Extremophiles!

Our animal episodes seem popular, so episode 9 is a return to silly beasties -- in this case Sean and Nathan are talking about organisms that like to live in EXTREME environments, organisms called extremophiles.

Sean and Nathan discuss the plural of octopus, with Sean starting out wrong with octopi (wrong!), Nathan offering octopussies (hmm) then switching to octopuses (best accepted answer). Sean tosses in octopodes, which is the correct plural form based on the etymology, but pretty much no one says it.

Sean mentions at one point that at some depths amphipods would normally have their exoskeletons dissolve, but H. gigas is an amphipod that secretes an aluminum hydroxide gel over their exoskeleton to protect it. Which is metal.

 

References:

https://www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4461

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063716300656?via%3Dihub

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0206710

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/these-intrepid-crickets-hawaii-s-lava-home-sweet-home

https://www.nature.com/articles/310225a0.pdf

https://www.pnas.org/content/104/36/14401.short

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4187170/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/space-station-mold-survives-200-times-radiation-dose-would-kill-human