological confrontation between moon goose and a python, we tend to think it's an individual. What about the rest of the literature? So you touch upon a point that in order to beat a gigantic animal, because a python is is most is sizable compared to a mere cat, a band of moon goose, whatever, the only way for them to eat them is through it through teamwork. Right? Yeah, yeah. And that's I think I never I didn't know about that, and I think that's that's a solution for them. They think so they think collectively, essentially, you know to take to take something down.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:39

Um I mean again, I I'll be a little careful in how how I would phrase that. They don't think collectively, they still think individually.

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:46

Individually, but like but going but yeah, but attacking collectively. So and this I understand the phrasing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:52

Um, but also just to clarify the point, because it is it's easy to then think that, right, they're working together, and so they are all very much like altruistic, they're doing it for the good of the group. They're actually not, I mean, that's not necessarily the case. They might still be very selfish in their self-interests, because still, if a python is around and you're a mongoose and you're living with your group, you know, one day the python might just like strike at you. So you really don't want the python there. So for your own self-benefit, you want the python gone or you want to kill it and eat it. Okay. So still they can be quite selfish, even in working together as a group, having very yeah, very individualistic drivers or motivators for their behavior. But yes, but exactly as you say, they do work together as this big group, and they are able to overpower the python. It depends a little as well. I mean, if they find, for example, a younger python, a baby python, then a single mongoose can take it out, and that happens a lot as well. Well we're saying here in during the adult phase. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah, and you can see, and again, you can think of many other examples, for instance, like dolphins versus sharks, something like that. Yeah, where you know, a great white shark or something like that may very easily overpower like a seal or a dolphin or something, but together they can really take them down. Yeah, and there's there's many cases like that, for example, with orcas as well. So killer whales are big apex predators. Sure. They often attack and bully, I mean, pretty much all other whales and all other dolphins and and can kill them and eat them. But when they work together as a pack, um, a group of dolphins, or like for example, uh uh whales or other species as well, they can overpower a killer whale by being in a group, by having this like group advantage. So yeah, so that's often, I mean, it's a very common theme in biology across many species. Working as a group, obviously, a team is is better than just one.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:48

Yeah. But they still think individually, no matter what.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:52

Yeah, yeah. At the end of the day, yeah. Because if uh I mean, also if you're aware of like uh some of the classic works like the selfish gene, you know, at the end of the day, evolution and and biology and survival is selfish. You are still uh thinking about your own reproduction and your own kind of evolutionary health in that way, of being able to pass on your genes. Sure. And so most I mean, really all in kind of life functions this way at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:19

Right. So in that case, I think we could have asked Disney production to add a bit of the realities of the life of Mirkat when uh doing again, doing past transmitting the Lion King once again. So in that case, because we have the team on as a mere cat, yeah, it would be okay, so um uh Pumba and Simba will come and then give us a help to defeat these pythons. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:47

Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah. And it's interesting because I now that I think about it, I've never thought about this before. I Don't remember the story of Timon, like what happened to him, but he's a single mere cat. Like, usually mere cats are in big groups, obviously, but he's alone. Um, or he's with with Pumba, with the warthog. And yeah, and that can and by the way, that can also happen. I mean, this is actual interaction, mere cats and warthogs and other mongooses and warthogs do have this mutualism as well, where the mongooses will clean the warthog, they will take off parasites like ticks from their skin, and so they actually can be friends. At the same time, uh, in the Uganda field site with the banded mongooses, right? We have records of warthogs killing and eating mongooses, particularly babies. So it's not always a pure friendship. As always in nature, like if you can take advantage of something and get a benefit of it, you will. So warthogs, if it seems that okay, maybe today I can actually eat the mongoose, yeah. Sometimes it happens.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:47

Okay, so so so now please let me take the tick take out the ticks and give a bit of a massage and say, Yay, massa massage before dinner. Yeah, so I'm gonna okay, I'm gonna take this, okay. I'm gonna get ready. I'm gonna take all these, but I want to be fed pro but I want you to fed to eat me properly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:08

Yeah, exactly. If you don't do a good enough job, then you get eaten at the end.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:12

Yeah, but speaking of that, did you also interact with other animals? Because we were talking about warhogs.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:21

