+DaGizmoGuy We debated showing the process, but to be honest it isn't that exciting as it takes a while between putting the specimen in the various solutions and letting them sit for days without a whole lot visibly happening. Perhaps sometime soon we'll set up a timelapse in the lab and try to capture the transformation that way!
+ljmasternoob Have you been there? It's a damn huge museum. I mean, Emily has shown us some parts of the museum on video, but until you've gone there in person, it's hard to understand how big it really is. I'm surprised it's ONLY 140.
I would love to see a timelapse of making these clearing and staining fishes (or something else). Just to see how everything changes. Awesome vid btw I now know how they do it!
I don't know, I think it'd probably be worth doing this to a human to see what we can learn about our own bodies. Depending on how expensive it is it might be best to leave that to an eccentric billionaire instead of draining public funds, but isn't doing weird things with their corpses what eccentric billionaires are for?
THAT IS AWESOME! I LOVE IT (In a purely scientific way... of course)! Thanks for that. I didn't know it was called diaphonization (?). These are so cool.
I'm not sure how useful a cleared and stained Emily specimen would be. I mean, even after the whole process I'm pretty sure we'd see that it's still got brains on it...
Fantastic! This is great example of the vast riches found on RU-vids video servers - the channel "for the people". Many thanks for your video. I just had to chime in and say, "COOL!".
Yet another amazingly interesting behind-the-scenes episode, Emily ^^ Diaphonization... another word I had never heard before. Seems to be pretty useful. And it looks pretty cool, too.
VERY COOL! I really enjoyed this episode, I'd only every seen these in passing but it was cool to understand the process :D And they look very awesome.
WHAAAT. WOAH! This was just so amazingly cool! I had no idea clearing and staining animals like this was a thing until watching this video. Now I really want to see one in person.
Man, i would love to have a job like Emily! She gets to dip into all types of sectors of science (and look at some of the coolest things on earth) and spread knowledge that a lot of people would never get to see!
That was really cool! Throughout the video, I was wondering too what it would be like to do this to a human. I think it's interesting just how informative this actually is, being able to move around the skeleton and joints, you could learn a lot by that.
My internship had a really cool video conference with some internso at the Smithsonian and they had a puppy that was stained like this. It's such a cool way to look at a specimen. Woo brain scoop^^
Awesome process! I found some of these teeny tiny stained specimens in 2 inch jars for sale when I visited Tokyo! I regret not buying one of them now :(
that is one of the coolest things i have ever seen. not only is it a fascinating process, it also looks very aesthetically pleasing for some reason. Is this something a layman could do as well, or are these chemicals restricted in their availability outside of professional scientific research? Also, could you encase these specimens in something like clear urethane resin or would that not work due to their gelatinous surface?
I just want a tour of one of the stained specimen like that little ray. Can we just get Dr. Caleb just explaining the morphology of the ray? That will be so cool
The stingray(-ish?) and turtles look amazing. Couple of questions: - Can mammals be cleared too? He only mentions "other vertebrate groups" - Can you reintroduce slight color variations in the soft tissue? It would be amazing to be able to distinguish muscle and such on a translucent level while still be able to see the bones
+Carlos Vives you can buy cleared and stained rats on Amazon, and there are several ways you can do it at home. I'm not sure if you can stain muscles, but you might be able to still see them if you don't completely clear the specimen.
This is so cool! And now I want those fishes on my walls... Hmm, what would happen if you encased such a specimen in like clear resin? Would it rot? Would that have a different refractive density and would that make it cloudy? I mean, it would probably be easier to paint one to put on the wall, but the real thing would be so cool (especially if you put a light behind it)!
They had some fetuses at body worlds nyc that were prepared in this way! It was a very morbid room but it was amazing to see the tiny skeletons in fetuses that were only a few weeks old.
+Erika Martin This paper from Taylor and Van Dyke (1985) seems to be one researchers reference as a good baseline, but as Caleb mentions in the video there are a few different ways to go about it depending on the size of the specimen, how old it is (e.g. he has cleared/stained specimens collected in the early 1900s that have sat in alcohol for a century), etc. But, you could start here: sfi.mnhn.fr/cybium/numeros/1985/92/01-Taylor[92]107-119.pdf
Are there any simple guides out there for assembling fish skeletons? Because I have a few and it's impossible to keep track of all the parts, especially around the skull.
+Pelle Olsson Well, glycerine tastes sweet and is classified as non-toxic, so I guess you could think of the specimens as candied fish? Edit: Now, purely out of curiosity, I wonder if a person could actually eat the specimens. Aside from the fact that there's probably no nutritional value and that it'd be like eating bones, plus it would destroy something with scientific value but...could it be done? I'm guessing yes.
How long does each stage take generally? Because these are being absorbed by static (dead) things I feel that each stage would take a considerable amount of time. Plus what looked like a small ray of some description looked great, can we get a close up of that . It kinda reminded me of the old screen-savers of dancing lines.
