CHRIS: Hey, everyone, my name is Chris Anderson.

Today on Science Around Cincy we're going to explore some of the truly creepy parts of our world.

From microbes to spiders, let's learn more about the weird and icky.

(music) I'm at the Rhined cheese shop at Findlay Market.

Stephanie Webster is the owner of this shop and she's going to teach me about the science of making cheese.

Stephanie.

Hello, Chris, welcome to The Rhined.

So other than delicious, what exactly is cheese?

STEPHANIE: Cheese at its core, it's just preserved milk.

CHRIS: Preserved milk.

STEPHANIE: Preserved milk.

It can be cow milk, sheep milk, goat milk, yak milk, camel milk.

CHRIS: As long as it's milk STEPHANIE: As long as it's milk.

CHRIS: Ok, so -- STEPHANIE: It's just preserved.

CHRIS: So what makes it -- I guess like what's the transition from milk to cheese.

STEPHANIE: So in all cheese there's only four ingredients: milk, cultures, so bacteria.

CHRIS: Bacteria.

STEPHANIE: Rennet, which is -- we can talk about, but it's an enzyme that kind of speeds up the reaction.

OK. And salt and time.

Right?

So that's really what is the difference.

So milk is basically fat, proteins, enzymes.

So really cheese is just trying to separate all those good things, fat, protein, nutrients away from the water.

CHRIS: So what you're telling me, this is basically a health food.

STEPHANIE: It's health food.

CHRIS: OK, I'll take it.

You're an expert.

STEPHANIE: You only need cheese and grapes.

CHRIS: You're an expert, I'll take your word for it.

So when you're talking about bacteria.

Bacteria do most of the hard work of making cheese, right?

STEPHANIE: Yep, bacteria is what gives it all of the different flavors and textures.

The cheese maker just gets it started and then the bacteria does the rest of the work.

CHRIS: So really, when we're talking about cheese making, it's really about creating a nice little environment for the bacteria to do their thing.

STEPHANIE: Exactly.

CHRIS: So how do you make a good environment for bacteria to turn milk into delicious, delicious cheese?

STEPHANIE: Well, you give them, first, what they want to eat, which is lactose.

Which is naturally occurring in milk.

CHRIS: That's the sugar found in milk.

STEPHANIE: That's the sugar in milk.

You give them the correct temperature requirements.

CHRIS: So do they take that lactose and turn it into anything else?

STEPHANIE: They turn it into lactic acid.

CHRIS: OK. And that's -- is that what helps preserve the cheese, like make that milk last longer?

STEPHANIE: If you've ever squirted a lemon into milk, then it curdles automatically.

Right?

CHRIS: Right.

STEPHANIE: And so that's what the bacteria is doing.

So they're eating all the lactose in liquid milk.

They're acidifying it, which is what takes the solids away from the liquids, the curd from the whey.

And then after that, other bacteria can start to do their work, creating all the flavor compounds.

CHRIS: OK, so I just want to make sure I know the process.

So we've got milk.

STEPHANIE: You've got milk.

CHRIS: The bacteria, they turn the lactose in the milk, the sugar in the milk into lactic acid, and that causes all those proteins and fats to kind of clump up in a curd.

STEPHANIE: Correct.

CHRIS: And then over time, those bacteria keep doing their thing and they give all those fun flavors of cheese that we really like.

STEPHANIE: Exactly.

CHRIS: So can you show me a little bit how we go about doing this?

STEPHANIE: Let's make some cheese.

CHRIS: So what we got?

STEPHANIE: We're going to -- so we have milk, of course, the most important ingredient.

We have our bacteria.

CHRIS: That's the bacteria right there?

STEPHANIE: That's the bacteria.

It's Freeze-Dried.

CHRIS: Ok, what kind of bacteria?

STEPHANIE: This is Lactobacillus and other lacto fermenting bacteria.

CHRIS: OK. STEPHANIE: So that just means that they eat lactose.

That's their food of choice.

CHRIS: Okay, simple enough.