Yeah, for sure. Oh man, no, absolutely. Uh, I mean these as well, the field sites themselves are you know it's it's practically wilderness. Uh I mean the Kalahari field site where they are, it used to be farmland, and so since then it's been uh there's been lots of rewilding taking place, so uh they obviously have left it as it is. Now it's protected, so there's no farming happening there, um, hunting only on some of the big antelope species, but everything else is left alone, so you can return back to the its natural habitat, and yeah, you have so much stuff there. And then in Uganda, the field site is in a national park, so we had lions, elephants, buffalo, hippos, leopards pretty much everywhere around us. And and you yeah, you see you see them. I would have them even come to like the the house where I lived, uh-huh there, which was actually the furthest away from the village. And yeah, at nighttime, often I would have lions coming to the house. There was this like pair of lions, two brothers that lived on the peninsula where the field site is, and they would come to the house and yeah, I would hear them, they would be roaring outside the window at night, like at 2 a.m. or something. I would hear them roar, and it was just it's it was a magical experience. I tell you what, like to you know, have lions as your alarm clock in the morning, it's it's crazy. Wow, and hippos would come as well. This is something I didn't know before as well. Hippos actually walk around a lot. You think of them as being this really like sedentary animal that lives in just like a river or something and always stays wet in its lake, and that's it. No, at night time they go foraging, they go on land, and they go munching on bushes, they go grazing on the grass, and again, around the house, because it's that you have to maintain a clearing around it, we would have grass growing, and the hippos would come from the lake from maybe like a kilometer away. They would walk at night and they would come and they would munch on the grass and be, you know, kind of act like a goat around the house and maintain our lawn. And so it's crazy. Yeah, you had a lot of interactions like this. That's why you have to be also a little bit careful at the field site in Uganda. You can't really go on your own out into the bush, you have to go with a car, ideally with other people as well, because you might come across a leopard or something like that, and then it's a little bit dangerous. But then also you learn, you know, you learn tricks of how to deal with all these animals in the wild. And yeah, for most of them, there are certain, as I say, tricks, but yeah, really understanding of their behavior, how you can deal with them so you avoid any risk, and it's quite safe. And yeah, no, man, I it was it was great at the Kalahari site as well. We had lots of snakes, which was really good for me. I mean, I was seeing like Cape Cobras and um all these other species that they have there, sand snakes and house snakes and puff adders and all this stuff. And yeah, no, there's a lot of diversity there. There's all the bird life as well, all the insects that you find there. As I said before, antelope species. You can sometimes see it's rare, but you can see, for example, porcupines. In theory, even they have like pangolins and caracals and all of these other animals that really are super super hard to see. But by being there for such a long time, also you increase your chances, you know, it's like the odds of seeing something increases. So yeah, no, it's super special.

SPEAKER_05: 1:12:39

I don't think that is as long as you like love what you do, these are these experiences that adds to to your PhD thesis, and then uh what comes afterwards. I think that is something that fulfills your the this journey of doing something, and where you get funding from it, you get the opportunity, even though it's okay, it's four years, at least you get the chance to to see some of these beautiful things that you don't get too many chances to to to see it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:12

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And no, I mean, and you know what? That's why it took me four years because I tried to have two field seasons. I went back. Um, I could have had just one and it would have been, I think, just about enough data uh for what I wanted to do. But I was like, you know what, I have the chance, I have the opportunity, why not? And I went back uh again to to South Africa for a second time and also went to Namibia. I I got invited to visit the research place there. And no, it was fantastic. Um, you just see, and it's such a new experience as well. I mean, I've as I say, it was my first time in Africa, and it was my first time in in a proper desert environment as well.

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:50

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:50

Um, I mean the Kalahari is not a true desert because it gets a bit too much rain for that, but still, you know, you have sand dunes and all the all the wildlife that you would expect in a desert. And then Namibia is even crazier. I mean, that's super dry. So you find maybe like one tree per hundred square kilometers. It's it's it's crazy. But it's it's such a unique experience, and then obviously also with the local people and the culture as well, it's it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:14

Did you get also to know any of the tribal groups there? Any tribes?

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:20

Um, a little bit. It's it's tricky, obviously, because that you're there working with the animals on the field site, and it's a bit of a bubble in that sense that you're not really as exposed to the local cultures because they don't really come into the field site. Yeah, of course. Um, but at the same time, yeah, no, absolutely. And especially at the Kalahari field site, there are local staff that are actually some of them used to work as trackers in a nearby national park. And I know one of them is a good friend of mine who is originally from the Koisan people, which are the Koisan, are like the original kind of desert-living uh tribal people. Um they were originally quite nomadic as well, so they used to be really relying on the land, and he knows it so well. You watch him go around the site and he can pick up tracks and he can tell you what animal it is, where, how fast it was going, how big it is, like all of this information they can gather from like the tiniest clues. And it's really incredible. So that was really special. And then in Uganda, they don't get volunteers coming from Europe. They have actually a permanent staff of, I think currently it's seven or eight people, something like that, that are all local Ugandans. Um, they're from there, they yeah, you know, they know the place really well. And most of them have worked on the project for at least a decade. So they know obviously everything there as well, and they are connected to to the local villages, they know all of the local customs and everything, because of course that's that's their home. And so working alongside them was also super special because yeah, they just tell you all this information, and we would go into the village and get like chapati in the morning together, and yeah, they would tell me things. Some of them also they had friends in in the local kind of fishing village, and they would occasionally bring me fish as well to to eat, and it was good. I mean, you learn so much from that. Wow.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:17

Yeah, I mean, again, these are the experiences that I think it makes a PhD thesis so fulfilling.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:26

So when you went to when you were still in doing your field research, did you also go to other places in South Africa like Turban or China's work? Did you also go to Lesotho as well? Uh Lozoto.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:40

