Alie Ward

for a visit, a tour, and a chat about armadillos, skunks, pangolins, spikes, spurs, stripes, spots, and the will to keep living.

So we'll chat in a sec, but first, thank you to all the patrons who support the show for as little as a dollar a month at patreon.com slash ologies.

We also have brand new merch about revolutions and protests.

It's up at ologiesmerch.com, designed by Andy Diaz, with proceeds benefiting the National Immigration Law Center.

That's brand new.

Again, ologiesmerch.com.

And for $0, thank you for helping boost the show by leaving reviews such as this very recent one from Jordan D. Friend who wrote, five stars.

It's great, but, and it's a big but, they write, it's too damn interesting.

They say, I listen to the podcast as I fall asleep and suddenly it's two hours later, I'm still awake and I'm like, damn girl, beavers are interesting.

Jordan D. Friend, thank you for that.

I hope it's your real name because friend indeed.

Also, thank you to sponsors of the show who let us donate to a cause of eachologist choosing every week.

Okay, this absolute gem studied biological sciences at Cornell, then got a master's and a PhD in animal behavior from Davis, and has taught at UMass Amherst, University of Mississippi, and Harvard, and has been a Darwin postdoc fellow.

But above all that, if you know an animal biologist in LA, they know this guy, everyone loves him.

Also, kind enough to help coin a term for this ology, since it's so specific.

So, zoo-hoplology it is.

It combines zoo, animal,

with the Greek root haplon, which means arms or armor.

So animal armor and defense.

The visit was also a visual feast as I walked past skunk pelts and tiger cutouts and sat under a whale skeleton.