STEPHANIE: We have rennet, which is an enzyme.

It kind of speeds up the process a little bit.

CHRIS: Like a catalyst.

STEPHANIE: A catalyst, that's exactly what it is.

CHRIS: Gotcha.

So it's going to speed up our reactions.

And of course, we have a little hot plate here to get our temperature right, correct?

STEPHANIE: Correct.

Yep.

So we have to heat the milk up a little bit because that is the conditions that these bacterias like to live in.

CHRIS: All right.

So what's first up?

STEPHANIE: All right, So first step is you can take your milk and just pour it right in here on your regular stovetop at home.

We have our little thermometer here.

CHRIS: My dad would be so proud because he was milkman.

STEPHANIE: Really?

CHRIS: Yeah, I'm the milkman's kid.

STEPHANIE: We're going to eat it to 75 degrees.

CHRIS: OK. STEPHANIE: Just want to keep this on a low temp.

We don't want to scorch the milk.

That's going to add flavors to the cheese we don't want.

All right, we're at 75 degrees now, so it's time to add our bacteria.

CHRIS: Add our bacteria, this guy right here.

STEPHANIE: I'm going to turn my heat off.

CHRIS: OK. How many packets?

STEPHANIE: Just one.

CHRIS: Just one.

STEPHANIE: they're in a deep sleep right now, so we got to wake them up.

So you're just going to kind of scatter them on the surface of the warmed milk.

CHRIS: Yeah.

Like this?

STEPHANIE: Yeah.

So they've been frozen and so we're just going to wake them up.

So we're going to let them sit for two minutes.

CHRIS: Two minutes.

OK, two minutes is up.

So these guys are awake now.

STEPHANIE: So they're awake, they're rehydrated, and they're ready to be stirred throughout the milk.

CHRIS: OK. STEPHANIE: So just with your slotted spoon and without scraping the bottom, you'll just want to stir really well, get them mixed throughout.

CHRIS: All right, it's nice.

STEPHANIE: Gently, gently, very gently.

You don't want to -- You don't want to -- CHRIS: This is why I wanted to do this with a master cheesemaker.

STEPHANIE: It's like a whirlpool over there that you've created.

CHRIS: Sorry about that, guys.

STEPHANIE: Apologize to the bacteria.

So at this point we add rennet.

And I have already taken half a tablet and dissolved it and about a tablespoon of water.

CHRIS: OK. STEPHANIE: So you can go ahead.

CHRIS: Just dump it in?

STEPHANIE: Then this is a much gentler stir, so just like -- CHRIS: You clearly don't trust me with it.

STEPHANIE: I'm going to do it.

It's a gentle stir, you don't want to disrupt anything.

And then this comes out, the lid goes on.

CHRIS: Lid goes on.

STEPHANIE: 12 hours.

CHRIS: 12 hours.

All right, so it's been 12 hours.

STEPHANIE: 12 hours later, and now the bacteria hopefully have done their job.

CHRIS: Let's see if they did it.

STEPHANIE: They did.

CHRIS: Wow.

STEPHANIE: So here we have curds and whey.

You see the whey is on top and the curds are just under the surface there, the solids.

And so the bacteria have eaten a lot of the lactose and turned it to lactic acid, which has caused our milk to curdle.

CHRIS: OK, and then -- STEPHANIE: And that's this.

CHRIS: That's that.

STEPHANIE: And so now we can remove the curds from the whey.

CHRIS: OK. STEPHANIE: And we're going to strain it.

And so I'll let you do that.

CHRIS: Oh, boy.

Just like this?

STEPHANIE: Wow.

Look at that.

That is a beautiful curd.

(music) It's already starting to drain.

CHRIS: Oh, yeah, whoo.

Look at that.

STEPHANIE: And then what we would do with this is you can -- we can just tighten it and you have to hold it for 12 hours.

CHRIS: All right, so we can finally taste the fruits of the bacteria's labor, right?

STEPHANIE: It's all drained out and we'll just take our bag and in there you should have some cheese.