Um no, so um I I did a little bit of traveling. Um obviously, especially in the first field season, I was still a bit also kind of concerned with the fact that I need to actually get the work done. Like I need to spend as much time as possible at the field site doing my experiments in case something goes wrong, in case it's not enough. Sure. You worry about that because obviously this is if you don't get enough, then you can't get the PhD. Like that's it, came over. So, yeah, so there's a more worry. In the second field season, I was a lot more relaxed, so I did a lot more traveling then. And yeah, no, I managed to go to a few places, and near the field site, we have two main national parks which are fantastic. One called Ochrabi's, which is named after a big waterfall there. And in the Koisan language, Ochrabi's means like big noise because of the noise that the waterfall makes, you can hear it from like miles away, and uh it's it's gorgeous. Like that's one of my favorite places in the world, I think for sure. Ochrabi's is just beautiful, and then the other place is Kalakadi Transfrontier Park, which basically sits between on the borders between South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. Most of it is actually in Botswana, and it's a huge area of land, it's one of the biggest national parks, if not in the world. I mean, certainly in South Africa, and it's fantastic, and that's where also you get a lot of the big animals. So you get lions there, you get cheetahs, hyenas, all the kind of typical animals you would expect in Africa, and it's beautiful. So I got to drive there. I went for a very short time, but I managed to I spent three days in the park. And my main goal for me was to try and find the three big cats so lion, leopard, and cheetah. And I managed to do it. I found pretty much one per day. I found a leopard's first day, lion's second day, and then cheetah. I just about managed to find before leaving the park on the third day. I was like, man, this is mission, mission complete. And then also the other place I went to is um an area called Kraskop, which is kind of on the eastern side of South Africa, above Johannesburg and above Pretoria, kind of going towards Kruger National Park. It's up in the mountains, it's what's called the Drakensburg Mountains. They kind of stretch all around South Africa and they reach up past uh past Joburg. And it's a really beautiful area. It's a very different. It was super cold when I was there. Um it's up high in the mountains, they get snow in the winter, so it's kind of the different thing of what you imagine usually from from Africa. And yeah, now super cool. I went with a good friend of mine. We went looking for snakes. We tried to find uh a species of viper that lives there, the burg adder, and we did. We found quite a few of them, and it was super cool. And we managed to see servals in the wild, which are super cool. Servals are these, for anyone who doesn't know, they're kind of like a small wild cat, sure, spotted and really beautiful. And we saw a family, we saw a mother with I think it was three cubs with her, and it was just oh my god, especially like the kittens, they were so cute. It was, I would never have expected to see that in the wild, so it was super special. And then, as I say, I managed to go to Namibia for a bit as well and kind of did a little tour of Namibia again, mostly looking for snakes because that's what I love. But I also visited a field site there called Gobabeb. It's also a field site, it has existed for 40 years, maybe at least, maybe more, maybe like 50 years. A long time, and they have a long data as well on um on climate. So they've tracked climate change in the desert. They were one of the main and one of the first places in the world actually that were recording changes in arid zones and arid climates. So, yeah, and I I was lucky to visit them and to to kind of learn from them. Yeah, no, I I tried to do some traveling where I could for sure, because you just have to, you're there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:20:30

Yeah, I think I and I figure that's reasonable. And also said because I had also opportunities to go each year to to Oxford to do research and wanted to see what's around. Oxford is a small c is a small city and see around what's around. I I've uh mainly I visited the majority of the museums as possible during my the week that I was uh uh living there for the time, and that's what what it is about. So what you've what you've done is uh someone's using an annual salary to go and do a safari.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:08

I mean more or less, except I don't have a salary because I'm self-funded, so I it was a lot trickier than that.

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:13

Yeah, so how how did you how did you how much did you have to apply for funding given by Swan Zuni or from also external? Yeah, it's it's strictly resources.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:24

So, as I say, luckily for me, I managed to reach agreements with the people running these field sites. So most of my field work actually didn't really have a cost at all because I was given basically everything there for free. I could do my experiment, I could live there, I could get the food and everything. And in exchange worked part-time for them, yes, which was very intense, I will say, for sure, especially in the first field season in South Africa. I, you know, I would sleep maybe like four or five hours per night for like easily at least two of the three months. Um, I had that sort of schedule, and every day I would go out um either doing my own experiments or collecting data for them. Yeah, I think I worked um I can't remember how much, I think it was like five days a week or something for them, and the two days, like weekend days or whatever, I would have for my own experiments. So I was working all the time and it was intense, but it meant that I had pretty much no costs. Yes. And then here in Swansea, I'm employed by the university, as I think maybe you are as well. So I could as a staff members. Yeah. So I worked as a uh what's it called? A uh research research assistant, or yeah, RAM, so as a demonstrator. Okay. So you could do, I helped in, for example, like practical courses, uh, computer labs, marking as well, some of the work of students, and you get paid for this.

SPEAKER_04: 1:22:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:43

And it's actually a pretty good pay, like it's okay. So yeah, so overall it was fairly sustainable to do all of this without any major funding. And then for us as research students, you get, I think, a thousand pounds allocated per year for you can use it for experimental costs or for conferences as well. I've used it, for example, I go to Zurich every year for the annual Meerkat conference that happens there, because that's where the field, the group that manages the field site is based. It's at uh University of Zurich, and uh um, yeah, and so we go there every year, and it's yes, it's good to see everyone, and then it's it's a lovely place. So, yeah, so you can use some funds for that, but it's tricky. Yeah, if you're self-funded, it's very tricky, which would not recommend at the same time, it does give you more freedom. Yeah. I know other people who have funding or have who have sponsors for the PhDs, they are very limited in what they can do because they have to agree it with the funders, it's set out for a very specific project, so you don't get this kind of creativity and freedom that you can otherwise. So everything has, I mean, its advantages and disadvantages.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:51

Don't forget to check that episode where I speak about the difference between funded and self-funded PhDs. So make a note of that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23:59

Yeah, exactly. And it's something important for people to understand, right? And and you do a great job of this in your podcast, for example, is actually showing what are the different pathways and PhDs, and it's so varied, right? It's so diverse across disciplines as well, especially.

SPEAKER_05: 1:24:13

Yeah. Um did you all you said also to me once uh when we had several conversations that you have a YouTube channel and you also you could join also your photography hobby. I'm assuming that you've taken lots of lots of pictures. Did you also documented document these onto your channel? And what is the name, by the way?

