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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Squid biologist | Science Communicator | Exec Director of
@SkypeScientist
in Philly | VP of
@fishtown
neighbors assn | Same handle everywhere
Science & TechnologyLenape Land/ Philadelphia, PAsarahmcanulty.comJoined September 2008
4,249 Following
69K Followers

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D’s Tweets

Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
My doctor told me I have low iron so could I please do her a favor and take an iron supplement, she’d super appreciate it. How the fuck did she know that’s *exactly* the way to get me to do something. For me? No. But for YOU, Jessica? Yes of COURSE, I will take one immediately.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D Retweeted
Dr. Lia Chalifour (She/her)
@ChalifourLia
How do environmental microbiota affect the development of a vital reproductive organ in squid? A fascinating tale by
@SarahMackAttack
, with a great title to boot! 👇👇👇
Quote Tweet
Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
HOT OFF THE PRESS! It's a story of bobtails. The female bobtails have a consortium of bacteria living in many tubes called the ANG. This bacteria is used to protect developing baby squid! What happens when squid grow up without that community nearby? 👇 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mb
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a bobtail squid looks at the camera, and on the right you have the innards of a bobtail squid. There's a big fluffy looking peach/pink blob, that's the ANG, the hero of our story
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Someone left elbow pasta out for the um. The birds? The squirrels? The raccoons? Their little rat friends? Uncooked pasta? For… for the animals??
A pile of seeds and elbow pasta, like I’m not kidding, uncooked elbow pasta, mixed in with the birdseed, on the sidewalk.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
I did many of the stupid things I was supposed to do today but not all of them but I am very tired and want to lay down on the floor and push my nose against the tile and be done for now.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
More people than I would have predicted are in the comments saying they've already been peed on by a lobster. You really never know what your fellow human is going through, I tell ya what.
Quote Tweet
Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Tonight we are going to ponder some of life's stranger questions. We'll cover the many ways that animals flirt, including lobsters who pee at each others faces & giraffes who drink female's pee to see if they're ready to mate. This begs the question... WOULD YOU RATHER:
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Perhaps you simply don't have enough information to answer this question. Understandable! What a weird thing to be asked on a Monday afternoon! Thankfully there is a class that delves into these important topics. Class starts at 8pm Eastern Tonight
atlasobscura.com
Mating Rituals of the Animal Kingdom With Dr. Sarah McAnulty
In this 4-part lecture series, learn about the elaborate, impressive, and often quite goofy ways different species flirt, get it on, and raise their young. Course Des...
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Tonight we are going to ponder some of life's stranger questions. We'll cover the many ways that animals flirt, including lobsters who pee at each others faces & giraffes who drink female's pee to see if they're ready to mate. This begs the question... WOULD YOU RATHER:
  • Have a lobster pee on you
    39.1%
  • Giraffe drink your pee
    60.9%
763 votesFinal results
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D Retweeted
purpurina ✨🪡
@purpurinastitch
Side note: if you wanna learn more about animal sex stuff, consider checking out Sarah’s class linked below (I don’t think there’s any Howard the duck stuff tho)
Quote Tweet
Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
What's that gator doing!? I'll tell you in my animal mating class, which starts Monday 1/23 It's 4 weeks of just-for-fun tales of animal mating! W 1: Flirting W 2: mating W 3: non-reproductive sex stuff W 4: Parental care! bit.ly/3uZ8A6P Video: BBC Animal Super Senses
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D Retweeted
Andrea Suria
@asuria25
Check out
@SarahMackAttack
’s thread for the highlights of our new paper!
Quote Tweet
Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
HOT OFF THE PRESS! It's a story of bobtails. The female bobtails have a consortium of bacteria living in many tubes called the ANG. This bacteria is used to protect developing baby squid! What happens when squid grow up without that community nearby? 👇 journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mb
Show this thread
a bobtail squid looks at the camera, and on the right you have the innards of a bobtail squid. There's a big fluffy looking peach/pink blob, that's the ANG, the hero of our story
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Turns out, YEP. You can. Once whatever in the sand kicked off development, we were able to add that other community members and the squid added it to their ANG. This is huge because that means if we have a strain we want to spike into the water and do experiments on, we can!
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Unlike a lot of the other bacteria in the ANG, which tended to be tan or pink, sometimes orange, this one was blue-black. We didn't see it all that often. I wanted to see if we could add it to the water, and get the ANG to pick it up when grown on that ANG-inducing sand.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Often, when working in animal models, you want to add genetically modified bacteria to the system. Could we do that with these squid?
@asuria25
had cultured this SUPER distinctive looking bacterium, which she named JC-1 (Jelly Coat-1, she isolated it from an egg jelly coat).
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
We finally had a way to get squid to grow an ANG. The late afternoon when we looked into that first squid that had an ANG grown in the lab, it was an absolute party in the lab. We were stomping around high 5-ing, we had literally spent years going nuts trying to get this to work.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
So we think it's possible that to kick off proper development, you need Verrucomicrobia present. We can't say for sure, because we can't do the experiment where we add verrucomicrobia in a controlled environment, because we can't culture it. But we weren't done playing.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
After many frustrating failures (all shown in this paper!), we took sand directly from where we collect the squid, and shipped in back to CT, still wet. We dumped that sand into tanks, said a little prayer, and raised the squid. That did it!!
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
We wanted to understand what a squid needs to grow an ANG. This took us YEARS to figure out- I raised many cohorts of squid trying all different things. First I tried adding strains of bacteria into the water that we knew lived in ANGs. You'd think that'd work, right? Lol, no.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
An example in plants: Some plants team up w/ rhizobium to create "root nodules" when they grow in nitrogen-poor soil. The bacteria pull nitrogen straight out of the air to nourish the plant (the plant can't pull nitrogen out of the air themselves). Without rhizobium, no nodules.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
There are examples of organ development that's odd/abnormal without bacteria- like if you raise a mouse without their gut bacteria, the blood vessels in their gut are under-developed, but no other animals where the organ entirely is gone.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
When we raised the squid without their normal bacterial community... the ANG...was simply not there. This was *totally wild* because we still can't think of a SINGLE other example of an animal that totally lacks an organ when their usual bacteria are absent.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Who do I want to lose at football more? The team that my whole city hates or the team my terrible asshole of an ex-uncle loves? Impossible. I hope they both lose.
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D
@SarahMackAttack
Ok I’m sitting here with
@adamteterus
. We’re both talking about how it’s hard to meet people as adults. Adam and I are both people-gatherers, and thinking about the reasons people would give as to why they struggle. WITHOUT negging yourself (I mean it!), what’s your hurdle?
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