Dr. Catherine Macdonald

speaker

130 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Dr. Catherine Macdonald’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Science Friday · Tracking shark populations, one shark at a time · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

And so it's not just a transit opportunity, but with a snack car.

But more than that, almost all of the literature around these relationships between remoras and their hosts assume that their hosts are

unbothered by that relationship, that it maybe even benefits the host because some remoras eat parasites that might otherwise be kind of a nuisance.

And this...

In my lab, we talk about science as being forming and adding small bricks to a wall of knowledge.

And this little brick contributes to a section of the wall that is asking questions about whether Remora host relationships are really as problem-free for the host as has been previously assumed.

If you see the video, it doesn't look like the manta ray is enjoying itself.

And I can hardly blame it.

So I think that this is a part of larger questions about if those remoras are entering the gill slits of a manta ray, the cloaca of a manta ray, if they're using their attachment disc in those spaces of more sensitive tissues, how much of a problem might that create for hosts?

And, you know, how should it affect the ways that we think about how those animals relate to each other?

If you imagine just a room full of people who share your very niche sort of strange set of interests and how far down that rabbit hole you could go with 200 of those people, it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

There's a lot of fish-themed clothing, although that's not 100% my jam, and a lot of fish-related conversations that, at least for me, are really energizing and inspiring.

Yes and no.

I think child Catherine expected a lot less paperwork.

Yes.

And I think more than that, I was the kind of kid who was dirty and outdoors and wanted to know why the crab was doing that.

And the idea that you can spend your whole life answering questions like, why is the crab doing that?

is to me one of the things that's really magical about science.

Yes, absolutely.

This is such a great question.

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