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:35

Yeah, so I I'll tell kind of the the quick background story to this as well. That it's not really just to me, it's not just the YouTube channel, and it's the idea behind it. It's called Diary of the Adventurer, and it's very much I try to do it in this kind of diary format of really, I mean, I guess again, inspired by people like Steve Rowan who would take their audience with them and put them in the middle of the action and being like, okay, this is the animal, this is how you can interact with it, this is what happens, and try to do much of the same is take you with me. And it's all very much kind of quite casual, I guess, in the diary format. And it started actually not even as film or as videos or anything like that, it started as articles. I used to write articles for magazines. Oh, okay. Um, back it started at school, actually, when I was back in back in Spain. Then when I moved to boarding school in England, I wrote for the school magazine. Then when I moved to undergrad to to uni at my college at Pembroke, we had a magazine that was that they worked with, and I published some articles there. And that was the original. So they the articles were called Diary of the Adventurer.

SPEAKER_05: 1:25:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:44

And so then from there, the next step obviously, because I had all the photographs and everything, I could use them in the articles. And then the logical next step is yeah, you can film as well. Yeah. And nowadays, I mean, most people are not really interested in reading something for a long time, and sure, people have perhaps shorter attention spans. Yeah, exactly. So you need it to be visual, you need to show it, and film is a good, it's a good resource for that.

SPEAKER_05: 1:26:10

But in the end, would you compile everything that you've said into into a book?

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:16

Into a book. Um, yeah, I would love to. Um, it's also something that I've never really spoken about much before, but um I have actually for now many years. I mean, now I've abandoned it a little during my PhD and during undergrad before, but I was actually working on writing a book and on really as a kind of as a memoir, as an autobiography of some of my adventures, some of my experiences with wildlife.

SPEAKER_05: 1:26:41

That's nice.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:42

Maybe one day I'll come back to it. I think for now my focus is on Diary of Adventure, on the on the episodes, on the documentaries that I try to make. Yeah, and I have filmed a lot for that. So wherever I go, whenever I travel, really, I try to film with animals. Sure. In Africa, I did a lot of filming during my field work as well, because you would see something cool happen and I'd be like, okay, yeah, let's let's let's film it. So then later, when I eventually get around to editing and producing it, because that takes ages as well. I mean, I'm sure you know as well. Sure. Even with podcasts to cut it all together and everything, it takes a while. And with with documentaries, I try to also put music to it, you know, even sometimes compose music for for it myself and do all these things, and it takes a long time. And I'm I keep getting distracted with other things. And I had to like work on my PhD before that work on my undergrad. Sure. And I'm trying to find time for it as best as I can, but it takes it takes a long time. It takes a long time, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 1:27:41

But I think as you said, as long as you are passionate in what you do, combining both worlds, yes, it takes time, uh, but it requires lots of patience. But then that comes when you develop those skills, it becomes fast and fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:00

And I think also to me, it does come quite naturally too. Again, like from when I was quite young, I would always like try and almost narrate um with animals and kind of try and present them to say like to my mom or sorry, yeah, you know, to people. And then I got my first video camera, I remember, and I would start filming. I remember I was in Cyprus, and I would find these geckos along this like old wall in in Paphos, and I would like find the geckos and I would like show them on camera and be like, okay, so this is this type of gecko, and look, it has the keypads, and you know, sorry, talk about it. So that's that's the that's the nice, that's the thing. Yeah, and you build up like that, and yeah, and that's what I've always kind of loved doing as well. And as you say, it comes it comes hand in hand. So yeah, no, I'd I would love to continue, and I will continue with that as long as I possibly can for sure. There are many new exciting projects that will be coming out, so like stay stay tuned as well.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:52

I don't know if you're like subscribe to Diary of Adventure or whatever, but yeah, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05: 1:28:59

Make sure it's exciting. Make sure students and graduates to check out his YouTube channel, Diaries of the Adventurer. And I do have an an activity for you. Oh yeah, tell me. So I'll I'll share it now. So you've been partnered with the YouTuber named Casual Geographic. I'm sure you've heard of him. And he's he blends humor related to the herd culture going on the streets and uses uh these specific uh slang terms into the animal into the animal world, which is it is humoristic and it's quite fun. Uh but then you've been partnered with him to create uh an incredible video that is packed with compelling, humoristic, and engaging research about your PhD topic. And then your research video with casual geographic casual geographic is going to be so much fun and it will feature the amazing humor about the hood mentality of mere cats and other types of mongooses towards snakes and your experiences not only in Africa but also in Swansea Uni, specifically in the Faculty of Biology. How would you structure this video?