CHRIS: Oh, yeah, We do have cheese, it's clumpy, but it's -- OK. Let's put it right here.

STEPHANIE: So that's our product.

We have a whole bag full of that.

So that is cheese on its freshest.

So this curd can go on to become, with age, years, months, with age under only conditions that a cheese maker can do.

So don't try it at home.

But this is good to eat as it is.

But with age, curds like this can turn into something that looks like this.

CHRIS: Oh, wow.

STEPHANIE: Or even this or this, and so that is the base product.

So with time, the bacteria continue to work on this cheese for more complex flavors.

CHRIS: So I guess, like, what do you -- what do cheesemakers do when they take, like, when you've got your curds here, what can they do to make something like, say, like something hard, like Parmesan cheese or like the difference between a like a real funky cheese like Limburger or something that's like, that's pretty, pretty out there?

STEPHANIE: So this curd is still really high moisture, even though we've been just draining it for 12 hours, right?

There's still a ton of moisture in here.

And Parmesan, as you know, is very dry.

So they have to take all this curd.

They press it in a circular mold and they continue to drain it until it's very, very, very dry.

CHRIS: OK. STEPHANIE: And then age it for three years sometimes.

CHRIS: Oh, wow.

STEPHANIE: For stinky, you want to get that stinky bacteria.

It's called bready bacteria.

CHRIS: OK. STEPHANIE: And it has this orange color, and you wash it in salt or beer or wine and it encourages the growth of that stinky bacteria and then you can get funky cheese.

CHRIS: OK, so then -- so that kind of cheese like you've got bacteria, a whole different set of bacteria making a whole bunch of different weird cool flavors with the cheese after it's been turned into the curd.

STEPHANIE: So once our initial bacteria has done the work to create the curd, now we can start introducing other molds and bacteria to make other types of flavors that we like.

CHRIS: That's cool.

Well, can we try our cheese?

STEPHANIE: Let's try it.

All right, here you go.

CHRIS: Thanks.

All right.

STEPHANIE: Cheers.

CHRIS: Clink.

I'm supposed to smell it?

STEPHANIE: I always do.

It's so lactic, it's like what fresh yogurt smells like.

CHRIS: Yeah.

STEPHANIE: But a really simple cheese, we could do like a little salt on that, I think would wake it up a little more.

And great as breakfast cheese, so spread on toast with jam or berries.

Really high in protein, really filling if you have it in the morning, it's a great breakfast.

It is -- CHRIS: It's really good.

It was really pretty easy to make.

STEPHANIE: Really easy to make.

CHRIS: Like most of the time it just kind of waiting around for it to do its thing.

I mean, like I said, you can just do this at home and you just need a couple simple ingredients and you could be your own cheesemaker.

STEPHANIE: Totally.

All you need is bacteria.

And if you can't get the rennet, you can even just do a little bit of lemon juice and it would help it a little bit.

CHRIS: Well, this has been clearly the most delicious episode of Science Around Cincy we've ever done.

So thank you so much for inviting me.

STEPHANIE: Thanks, Chris.

CHRIS: And teaching me how to make cheese.

STEPHANIE: It's easy, everyone should be making cheese and yogurt, too.

CHRIS: It's a superfood.

STEPHANIE: It's a superfood.

(music) CHRIS: We humans learn a lot about the world around us through our vision, but we're not the only ones who use our eyes to survive.

Dr. Nate Morehouse and his lab have been researching how spiders see the world, specifically with how they find a mate.

Let's check in with Nate and his team and learn how spiders find love in a hopeless place.

Hey, Nate.

NATE: Hey, Chris.

How's it going?

CHRIS: It's going all right.

So how does our vision differ from spiders?

NATE: So we do everything in just one pair of eyes and that works well if you can have an eye the size that ours is.

We have pretty large eyes.

But spiders are small and so what they've done is instead of having a single pair of eyes, they have eight eyes, four pairs of eyes.

And they split up the things that we do in our single pair into these separate pairs.

They split up color vision and pattern recognition and motion detection into different kinds of eyes.

