Thomas Stroud

two? three? years ago i found a baby alligator snapping turtle on the sidewalk by my apartment, toody and i took it to the river nearby, on our way i found a GIANT acorn and i took it home. we named the turtle Acorn and the acorn Baby Alligator Snapping Turtle.

a baby alligator snapping turtle named Acorn, and an acorn named Baby Alligator Snapping Turtle ༄˖°.🍂.ೃ࿔*:･

Baby alligator snapping turtle

Baby alligator snapping turtle

Just thinking about her

Very happy that our new paper on the odd, looped optic nerves of chameleons is now out! It turns out having highly mobile eyes require some pretty specialized connections! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

One of those Etsy pages that sells decals that say "Your Bones are wet" and a dancing skeleton.

Your BONES 🦴 are WET💧.

Sorry, I know that's a weird thing to tell someone, but it's:
A. True.
B. Important, for reasons.

Your bones are about 30% water by weight & an adult skeleton contains ~3.2 liters of water, a little less than a gallon.

Stolen from the Internet: a paved path goes up some shallow stairs that curve around to the left. Meanwhile, a foot-beaten trail goes to the top of a green hill, with cloudy skies above.

This picture tells a story about who we are as humans:
we're monkeys that want to see the view from the hill, because it might be pretty, surprising, or neat.

We're driven by discovery, novelty, curiosity.

But you'll also notice how uniform the patterning is.

Let's talk about Desire Paths.

salamander phylogeny with representative limb bones and their cross-sections

New PhD preprint! We studied the effects of habitat and multi-stage life cycles on salamander limb bones! Aquatic and terrestrial spp. have divergent morphs + semi-aquatic and multi-phasic spp. do their own thing + decoupled external and internal shape promote diversity. 🧪🦎

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Biomechanical simulations of hindlimb function in Alligator provide insights into postural shifts and body size evolution Locomotor simulations in alligators reveal that transitions to erect limb postures facilitate the evolution of larger body sizes.

New paper on crocodylian locomotor evolution led by Masaya Iijima, w/Richard Blob & me!
More erect hindlimb postures help extant gators support their weight (esp. at ankle), & how these mechanics constrained giant Deinosuchus to a slow walk at best!
The paper-- www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Taphonomy is the science of what happens between death and discovery.

Image of a fluorescently labeled adult mouse kidney showing AQP2 staining of collecting ducts and connecting segment in green and alpha SMA staining of the arterial tree in magenta. The collecting ducts look like squiggly branches.

For this #FluorescenceFriday, a gorgeous image of an adult mouse kidney labeled with AQP2 and alpha SMA antibodies. AQP2 (green) marks the collecting duct and distal connecting segment while SMA marks the arterial tree. Courtesy of talented postdoc Sarah McLarnon.

Newest paper from the lab! Led by recent lab alum Maressa Kennedy, we utilized a novel nipple apparatus capable of modulating milk flow rate and stiffness to investigate the impact of multiple sensory inputs on suck-swallow-breathing coordination in an infant pig model. 🤖🐷🍼
doi.org/10.1152/japp...

Apply for the Scripps Postdoctoral Fellowship! I'm looking to support a strong candidate in fish physiology and/or biomechanics. Deadline: Oct 9, 2025. Eligibility: PhD by Nov 30, 2026 with ≤3 years postdoc experience. 2 years, $74K salary, $6K research allowance 👉 apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04348 🧪 🐟

I'm recruiting a PhD student to join the lab at @gtsciences.bsky.social in Fall 2026! Broad taxonomic and topical freedom under the umbrella of vertebrate joint form and function. Information here: www.manafzadeh.com – please share 🦴🩻

New paper out in Pediatric Research! We found that feeding in infant pigs raised on a ducted, biomimetic nipple more closely resembled the mechanics of breastfeeding, and that differences in nipple design impacted milk acquisition and overall feeding performance 🐷🍼
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

From the depths of the pond.

Snapping turtle swimming underwater while painted turtles swim at the surface.

Baby snapping turtle in sandy beach. Wet sand on its chin.

Hatchlings are emerging! Look at the little sand beard on this baby snapper! 🐢

My Alma mater! So jealous!

Baby snapper yawning.

Rawr! 🐢

Our new paper led by recent lab alumni Hannah Shideler and postdoc Elska Kaczmarek is out in ICB @sicbjournals.bsky.social! For the first time ever, we reconstructed the volume of the oral cavity during suckling, and found that nipple design impacts tongue function.
doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

From left to right, Dr. Albert Mulenga, William Tae Heung Kim, Dr. Thu Thuy Nguyen, Dr. Alex Kiarie Gaithuma, Dr Hassan Hakimi and Emily Bencosme Cuevas. Kim is a Texas A&M researcher who was detained in San Francisco last Monday despite being a permanent resident of the United States and a green card holder. COURTESY OF TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

I NEED to tell you the story of Tae Heung “William” Kim.

He's a graduate student at Texas A&M where he's working on a vaccine for Lyme disease.

He's a *legal permanent resident* of the United States.

And he's been in ICE detention for 12 days & counting, transferred Tuesday to South Texas.

New Comparative Anatomy Textbook! Completely free to read and open access!

doi.org/10.59319/YHF...

📣I’m hiring!
Two weeks to apply for an October start.
Start date is also flexible.
#PhD #Morphology #evolution

Three‑row table linking scales: fish, penguin, ant. Each row shows an individual silhouette, a pair‑level interaction image, and the emergent collective - schooling fish, penguin huddle, and an ant raft.

New review in PRX Life, where we propose a tangibility scale for the physics of social interactions, and highlight a few tangible examples - from dead fish “swimming” to efficient schooling, warm penguin huddles, and dry ant rafts.
Written with the brilliant Chantal Nguyen 🐟🐧🐜

tinyurl.com/naet5tdh

A 3d rendering of a CT scan of a Rio Cauca caecilian with transparent body and bone colored skeleton, showing 7 baby caecilians inside, each rendered in a different color - counter-clockwise from tail to head - red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, purple.

Say hello to Florida's newest established species, Typhlonectes natans - the Rio Cauca Caecilian! You can read about their relative abundance, distribution, & natural history, in our brand new paper:

journals.ku.edu/reptilesanda...

Here is one individual I CT scanned that had 7 babies inside!

One of the most irritating things about RFK Jr is how he makes things that are usually fun biologist anecdotes ("I found some neat roadkill, I got to hold a lamprey" etc) seem uncool and weird

Be the vigilante arborist you want to see in the world

btw did you know you can subscribe to PBS for only like $5/mo or a $60 one-time for a year donation, and get access to their Passport streaming service? They mail you a little live programming guide and everything, too. The 40-something seasons of NOVA alone are worth it.

The Mayerl Lab at NAU is looking to recruit a PhD student for Fall 2026! We take an integrative approach that bridges engineering, clinical, and evolutionary approaches to study feeding physiology of vertebrates. Our lab website is linked in our bio, and feel free to reach out on here or via email.

Are you a PI in a biology field looking for students to join your lab as a PhD student? I made a Starter Pack to help PIs and potential PhD students connect! If you would like to be added to this pack, please let me know! go.bsky.app/EFj87fi

‘Stealth flippers’ helped this extinct mega-predator stalk its prey Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 16 July 2025

This week on the pod:

🦈 The ancient mega-predator with a ‘stealth mode’
💤 ‘Leaky’ mitochondria could be the root cause of sleep
📄 The secret messages used to trick peer-review AI
go.nature.com/3IrcyQ5