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:21

Yeah, um, okay, this is it's an interesting challenge. I think. Yeah. I mean the main thing I would say first is obviously you have to balance humor and the way he presents things is really good. I think it applies it's expands it to a wider audience. Yes. Because you have all the memes that come from it, you know, and all these things that make it funny and make it engaging and entertaining in a different way to normal documentaries. And I think, in fact, actually, I I uh I recently saw he made a video about what I was saying before about orcas and dolphins fighting at their like gang wars, which is almost identical to mongooses and snakes. I mean, so it's almost exactly the same. So it's showing these dynamics of these interactions. The way I would approach it as well is still try and pay attention because obviously I'll be involved with it, and um, I could advise that you don't try to dramatize these interactions too much either, because that's the pitfall. It's very easy to dramatize it and say, Oh, like look, they're fighting to the death. Look at what's happening, and the mongoose is launching out the snake and this. No, and that's not the reality of it. I mean, in most interactions of mongooses and snakes, they both come out alive and they just go their separate ways, right? Because again, they have this threat discrimination, so they don't really want to get in trouble. So it would be to show more the complexity and kind of the dynamics of these and how we can like this concept of mutual predation, right? Which at first is difficult to understand, but as I guess maybe happened with you now as well, um, in our talk today, that you can start seeing how it can so easily change. And so perhaps showing videos of yeah, in some cases the Python wins and it gets an individual mongoose, but then you know the group comes back and they're like, Hey, you know, what's up? We're we're you know, we're in the hood now, and they and they beat up the python, basically. So, and that's pretty much what happens, you know. That's what can very easily happen. So addressing it from that side, but like not dramatizing it too much would be very important to this. But yeah, I think especially showing this dynamics and how nature is very flexible. So it's very important to show people, I think, especially kids. I mean, because in school you learn about the food chain and everything is very straightforward and linear. And actually, it's not the case, you know, food chains can be quite flexible. You have so many of these like cross-interactions and showing the dynamics, and also what's something that's quite cool. You can do is you can show different personalities of the mongooses because they do differ, as I say. Like, for example, yellow mongooses personally, I believe are so much smarter than mere cats. You can see, I mean, they yeah, they're they're faster, they're they're more intelligent. And with a video like this, especially having so much humor and comedy behind it, you can very easily, you know, have almost like these characters as different mongooses and show their approach to snakes and highlight how, yeah, maybe someone is actually a bit smarter and they'd be like, you know what, that snake is a bit of a risk, or you know, actually, I have resistance, this cobra means nothing to me, you know, like just go and punch it and that's it, and something, you know, thinking of like, I don't know, whatever gangs, uh, I don't know what happens in the hoods, but like whatever, you know, so you can like come come and come and get it, and yeah, you can show a lot of this. I think so. My approach would be almost to kind of space it out like this, and you can introduce the players, as it were, the different characters of the mongooses and the snakes, and then build up to showing these interactions and one can what can affect them as well. And then you bring in all the experience and context-driven behaviors that you can see and build it up that way. So then actually at the end, when you watch the video, yeah, you might see that's it is quite simple. I mean, at the end of the day, all they're trying to do is survive, they're trying to get some food. If they can, then they will. If they can't, then they just yeah, they bully them, they try and chase the snake away, protect their pups, again, like group mentality, and yeah, and and go go their separate ways, and life continues, and you know, you go back in the hood or whatever, and that's it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:41

And I think that would be a very plausible conclusion to say, okay, they are great animals, but they also have their they have their street mentality or hood mentality, and it's yeah, we in the hood, but also we are trying to protect ourselves from dangerous species.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:59

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And yeah, and life continues.

SPEAKER_05: 1:35:01

And life continues. Yeah, exactly. So I think that would this would be a great video if it was to be made, of course.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:08

Yeah, yeah, like casual geographic if you're listening, uh happy to collaborate.

SPEAKER_05: 1:35:12

Exactly. Make casual geographic, make a collab with Nikita, because I think he would be a great biologist to to share you some more insights about uh mongooses and maybe provide more videos about it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:25

Yeah, I mean equally anyone else who wants to collaborate, I'm I'm very open to that. Okay, um, for sure. Not something that I have done so much yet, because also I tend to travel and uh do all of my adventures on my own, so you just tend to do it all yourself. But yeah, no, I I would I would love to get involved with other bigger projects that way.

SPEAKER_05: 1:35:43

So in that case, what are you trying to uh what message are you trying to send with your PhD thesis?

SPEAKER_00: 1:35:53

With my thesis. Um I think most of these things that I was just saying that it's important to understand the dynamics of interactions between species. So basically as as I as I've been saying, you know, naturally everything interacts with each other, and we still don't know a lot of the complexity of these interactions. And why it's important is because only through understanding this can we better protect the ecosystems, for example, for conservation. Um, we need to understand which animals may be more resistant to change, for instance, or may be more prone to actually being impacted by changes in populations. So, for example, if if there's drought, yeah, and a lot of insects like termites die out, the mongooses won't have a food source. So then they will resort to eating more and more dangerous prey, and they will resort to killing snakes, so then the snake population will plummet, but then something else will happen as a result of it. So understanding these interactions is super important for that, for the ecology and conservation, but also because it relates to us as well, to humans. I mean, even specifically for this case, humans interact with snakes around the world. Snake bite is the neglected tropical disease, um, as like described by the WHO, for example, and um, lots of people get bitten every year by snakes. I think easily more than I think five million people get bitten, and at least about a hundred thousand people die from snake bite every year. So understanding how these animals interact, what their behaviors are like, what we can learn from their interactions with mongooses, for example, how to maybe chase them away, you know, how to repel snakes from villages so we don't get in contact with them, it's really important. Um, and it's something that might help humans as well. And also it helps us understand our own cognitive processes too, because we have the same mechanisms, interestingly enough. We have, for example, snake detection theory. It's a kind of a field of research that has been developed. And it started in humans. There's a lot of work that's been done in humans and how we respond to being shown images of snakes, for example, how our brain reacts, what actually goes on. And there's some fascinating things that they found. They found, for example, that fear of snakes is not innate, it's not genetic. We develop fear culturally. Yeah. And they did it with babies. So they showed baby snakes in the presence of or in the absence of other adults in the room. And the babies would watch the adults if they were present, especially their parents. And if they showed disgust to the snakes, the baby would immediately react and it would also show disgust. It would show fear to the snake. If they didn't, if they had no input like that, the baby would be fine. It would just be like, okay, this is a snake. Let me just like play with it or whatever. It's it's fine. Um, so we build this up, and so we can understand this, and we can compare it to mongooses as well, and we can build up a more universal perhaps understanding of some of these processes that go on because we both co-evolved with snakes, and and it's very interesting. And for example, what I found with mongooses is actually they are different in captivity. For example, all of their reactions, the first reaction to the models was, or at least doesn't seem to be driven by the type of snake it is, or even by it being a snake. Rather, it is driven by the movement of the model. So mongooses, it seems, are a lot more movement-oriented to the initial uh recognition, to the initial spotting of the snake. Whereas all the human research has shown that actually it is the snake shape, it is the pattern of this like serpentine body that we are immediately drawn to, that our brain is predisposed to detect. Even if it's not with fear, still it's kind of the alert response is there, is that is genetic. And so we will very easily spot a snake even in a very complex background. And so that seems to differ, for example, between mongooses and humans, and it's something quite interesting. Then you can ask why, you know, how has our evolution perhaps led to this in different ways? So you can there's a lot to learn from it.