A little bit of a division of labor in their eyes.

CHRIS: And so their eyes do -- well, I mean, first of all, they have eight eyes, which is amazing.

So but their eyes do -- different sets of eyes do different things?

NATE: Yeah, absolutely.

And how they stitch all of that information together to have a seamless view of the world is a complete mystery still.

CHRIS: That is, I mean, it's hard.

We can't even comprehend that, but that's got to be amazing to have all these different pairs.

So how do spiders use their vision to find a mate?

Because that's what you study.

So how do they do that?

NATE: Well, it depends on the kind of spider you're talking about.

The ones that we care the most about in my lab are the jumping spiders.

And part of that is because they just have the most extraordinary eyes.

Other spiders don't see the world quite as well.

You know, orb weavers, you know, the spiders you might find on the web in your garden, see the world very poorly.

And so most of their courtship and finding of mates happens through vibrational senses.

They are very sensitive to vibration and sound.

But jumping spiders and other things like wolf spiders have excellent vision and they use that vision to find mates.

They use that vision to choose among mates to decide if a mate is high quality or not, is it sick or is it healthy?

And they're doing all of that with this exceptional vision that I just described.

CHRIS: So can we watch some spiders try to find their better halves?

NATE: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

We'll do that right up here in the greenhouse where they get all that bright sunlight to be able to see each other quite well.

CHRIS: Awesome.

Let's go check it out.

All right, guys.

So tell me a little bit about the setup here.

What are you guys doing?

NATE: Well, we're going to look at some jumping spiders courting each other and maybe some jumping spiders attacking prey items here.

CHRIS: What kind of behaviors in these spiders are we going to see as they're potentially maybe looking for a mate?

OLIVIA: So the male of each species has a species specific courtship dance that he's going to do.

It involves all of his legs as well as like vibration in order to send signals of fitness to the female.

He's going to do this dance that evolves over different stages to convince her that he's a worthwhile mate.

CHRIS: Well, let's see if we can't get some spiders to find a mate.

OLIVIA: OK, here you go.

He's courting.

CHRIS: Courtship, oh, my gosh.

He's like showing off this front.

NATE: Oh, yeah, he's got all sorts of action going on right now.

OLIVIA: Including a vibration element.

CHRIS: Oh, wow, yeah.

OLIVIA: He's dancing, but also, like, singing to her.

CHRIS: Look at that.

NATE: Yeah.

All the vibrations are coordinated with the dance moves.

CHRIS: I mean, karaoke works, you know.

OLIVIA: [indiscernible] Oh, yeah, you can kind of see that.

NATE: She's pretty interested, too.

OLIVIA: Yeah, I'm surprised because she might be hungry.

NATE: Yeah, so a lot of the sounds that they'll make in their songs will sound like purring, they'll will be going [FX purr] Like that, she'll be feeling that through her legs, actually, because it's vibrations that go through whatever they're standing on.

As long as they're connected in some way, then she can feel that.

CHRIS: She's quite a bit bigger than he is, isn't she?

NATE: Yep, and that may actually be one of the important pieces for why males are so elaborate in their courtship is because females will eat these males.

And so he's really dancing for his life.

CHRIS: This isn't a game for him.

NATE: No, no.

He's at a distinct disadvantage.

So if he can't redirect her attention away from food towards mating.

OLIVIA: She's starting to take her own posture here, so he might not be doing too well, but he's going -- CHRIS: OH!

OLIVIA: Yeah.

NATE: All right, he's going to start it again, or maybe he's going to take off.

OLIVIA: Take a breather, figure out where he is.

CHRIS: His pride's hurt a little bit.

OLIVIA: The males will have colorful ornaments that the brightness of their color could be correlated to, like, better fitness, which the females might be looking for.

The interesting thing is only the female's front two eyes have color vision.

CHRIS: Oh, really?

OLIVIA: And they have a very small range of view.

So she's watching this male move and as she's doing that she's scanning over his image with those front eyes.

