Tuatara

But yeah, not as common, not so likely to be an issue for people.

But we do have amazing native ticks, including one called Archaocroton, which inhabits Tuatara, and it's almost exclusively inhabiting Tuatara.

And some scientists have said that it's about as important for the study of ticks as Tuatara are for the study of reptiles.

So quite fascinating waydenisms.

That is fascinating.

And it releases you from an awful lot of strict pressure that you might find in other places.

I don't think we've talked about Tuatara yet.

Oh, now there's a long time horizon for you, eh? So, in Aotearoa New Zealand, you know, the longest living tuatara must be 130 by now, Henry Downing and the Cargill, I believe.

If you think about our 500-year time horizon, that's just, you know, that's just five lifespans of Henry who's still kicking on.

that's so

good.

One of our biggest biosecurity risks, a little tongue-in-cheek here, is actually a Tōtara burrowing out of the sanctuary that they're

doing so well.

So funnily enough, they're out to sequence about 1,000 bats, and they've sequenced in this instance just over 100 different bat species.

And that work, so I was engaged in that work partly actually through the work I think we might have previously discussed on the Tuatara genome.

Mm-hmm.

And because New Zealand's got all these weird and wonderful creatures, one of my colleagues said, who's Irish, and she came up to me, Emma Teeling, who was one of the co-leaders of this, came to me at a meeting and said, Neil, we've got to sequence a New Zealand bat.

Like they have like birds filled all the niches.

And Tuatara.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems like the cool forms of life, by which I don't mean like physically cool, I mean like interesting.

And I don't want to judge, but I do think that, you know, Tuatara are a little more interesting than bacteria.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And I think we're a little more interesting than Tuatara.

Not to create a hierarchy.

I mean...

Well, maybe not.

Welcome to The Fantastical Field Guide, your handbook to animals real and fantasy.

On this episode, we have Tuatara, Snorlax, and Eugene Tombs.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Blair.

So we thought it would be fun to see how all of those areas, their kind of fantastical creatures align with the real world, crazy things that nature has thrown at us, and maybe discuss kind of what inspired some of those fantastical animals.

So we're going to jump right into it here.

We had our usual switch them up at the end of last episode where I introduced you both to the Tuatara.

Looks like a lizard? Is not a lizard.