SPEAKER_05: 1:40:05

And I think it's it's an endless knowledge, and because we we keep we keep evolving and we keep knowing more and more about wild animals that we probably we're gonna there's be more more research from the time from over the next decade that we learnt in school and in documentaries as well. And uh it will keep evolving, as we were saying, about fear and whether the babies would react or not. It is something truly insightful, and I think this is a a good way to educate ourselves and teaching the next generations how we can behave and interact, and how can we learn also from wild animal interaction.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:58

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. There's still a lot to learn. And you can see even like big projects, the BBC does all these documentary series, right? And they've really made an effort in recent years, I feel, to show new behaviors to really showcase new research and these animal attractions though previously we knew nothing about, and more and more keeps coming out of it. It's yeah, as you say, it's really fascinating. There's a lot more to learn. Do you have the a a day for Divor?

SPEAKER_05: 1:41:27

Um, almost, yeah. It's it's it will be quite soon. But then will you stay in the UK for over the couple years, or are you planning to move to maybe to South Africa and go to Kalahari Desert?

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:43

Yeah, I mean, as I say, that's ultimately that's kind of what I live for. I I want to be out in the field, I want to be interacting with wildlife, learning about their behaviors, and you know, and obviously sharing it with people. Uh that's what I would love to do. And I need to be in the field.

SPEAKER_05: 1:42:00

Once you've passed your vibe, obviously celebration will happen, and then you would let us know when you actually leave. And but before that, I have something for uh something that I would love you to get a signature from, because we don't know whether you stay here because you said you want to be in the wild and yeah checking on the animals. So I brought this Welsh flag of mine, which contains all the signatures of the many people that I've met so far over the past six years or so since I've been here since the 10th of October. Oh wow. So if you could sign around here, you can see lots of people that I've signed already. Obviously, most men some of them are from are from the UK, of course, but I have people from other parts of the world as well. So I got the pen. You can write in Spanish because it's it makes it more original.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:54

Yeah, sure. This is oh, this is super cool. Look at this.

SPEAKER_05: 1:42:57

Yeah. So seeing the students and graduates over there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:01

Oh, yeah. Yeah, for anyone because it's doing I guess on camera or on yeah, for anyone not on on camera, there's this massive Welsh flag, which is super cool.

SPEAKER_05: 1:43:11

You can write on the dragon.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:12

Oh by no yeah, maybe I'll write like somewhere.

SPEAKER_05: 1:43:17

Yeah, it's it it is it tricky for you to sign it because of the uh yeah. Oh wait, also I don't want to like no you want because no, that's that's that permanent marker isn't doesn't go over the it doesn't go through, does it? No, it doesn't go through, no no, that's good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:30

We don't want to destroy the setup.

SPEAKER_05: 1:43:32

Let's not destroy the paper the furniture. Yeah, maybe you can just put it over there. Yeah, sounds good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:38

Just so I'm I'm aware of the off the table. Anyway, Jared will kill us. Shout shout out by the way to the studio and everything where we are.

SPEAKER_05: 1:43:46

No, we got we're really appreciated for for having the studio. And obviously we're not expecting I didn't know that this even exist this even existed until until now. Oh, we'll have a look afterwards when I get when I get home. After the talk I need to do some research. And you become like Donald Trump, and then he show you show the the flag, and then oh, there he goes. There's the proof.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:37

Yeah, no, yeah, I do I do very much support uh Wales.

SPEAKER_00: 1:44:40

Actually, I was talking to someone um recently. Uh I have a Welsh friend who's saying, yeah, like you know, the it's really important to understand the local identity, and you know, this quite, I guess, nationalistic feeling, but very rightfully so. Yes. You know, Wales is a separate country, they have their own identity, they have their own culture and everything, and it's something that's really a lot of people take for granted, people who don't know as well. Yeah, like even me coming from from abroad, obviously I'm not from here. Me neither. It's yeah, exactly. So it's something that we really need to uh appreciate.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:13

So this is super cool.