And we think a lot of the motion that he does is meant to maintain her interest so that he's continuing to give her a dynamic and changing display so she doesn't get bored of watching him.

You can do it.

CHRIS: He's just a little shy.

OLIVIA: Yeah.

CHRIS: Oh.

OLIVIA: That was bold, sir.

NATE: All right, he's got his courage up.

Now, he knows she's there.

She's likely to turn to look at him if he makes a move.

This is -- his initial motif is to hold his front legs out like that.

CHRIS: Okay, bye.

OLIVIA: I don't think -- NATE: Every once in a while you catch a glimpse of that pink butt, it's really extraordinary.

OLIVIA: Not me, look at her.

NATE: These animals are most active in the late spring, in April and May.

And they're quite common in the Cincinnati area.

OLIVIA: Oh, razzle dazzle.

NATE: Oh.

OLIVIA: Yeah, he's got her -- CHRIS: Yeah, he puts his booty in the air.

OLIVIA: He's got that butt up.

CHRIS: Butt's up.

NATE: He's going to strike a pose, I guess.

CHRIS: He's like the Derek Zoolander of spiders.

OLIVIA: You can probably see this courtship dance is totally different than the other two.

CHRIS: Oh, yeah, it is different, isn't it?

NATE: When you begin really paying attention to the dynamics here, it's very clear that the male is just 100% tuned into whatever the female is doing.

And that's not something we understand very well.

There are very few animals where we really know, like, how are the males keeping track of females.

Something as intuitive.

We did another study where we were looking at these waving displays and asking are males adjusting those based on how close or far away they are from females?

And they do, they wave larger when they're farther away from the female.

Something we do all the time.

Right?

We're trying to catch the eye of a friend down the street, you make this big, huge wave.

You'd never wave that big if they were right next to you.

CHRIS: Unless you're Forrest Gump.

NATE: Yeah.

Nate, that was amazing to watch those spiders interact and dance with each other.

That was so cool.

NATE: Aren't they fascinating little animals?

CHRIS: They are, you know, you talk about how the spiders almost have like a personality.

I feel like you're right.

We do see ourselves in the spiders a little bit.

I mean, I feel like humans find mates by, you know, the way people dance and with their appearance and stuff.

NATE: Oh, yeah.

We can't help but root for the males and the females.

It kind of depends on your personality, which one you're rooting for.

Do you want the female to eat the male or do you want the male to successfully mate the female?

But they really just draws in, for sure.

CHRIS: Way more entertaining than Love is Blind.

So how do these, the choices that spiders make as they're mating, how does that affect their populations and as those populations change over time?

NATE: Well, in a number of different ways.

I mean, one thing is you probably noticed how elaborate and how different each of those species were with regard to their courtship.

And that's because males are really under pressure to perform.

They have to capture female's attention.

They have to keep that attention.

They have to convince the female that they're an excellent mate.

And this has led to this proliferation, this kind of exuberance in the evolutionary sense of these movements and colors and patterns.

And so that sends each of these little populations off on their own little trajectory in evolutionary time and results in this diversity that we see.

CHRIS: Well, thank you so much for inviting me to your lab and showing me all the awesome work that you and the rest of your team do and learning how these spiders choose mates and their vision as well.

NATE: It's really cool.

Oh, it's been our pleasure.

It's really so much fun to share this stuff with others because it's such a fascination to us.

(music) CHRIS: I'm Chris Anderson from Science Around Cincy.

CHRISTY: And we are the bug chicks.

JESSICA: I'm Jessica Honaker.

CHRISTY: And I'm Christy Reddick and today we're going to show you how to find bugs in your own backyard.

So we're holding nets right now because we're going to be sweeping around in the grasses looking for insects.

Now, my net has seen better days, and it's not actually a sweep.

JESSICA: It's just well-loved.

Yeah.

So this one's a sweep net, and you can tell because of the linen here.

It's sort of sturdier as it sweeps through the higher grasses and things.

So what we'll do is we will walk through this sort of weedy area and we will sweep it side to side like this and then we'll flip the net over so the end goes over the top and traps the insects inside.

CHRISTY: Now, when you open a net, always bring it up like this.

Don't look into it like this, because bugs fly up and they're going to fly right up your nose and you're going to lose them, which is the worst.

All right, let's do this.

(music) More brush, less air.

CHRIS: Okay.

CHRISTY: Faster.

Don't be afraid.

Yeah, use two hands and go for it, and flip.

JESSICA: That flip was kind of pro.

CHRISTY: One of the great ways to find arthropods, an arthropod is anything with an exoskeleton, six or more jointed legs, in your backyard is to just roll over rocks and logs and things.

Things love to live under rotting logs.

Here we go.

Ready?

(music) I've never seen this species.

There, there, here.

Right here.

You got him?

Don't bite me.

Oh, it's leaking on me, leaking.

Oh, I'm going to taste it.

JESSICA: Yeah, do it.

CHRISTY: Oh, I'm not going to taste it.

Smell it, smell that.

CHRIS: It smells like smoke.

JESSICA: Like really bad barbecue.

CHRISTY: Now, I want to make sure that we're telling people that if you don't know what something is, and if you think something might bite or sting or have boiling acid, please don't go and grab it.

Jessica and I are entomologists, we study bugs.

Especially for spiders and centipedes and things like that.

JESSICA: And bees and wasps and some of the others.

CHRISTY: Things that have venom, they are are look, but don't touch.

We call them not bug chicks approved to touch.

CHRIS: Should we take a look see at the stuff that we have caught?

JESSICA: Yes, absolutely.

CHRISTY: Earlier we caught it the smoky juice beetle.

CHRIS: Oh, yeah.

CHRISTY: The ground beetle that leaked that incredible barbecue on us.

JESSICA: The barbecue beetle.

CHRISTY: Right?

And we want to look at this really beautiful exoskeleton.

JESSICA: Oh, wow.

CHRISTY: Oh, my gosh.

Look at that color.

So this is not pigment.

This is structural color, meaning it's tiny little structure's microscopic that refract light in different wavelengths to make that iridescence.

CHRIS: Wow.

[all talking at once] CHRISTY: Look at that!

CHRIS: So, that's like a -- it's like a lobster claw on its face.

CHRISTY: Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

JESSICA: This is a predator like, it chases down its prey.

We saw how fast it was.

CHRIS: Well that's -- that isn't something that's built to eat plants.

CHRISTY: No.

JESSICA: No.

Absolutely not.

CHRIS: It's designed to crush something and put in its mouth.

JESSICA: And kind of slice it.

Those are sharp.

CHRIS: Yeah.

CHRISTY: That's what I love about this is even if you don't know anything about an animal, like a beetle like this.

You can take a look at it and you can make an observation and you can hypothesize what it might eat based on the shape of its mouth.

CHRIS: Yeah.

CHRISTY: And this is prognathous, meaning forward facing mouthparts.

And when you see something like this, you know it's a predator.

You know it's really going after something.

JESSICA: As opposed to something like a caterpillar where the mouthparts kind of sit at the very bottom of its head.

CHRIS: Well, it kind of goes down.

CHRISTY: Exactly.

CHRIS: Like he's going to look straight at what, like, whatever -- JESSICA: Whatever he runs into.

CHRIS: Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's like eyesight and mouth eating is aligned on the same plane.

(music) That's our show.

Thank you so much for watching.

We hope you learned how amazing the strange can be.

See you next time on Science Around Cincy.

Hey, everyone, my name is Chris Anderson.

You know, we humans learn a lot about the world around us from our eyes, but we're not the only ones who survive -- Ah, you know what, we've got that first one.

Science Around Cincy is an independently produced collaboration between educators and students in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

Funding is provided in part by: Northern Kentucky University's College of Informatics and Department of Communication, the Hamilton County Educational Service Center, Outsider Productions, and Fuel Cincinnati.

Stay curious, my friends.

Captioning: Maverick Captioning CIN OH maverickcaptioning.com