SPEAKER_00: 1:45:14

I mean, this is yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:11

No, I'm drawing a snake. In most things that like I sign or something, I tend to do a little like cobra drawing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:46:21

Oh yeah, mongoose, I'm not really good at at drawing, so um mongoose is a bit complicated to draw in a moment's notice.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:35

Oh, there you go, it's a little cobra. Oh, this is awesome. Okay, yeah, well there you go.

SPEAKER_05: 1:46:42

Representing representing whales.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:46

Let's go. Oh, Sim Ruan Beath. Okay, well there you go.

SPEAKER_05: 1:46:53

Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you for for the honor of this. No exciting thing. That that is my honor. And to wrap up, just tell us what advice do you have for those who are tuning in and are still undecided whether they want to go for a PhD.

SPEAKER_00: 1:47:10

Yeah, I think it's a it's a huge commitment for sure. And as I was saying before, it can be quite difficult. Obviously, I only know about my experience in experimental science in biology, and it can be a little tricky. But I mean, if it's something you're passionate about, if it's something that you think you want to do, honestly do it. Like it's it's it's a great experience, I'm sure you agree. And you learn so much. And yes, there may be times you struggle. There will be times for sure that you struggle, let's rephrase that. And and there will be most things that you don't really know much about to begin with. When you start, you will be uncertain about most things. Be like, ah, what do I do with this? But you will learn and it's fine, and everyone learns. It's okay. You can get advice, speak to your supervisors as well, use your supervisors, I would say. And also before, I think when you're looking for PhDs, this is also, I feel, quite important, especially in the sciences perhaps, is you really need to find a like a good friendly supervisor. Maybe even try to talk to some of their previous PhD students about what's their experience like. How are they as a supervisor? How is this person? I think that does help a lot. And yeah, kind of see what vibe you're getting from the research group, because it may be the perfect one for your like niche interest, but it just might not be a good atmosphere or something like that. And then you'll struggle more. And you know, why put yourself through that? For me, I was extremely lucky that when I was looking for PhDs and sending emails and trying to communicate with a lot of professors, I received a reply from my supervisor here from Kevin Arbuckle, and it was the most enthusiastic email I have ever received from an academic. I was like, he has so many ideas and he wants to discuss them with us. And it felt so good. It felt so so special at the time. You know, I really felt um like I was I was wanted and and and feels good, you know. Um, so when you get that, you you just kind of have to go for it. The other advice I would give whilst actually doing the PhD, this I guess goes also particularly for experimental science, is that try, really try to write as early as possible, even if it's not writing out full chapters, it doesn't matter. But whatever you're doing, especially with analysis of results, is it doesn't have to be perfect, as I said before. Get it to some sort of stage, some sort of level, and then just send it off to like your supervisors or submit it or whatever to like for publications or something, and just kind of forget it, move, move on to other things, and just try and do that as much as possible because it is very easy, especially in science, I suppose, to kind of keep trying to add things, improve the results. You have you have to do statistics on it, and you think, okay, which model do I use? What's that? How do I prove this or how do I show that? And it's easy to get bogged down and focus so much on that that you actually kind of lose track of, okay, I'm just trying to show this, like this is the overall message that I'm trying to show. And that's good. That's it's enough. You know, you kind of you get the results, put them, send them to your supervisor, that's fine, move on. It's something that I really struggled with. Hence, you know, and you hear this advice all the time, you know, start writing as early as possible. And you don't listen, and no one ever listens, and then you end up in like your fourth year and you have to write the whole thesis, and it's it's crazy. So it wasn't quite as dramatic for me, but almost like, you know, it's how many words did you have to to write your thesis? So in the end, my thesis is I don't remember exactly, I think it's with references, like all together, I think it's around 70 something thousand words. So it's not huge, but also but for scientific thesis, I think that is quite a lot. But without, I mean, references take maybe like 10,000 words.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:06

So it's with your experiences in the field. You also you also did conduct your podcast as well. You come here too often because we we didn't we didn't speak, but yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51:16

I mean, that's the other thing that I was involved with earlier this year. We started with Lucy Murphy, who also, I mean, massive shout out. She's amazing. She's now started her PhD as well. So maybe one day you should have her on the podcast too.

SPEAKER_05: 1:51:28

Yeah, that would be great.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51:30

And yeah, together we started the baffling biology podcast, which again, also everyone should go and check out. It's it's really good. And the idea behind that is much like yourself, to bring people on and just allow them to share what interests them, what what baffles them in in biology. And it's been super fascinating. I think it's been great. But tell you what, also, it's been such a learning experience for me. I was super nervous at the beginning to come on as an interviewer and as one of the co-hosts of the podcast because it's, I don't know, I feel like I would much rather actually get interviewed than interview because it's a skill. It's a skill you pick up, it's a skill you develop because you try, you obviously want to get the most out of the person, and you want to get the interesting stories and the kind of the funny things and the kind of the fascinating things. And you spend a lot of time, I'm sure you do as well, in planning out the questions and what you want to ask, how to kind of structure the interview. And it's difficult. It is really difficult. Something I had to learn, but I something that I really wanted to learn, and Lucy did too. So luckily, we um kind of joined forces and started it. And then since then, I mean it's it's become a huge thing as well, and she's running it really, really brilliantly. It it will keep growing, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_05: 1:52:47

And I think that's the best thing. You have an idea, you start now. You're doing the podcast, uh, and that's that's what is the cultural trend nowadays. You start a podcast on the internet. It ain't popular, eh? It's just not alongside YouTube, of course, but I now this is uh a novelty to say the least.

SPEAKER_00: 1:53:08

It has so yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So it's yeah, I guess like it's something that I'm really bad at with is jumping on trends like this. Yeah, I'm always I think a bit too late or just don't care enough because I just as in like I want to share with people my passion for animals and show them animals, sure, but then I don't really know how like I I would much rather go in the fields, as I say, and like catch snakes and do whatever. That's what I know how to do. This I really don't know how to do like so it's it's been a learning experience for sure, and something so important. But yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05: 1:53:42

And I think it's a nice message to to end up the podcast, our our talk at the PhD lounge. Do you have any social media besides sharing baffling biology, the diaries of an adventurer?

SPEAKER_00: 1:53:56

Yeah, I mean there are any other projects as well.

SPEAKER_05: 1:53:58

You've you've referred uh previously.

SPEAKER_00: 1:54:01

Yeah, I mean, I don't honestly I try not to use social media too much. Again, I may be a bit old school in that way. I've yeah, it just takes too much time, man. Yeah. Recently I did get Instagram, but I've not posted anything on it, for example. So like I tried to set up the page for Diary of the Adventure on Instagram, but as I say, like I've not done anything with it. So yeah, honestly, don't like at the moment it's a bit stale. But yeah, I don't know. Honestly, if you want to find me, just find me on like LinkedIn or something. Uh it's probably the easiest platform. And yeah, and on Diary of Adventure, as I say, that's where my main focus will be. I want to shift to producing a lot more because I have a backlog of many years, maybe almost like a decade of filming. And I've done almost nothing with it. And so many projects I've filmed in Peru, in Madagascar, and Africa, and lots of different other places. And I want to get those out. So that's I think maybe the main place to follow. But also going back to advice for PhD and in general, um, just to add to this, yeah, is that I think people, when you're doing your PhD, it's very easy to focus on what you're doing and to be like, okay, I have to produce something, I have to work on the thesis. And I know a lot of like most people here, for example, in my department or in research groups, are very focused on their work. But it's also a really good time, probably perhaps the last time you will get in academia to focus on other things, to join other societies, to try different things because you're still students, you still have a lot of flexibility, you still get all the like the free stuff that students get, you know, at universities and all this kind of stuff. And it's it's really special. And really, you won't get another opportunity. Because I mean, even if you stay in academia, you will become a postdoc or professor, and you will have all the hassle and all the work that comes with it, and a lot of limitations that you can't just, you know, go and socialize with with your students as a professor. It's a bit weird. So um, so it's yeah, so I think it's it's a great opportunity for that, is actually get involved. Yes, your PhD matters, and yes, it's important. At the same time, yeah, look after yourself, I mean, as well, like mental health and everything, but yeah, still try new things. I think I always try and uh expand. This year, for example, randomly, very randomly, I tried ice skating. I tried to start learning figure skating as a very random thing, and I've loved it to be honest. So it's just it's yeah, honestly, just try try and expand. Like go on go on podcasts, go gain experience with public speaking as well. It's so important for any career, I think. Yes, gaining that confidence to speak, to present to a large audience, or even uh in a conversation like this, I would highly advise it. Yeah, gaining things like this.

SPEAKER_05: 1:56:48

And I think that what the concept of the PhD nowadays uh is and will remain as such, many people speak networking, but it's also public speaking, doing something on your own. Uh write a blog, do a podcast, uh write an article that doesn't need to be for a journal, just to train train yourself. You have four years or even five of your PhD, and I think the message I was trying to say is do the most of what you can during this journey, because then you might not be able to further this. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll you'll be you'll be going for it on what you do.

SPEAKER_00: 1:57:34

Yeah, I think you'll thank yourself later. But yeah, obviously balance is very important. Something I've struggled with myself as well. Like especially as a as a field biologist, you don't really get a personal life, so it's been something that I have truly struggled with. So it's yeah, it's it's finding that I think the the balance that you want in life, and if you're passionate for it at the end of the day, it's it's much easier.

SPEAKER_05: 1:58:01

Nikida Bedov. Uh enhorabuena for your PhD thesis. And looking forward to hear about the Vivor and Muchas gracias. Yeah, we'll have to celebrate for coming here. And yes, we will do we'll have a celebrate a celebration on your own Spanish way, the Marbella Way. And I look forward to hearing any updates. So thank you, man. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. That was my fantastic late-night talk with Nikita Vedov, sharing his PhD experience and research on mongooses, snakes, mutual predation systems, and threat discrimination. To be honest with you, I have never thought that mongooses could be on the list of predators and their interactions with other predators, including snakes in this context. Nicetus at all made me realize that not only big wild animals as well as snakes are on the predator tier list, but also mongooses and probably other small-sized wild animals who seem to have docile and cute faces, but can turn ugly when it comes to battle for food. A huge thank you for him to be available, to have this late-night talk, and all the best in his new endeavors after his viva voke and eventual corrections. Nikita's talk will be released soon on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. And you can follow him on his LinkedIn and Instagram pages, subscribe to his YouTube channel, Diary of the Adventurer, and follow his podcast at Baffling Biology. If you have enjoyed tuning in to this session, you can also check my other late night talks and solo sessions at my website phdlounger.co.uk, where you can also follow my socials. LinkedIn, Luis Meyer and Instagram at PhDLMF. Last but not least, if you're a PhD candidate, post-phd scholar or doctoral entrepreneur, and would like to be featured, or would like to have a business collab, then send me an email at LuisphDLounge at gmail.com. Thank you all for tuning in. It has been a pleasure.